I want to move to Finland
Posted by Anna Bull on April 26th, 2007
Although the charms of Norway, detailed below, are alluring, my vote goes to Finland for appointing the world’s first women-dominated cabinet with 12 women and 8 men. I know, it’s ridiculous that this should be note-worthy; I can’t believe we didn’t have these kinds of ‘firsts’ decades ago. But there it is. Especially with the American Association for University Women detailing (in the US at least) how much better educated women are than men.
Now I know that for Finland, having two or three more or less women in the cabinet probably isn’t going to make a tangible difference to policies. That’s not the point. The point is representative government actually representing the people who vote for it. Let’s have a look at Britain: currently the Labour Party has 97 women MPs (27% of the party), the Liberal Democrats 9 women MPs (14% of the party) and the Conservatives 17 (9% of the party).
The Fawcett Society notes that ‘at the current rate of change, it will take Labour around 20 years to get to 50-50 women and men, the Lib Dems around 40 years and the Conservatives around 400′ (despite the fact that having a woman MP is shown to increase voter turnout at elections). Personally, I’d be very surprised (but delighted) if in 20 years Labour has equal numbers of women and men in parliament.
And please don’t give me that tired old line of women not being in parliament because they don’t want to. Research shows the reasons women don’t stand are the ‘four Cs’ of culture, childcare, cash and confidence. When you remember that David Cameron voted against introducing family-friendly hours in parliament, it becomes clearer why the Conservatives are going to take 400 years to reach equality!
What exactly does family-friendly hours have to do with equality in the Conservative Party. Surely you can’t be implying that family-friendly hours are of more benefit to women- isn’t that exactly the sort of culturally prejudiced attitude we should be fighting against?
And the Fawcett Society’s recommendation seems to be something quite astoundingly undemocratic:
“positive action, such as all-women shortlists”
Are the 4 Cs supposed to imply that male candidates face fewer issues of childcare, cash and confidence? Why should this be the case?
Since women in all societies take on the bulk of the work associated with childcare, it follows that family-friendly employment practices (in Parliament or elsewhere) will tend to enable women to participate on a more equal footing with men.
I suppose Cameron could have chosen the alternative strategy of requiring the households of all prospective Conservative candidates to undertake to share all aspects of housework and childcare equally between the partners, and then enforced it by regular surprise inspections by the tory-party-inquisitorial-squad. But supporting familiy-friendly working hours would have been more workable, don’t you think?
“women in all societies take on the bulk of the work associated with childcare”
Quite a sweeping statement to kick off with- and we aren’t talking about generalised women in all societies, we are talking about ambitious politically motivated women. Do you seriously believe that someone willing to confront all of the difficulties and hassle of becoming a constituency MP would be put off by hours that were not ‘family-friendly’? The changes in Parliamentary hours might improve the business of Parliament, but they are not a ‘pro-female’ measure. If any partner of mine were a member of Parliament, I’d be happy to take on a childcare role for late night votes etc. Unless of course I’d been conditioned to assume that ‘family’ was woman’s work.
Finland may be first with a “women” dominated cabinet. GB had a “woman” dominated cabinet nearly 30 years ago.