This is kind of an extension to Faith’s article about party representation.
Since 1918, women have been allowed to stand for Parliament, while not being very long ago, this hard earned victory should have represented a massive change in our country. One would hope it would allow the government to more closely resemble the people – one of the signs of a healthy democracy. Unfortunately this is not the case, while women and men are approximately equal in number (until we get older) only 291 female mps have been elected compared to 4365 male ones since 1918. In the last parliament men outnumbered women approximately 5 to 1. It’s often suggested that having a first past the post system makes us more likely to have straight white christian men in parliament, but even so – why are people not making a bigger deal about this? Continue reading