On Parliamentarians and Parliamentariennes

(c) Marieke van Santen

While I extend my congratulations to the new MP for Norwich North, Chloe Smith, I do hate it when women are elected as MPs. Allow me to explain why.

Last weekend it was revealed that Labour’s deputy leader, Harriet Harman, two years ago attempted to change party rules to ensure one of the party’s top two positions was always held by a woman. According to the Sunday Times, Harman stated that Labour “ ‘owed it to women’ to have a female in one of the two top jobs, to ensure concerns of women voters were properly taken into account when decisions were being made”.

On the face of it this seems a shocking claim, for the implication is that an entirely male leadership would/did ignore the concerns of 50% of the electorate in their decision making. It also implies that women will look out for the interests of their sex.. While once this was considered feasible, at least the latter is now incredulous. Consider the 1997 vote on cutting lone parent benefits, an issue disproportionately affecting women. As Philip Cowley reminds us “of the 47 MPs to vote against the party line, just one was a woman from the 1997 intake (of 65)”. So much for representing women’s interests! But Harman should know this: she was the minister responsible for forcing through these cuts.

Or consider Margaret Thatcher, who famously failed to promote women into her cabinet. Is there any guarantee that a female Labour leader would not do the same? In any case, Harman’s presence as one of Labour’s “top two” hasn’t prevented accusations from Patricia Hewitt of 10 Downing Street’s “laddish culture” or of from Caroline Flint that Gordon Brown treated of women as “window dressing”.

No, what Harman appeared to be promoting is not “equality” but “parity”. An electoral system cannot be allowed to choose two men for two positions but must choose one from each gender. Rather than encouraging women to stand for election and take their chances, or guaranteeing one-member, one-vote party elections (which Labour has been notoriously reluctant to implement) to which women have equal access, Harman’s proposition was to enforce sectarianism upon politics. We must have a woman representing women – does this mean the man in the leadership represents men?

Where does such a policy end? Can we not be concerned that the present Labour leadership is overwhelmingly white and Christian, so say nothing of the Scots bias amongst Gordon Brown’s senior cabinet ministers – between Brown and Harman who considers the needs of Cornwall? Or to put it another way, exactly who should the Conservative Shadow Minister for Cornwall, Mark Prisk, be shadowing?

Taking Harman’s argument to its logical conclusion, geographical constituencies elect their representatives who then elect leaders. These leaders should be representative of other, pre-specified constituencies. Such as the sexes. While such a policy would undoubtedly be more advantageous to a handful of individual women, there is no evidence to suggest that it would be advantageous for women as a whole, who undeniably do suffer discrimination in many walks of life.

This is why I am unhappy about Ms Smith’s election as an MP, for every time it occurs I am forced to put up with endless sexist comments about women in politics – all of which are from women. Her campaign manager, Theresa May, claimed “Women politicians are less interested in dirty tricks and backstabbing. They are more interested in the policies and getting things done.” Tory backbencher Nadine Dorries weighed in with “The difference between male and female MPs is that male MPs are all clones whereas the women are all individuals. No two female Conservative MPs are alike”.

I have yet to see convincing evidence for this. Certainly, the claim that male MPs are all clones is laughable. Or it would be were it made by a Woman’s Own letter writer and not a member of the legislature. Taking these arguments to their logical conclusion, if true I would not want to see any men in power. We should discriminate against them… or rather, against “us”.

Undoubtedly discrimination is still a pernicious part of our society, but – as President Obama recently discovered – over reaction to it can be harmful too. Profiling people as anything other than human beings is unhelpful to the cause of real equality – equality of opportunity – and can only lead to demands for representation from ever smaller sectors of the population. Until we can accept that our representatives not be clones of ourselves, we cannot ever believe they will be working in our interests. And we will never achieve equality.