Labour Selectors and Women Candidates: A Reply to David Denver
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9256.1982.tb00074.x |
| Published date | 01 October 1982 |
| Date | 01 October 1982 |
| Author | Elizabeth Vallance |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Labour
's
Women Candidates
for
the European Parliament
33
candidates. This statement is
of
course made within the context of a discussion of
different electoral systems, but could nevertheless throw light on the
E.S.O.
selection results discussed here. What of course
it
cannot do is to provide further
explanation of the percentage of Labour MEPs who were female. For this we would
need more data, especially on the type of constituency lost and won. Certainly the
figure of 23.5 per cent
of
Labour MEPs is in stark contrast to the 3.0 per cent of
women irrespective of party who were elected in
1979.
However, this result, rather
than being a comment upon the territorial base of the electoral system, is more
probably a reflection of the lower status and priority given to the European Parlia-
ment elections by Labour's European selectorates.
bias appears
to
be societal. The real problem is
in
attracting sufficient numbers
of women aspirants rather than any aversion to selecting women on the part of all local
selectors.
In summary, the data adds qualified support to Denver's research in that sexual
References
Castles,
F.G.
(19811, 'Female Legislative Representation and the Electoral System',
Politics, 1-2, 21-27.
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-
LABOUR SELECTORS AND WOMEN CANDIDATES:
A
REPLY
TO
DAVID DENVER
EL
I
ZABETH
VALLANCE
David Denver (1982) offers us some much-needed information about the beliefs of
Labour Party selectors, particularly with regard to women candidates. He rightly
says that
I
did not offer (Vallance,
1981)
any direct evidence for the proposition
that party selectors are predisposed to select men rather than women candidates.
was of course largely because the burden
of
my argument was that the electorate
apparently do not discriminate against women and the evidence offered was in that
context. But
it
is also true that much
of
the evidence of selector prejudice
I
have
been able to find
-
and because of this
I
welcome an exercise such as
Dr.
Denver's
-
has been anecdotal (.i.e. the accounts of women themselves and of selectors, in
interviews)
or
indirect (e.g. figures over time on the small number of women selected
for winnable seats).
simply to ask those who do the choosing.
simply to enquire directly
of
selectors
if
they were predisposed against women, which
would inevitably have elicited an 'against sin' response. But
I
wonder whether his
enquiry as
to
whether the sex of a candidate
-
even when hidden among other charac-
teristics
-
is an advantage or disadvantage, gets away entirely from the problem. The
people asked
-
Idelegatesto selection conferences'
-
were obviously, as a group,
highly politically aware, and no doubt astute enough to know that when social scien-
tists ask about contentious issues like this, sexist implications may be drawn from
the answers given, and they naturally want to be seen to be above suspicion. Without
wishing to cast too much doubt on the truthfulness ofthe respondents,
it
does seem
slightlysuspicious that nearly 80% of them claimed
to
believe that femininity was not
an objective disadvantage with the electorate (i.e.
it
was either an advantage or
irrelevant) when selectors must know, better than most people, how opinion pol 1s
consistently show that, given
a
choice, a majority
of
the electorate would still prefer
a
male candidate, even
if
they
will
not discriminate against
a
woman once chosen.
This
I
am not entirely convinced however, that the way to get at the facts here is
Clearly
Dr.
Denver was not naive enough
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