When 101 women were elected as Labour MPs last May, many commentators argued that their presence in Westminster would lead to a feminised, softer, more caring politics.
Yet of the 47 Labour MPs who defied the Government Whip to vote against the cut in lone parent benefit, only eight were women. Only one, Ann Cryer, was a newly elected woman MP. 93 Labour women MPs voted to cut lone parent benefit or abstained. In one night, high hopes that the mere presence of more women in the House of Commons might lead to greater rights for women and respect for their needs were dashed.
The new women Labour MPs did not arrive in the House of Commons by chance. The Labour Party’s decision to have all-women shortlists for half of the vacant safe or marginal seats was the result of years of campaigning by Labour women, organised through local women’s sections, regional and national conferences and trade union bodies. From the early 1980s, the women’s organisation within the Party demanded the right to have its voice heard within the Party’s broader structures. Feminists in the women’s organisation argued for the five women’s seats on the National Executive Committee to be directly elected by the Women’s Conference, which should also be able to put motions directly to Labour Party Conference. They also demanded more women in Parliament.
During the early 1990s, there were a number of attempts to increase women’s representation in Westminster and the Party, such as one woman on every shortlist (which resulted in one woman and several men, on every shortlist) or quotas for Party positions. None of these policies made any discernible difference to the number of women candidates being selected. The policy of all-women shortlists in half the vacant safe or marginal seats was eventually accepted by the women’s organisation, at the cost of abandoning its original demands for women representatives to be accountable to the women’s organisation. The effectiveness of the women’s organisation itself diminished as policy-making conferences began to be held every two years rather than annually, and in recent years were frequently cancelled altogether.
Why did the election of the 101 Labour women raise such expectations in the Party and in the country as a whole? On one level, it is clearly absurd to think that just because someone is a woman, she is likely to stand for women’s interests. Margaret Thatcher disproved that long ago. On the other hand, many of the women who put themselves forward for selection did emphasise their feminist credentials. The introduction of all-women shortlists coincided with a readiness to begin listening to women’s voices, to take seriously issues such as women’s reproductive rights, child-care, domestic violence and low pay. The arguments of the women’s organisation in the Party, and other feminist groups outside the Party, were winning acceptance.
However, all this coincided with the rise of the Blairites and their imposition of political conformity on the Party by measures overt and covert. Many of the women selected as Labour candidates emphasised not only their feminist credentials, but also their loyalty to the leadership, whose support was critical in many cases in winning selection. On 10th December 1997, the new Labour women MPs faced a conflict between their feminist arguments and their loyalty to the leadership and most placed leadership loyalty — and their own aspirations for career advancement — over the interests of women.
The media’s interest in the new Labour women MPs has focused on their clothes, hair-style and their treatment by male MPs. Sadly, several women MPs have been happy to go along with this trivialisation (Caroline Flint modelling clothes for Vogue, Lorna Fitzsimons giving interviews about sex), providing fodder for the media’s current craze for the “new feminism”. This, the media tells us, is all about job opportunities for middle-class professional career women, along with a reassertion of feminine glamour and mystique. Camille Paglia hails Diana Spencer and Madonna as feminist icons. Individual opportunities are all; sisterhood and solidarity mean nothing.
The media ignore the real, vital and forward-looking feminism of the huge numbers of ordinary women working on the ground to improve the lives of women collectively. For single mothers, women pensioners, low-paid and part-time women workers and young women finding their way in the labour market, the classic feminist agenda of economic and social equality, individual freedom and collective responsibility for welfare are far from “outdated”.
The Government’s unfolding attack on the welfare state will hit women hard. Means-testing, as well as outright cuts in the level of benefits, and the pressure to enter the workforce on the most disadvantageous terms, will exacerbate women’s poverty and economic inequality. A Labour Government that really wants to improve job opportunities for women would offer well-funded, good quality child-care, create new, decently-paid jobs, strengthen workplace rights, and respect any single parent who chose to devote their time to bringing up children rather than working. This is the message our Labour women MPs should be sending the Government.