IN satisfaction as much as in regret Nancy Astor observed that women
possessed no political past. What they had instead were the accumulated
mistakes of one-sex legislation which provided them with the surest
guide in what precisely to avoid.
''It is no use blaming men,'' she mused. ''We -- the makers of men --
have made them what they are. Now we must try to make ourselves a little
more responsible.'' These days that sentiment, belonging to the first
woman to take her seat at Westminster, travels like a ghostly whisper
along the corridors of the House of Commons which next week commemorates
the seventy-fifth anniversary of women being granted the right to vote.
Obviously much has changed since 1918 and yet in certain respects very
little has altered. We now have the greatest number of women MPs in
Parliament's history but the Commons is still a man's club, the dim
green leather benches and chairs and all those dull grey worsted suits
appearing like set pieces in some early photograph of the Atheneum, and
its hours of business still obstinately structured to neglect family
life fretting beyond its portals. Why, it's only relatively recently
that women members managed to gain adequate lavatory accommodation at
Westminster.
Last year, to capitalise on the women's vote and ensure that the 1992
General Election made some kind of start on smashing the infamous glass
ceiling, all parties selected more female candidates than ever before.
None the less, in the Mother of Parliaments 59 women members remains
pitifully short of fair representation between the sexes, a smarting
irony indeed since more than half of Britain's electorate are female.
Next Monday the Fawcett Society -- campaigners for sexual equality
since 1866 -- will bring together at Westminster Abbey MPs and peers not
only to honour the suffrage struggle but to chart the distance yet to
go. Speaker Betty Boothroyd will lay a wreath at the memorial to
Millicent Garratt Fawcett, and the ever feisty Lady Barbara Castle will
rally the troops.
Three days earlier the Labour Women's Network will offer some
financial muscle by launching Emily's List UK. This is set to be the
sister organisation of that impressively effective American Democratic
action committee which last year raised $6.2m to help triple the number
of Democratic women in the House of Representatives, from 12 to 36, and
those in the Senate from one to five. In America Emily is the acronym of
Early Money Is Like Yeast (it makes dough rise), but here it also pays
homage to two pioneer fighters for the women's vote, Emily Davies and
Emily Wilding Davison.
The aim in Britain is to gather #30,000 which will be used to assist
those women parliamentary candidates whose campaigns are woefully
strapped for cash, and already #16,000 has been pledged by supporters
who include actresses Emma Thompson and Juliet Stevenson and authors Sue
Townsend and Fay Weldon.
Until recently few have bothered to consider seriously the ill effects
of an excessively male-dominated Parliament, yet no-one can believe that
the interests of women (or ethnic minorities, for that matter) are
justly reflected in the House's deliberations when the actual
composition of the Commons is so unbalanced. Would a woman's national
party be the answer? That was Christobel Pankhurst's ambition but its
appeal today remains as remote as ever and the reason, quite simply, is
the obsessive nature of politics itself.
Being a Conservative, a Socialist, a Scottish Nationalist or whatever
does not preclude being a champion of women's rights. Nevertheless party
allegiance is the overwhelming priority for women politicians (as indeed
it is for men), and that instils a loyalty more profound than feminism.
Additionally the very idea of women's subjects is double-edged in
politics for to be confined to these areas exclusively limits your span
of influence, a fate for women that many political men would clearly
relish. When Lena Jeger was about to make her maiden speech Herbert
Morrison told her: ''Stick to women's matters'', and when she didn't but
spoke on the Berlin Conference he was not amused. ''Isn't peace a
woman's matter?'' she retorted.
But the problem is that, whatever their party, many excellent women
who might contribute much to Parliament never get beyond the first
constituency meeting in those drafty halls and threadbare offices where
local party committees choose their candidates. The old prejudice that
women are just not political animals may gradually be lessening, but the
truth is that many unashamed bigots remain left, right, and centre of
politics, and not only do they loathe change, they have the power to
obstruct it.
Of course, the other lingering snag which holds too many women back
from the Commons is the unfair division of drudgery back home. A woman
can be married to a Tory party toff or a card-carrying Socialist but her
own political ambitions will be thwarted if, at the end of the day, he
doesn't stir off the butt of his ideologies to rise up and help her take
out the garbage.
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