Erratum
| Date | 01 October 1982 |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9256.1982.tb00073.x |
| Published date | 01 October 1982 |
| Subject Matter | Erratum |
32
Martin
HQ
Z
land
393
)
cooperate
On the other hand,
it
is probably unsurprising that a relatively high proportion of
selectors
in
marginal seats believed femininity to be an advantage. Selectors
there may be on the look-out for the greater impact they think a woman candidate
may make
with
her scarcity value and potentially disconcerting effect on the opposition
(one thinks here of Helene Hayman being run against Enoch Powell or Margaret Jackson
against Dick Taverne).
It
is also probably the case that, as women do not often get
picked for the safe seats (unbiased Labour selectors chose women for only seven of
the 209 Labour safe seats in 1979) they are available in greater numbers and high
quality for the marginals and selectors know this.
095
Dr.
Denver's direct enquiry to selectors as to whether
,
other things being equal
(my emphasis)CLP's should select more women candidates' looked bland enough to
attract a lot
of
support.
that
(and
57%
in Labour seats) said no, which hardly seems a vindication of the non-
discrimination thesis.
that is, they do not come forward and
if
they did, they 'would stand every chance of
being selected'. Without going into the diffuse and circular reasons for women pre-
senting themselves as candidates in relatively much smaller numbers than men, there
are some difficulties implicit in this belief (for which, dare
I
say,
Dr.
Denver
produces no direct evidence).
lists seems to bear little direct relationship to the numbers of women chosen as can-
didates, and indeed of the numbers selected, there is little direct relationship
to the numbers elected. Initially, this is largely because neither Labour nor Tory
party headquarters can at the moment insist on constituency parties short-listing
or even considering women, or indeed any candidates, on the central lists (although
a quota system
is
now written into the constitution of the SDP).
considered they are mostly selected for the hopeless or at best marginal seats and
minority parties. In
1979,
for example, the Ecology party
-
with no successful
candidates
-
ran
15%
women while the winning Tory party, ran only
4%,
choosing only
one woman in all their nearly 200 safe seats. Thus a man's chance of election once
selected, was about
1:3
-
a woman's, about
1:lO.
Overall, in
1979,
more women
stood than ever before for their worst return in nearly thirty years.
in the House of Commons and while
I
think nobody would quarrel with
Dr.
Denver's
statement that 'the under-representation of women is not in any simple sense the
'fault' of local selection committees', still they must take their responsibility in
the overall process, involving social attitudes, party organisation, selection proce-
dures and ultimately the electoral system itself, all of which results in the virtual
exclusion of women from national politics.
Yet even with the hint, implicit in the ceteris paribus,
they were not committing themselves to revolutionary change,
40%
of the selectors
Finally
Dr.
Denver puts forward his own theory of why women do not get chosen:
For example, the number of women
on
party candidate
Again, when women are
More women on lists or even being selected has not meant progressively more women
References
Denver,
D.
(1982), 'Are Labour Selectors Prejudiced against Women Candidates?',
Politics, Vo1.2,
No.
1,
April pp.36-38.
Vallance,
E.
(1981), 'Women Candidates and Electoral Preference', Politics, Vol.
1,
No.
2, November pp.27-31.
-0-000-0-
Erratum
The table on p.32
of
the article by lain Mclean ('Tit for Tat' and Ethical Computers'
Politics, Vol.
2,
No.
1
pp.31-35) was incorrectly printed,
it
should read:
F
mB
c
cooperate
,
defect
-
L
defect
5,0
I
1,1
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