Women’s Committees: a model for good local government?

Abstract

Women’s committees, although still few in number, have been a steadily growing phenomenon in local government for the past ten years. They reflect the failure of politicians and professionals to address the needs of women in the community and many of them have developed co-operative ways of working with women’s groups trying to extend the representativeness and responsiveness of local government. By analysing policies in terms of women’s lived experiences, women’s committees highlight the alienating effect of predominantly white, middle-class, male-defined policies which ignore the majority of citizens. Given a firm legal base, adequate resources and a corporate structure, women’s committees might radically improve women’s equality of opportunity in local authority jobs and services. As such they may, therefore, also offer us a potential model for more democratic local government generally.