A Man’s Game? The Grassroots Gender Gap in Britain’s Political Parties
| Author | Monica Poletti,Paul Webb,Tim Bale |
| Published date | 01 June 2018 |
| Date | 01 June 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/2041905818779324 |
JUNE 2018 • POLITICAL INSIGHT 7
The UK’s Prime Minister is female. The
leaders of the two largest parties in
Scotland are women and so, too, was
Northern Ireland’s First Minister before
the Assembly in Belfast was suspended. And
women, of course, make up more than half of
the population of Great Britain. Yet, as surveys
conducted by YouGov for the ESRC-funded
Party Membership Project run from Queen Mary
University of London and Sussex University
(ESRCpartymembersproject.org) reveal, only
four out of ten members of the country’s
political parties are women. True, the imbalance
isn’t quite as glaring as it is in the UK House of
Commons, where two thirds of MPs are men.
But it’s still worth highlighting.
Party members, after all, are the footsoldiers
and the lifeblood of democracy. Without
them, parties would nd it dicult – and
certainly a lot more costly – to ght elections.
Members also help connect parties to society,
help anchor them ideologically and provide
them with pools of candidates. Moreover,
they play a big part in choosing those
candidates, as well as their parties’ leaders.
Indeed, the fact that men outnumber women
at Westminster may well have something to
do with the fact that they outnumber them
at the grassroots, too: certainly, a quick look at
the big dierences between political parties
on this score (see Fable 1) at least suggests
that there may be a link.
A Man’s Game? The
Grassroots Gender Gap in
Britain’s Political Parties
The gender disparity in Britain’s elected representatives have been
well documented. But is it mirrored in party members? Do grassroots
female activists differ from their male counterparts? Tim Bale, Monica
Poletti and Paul Webb report on a major study of the attitudes of
women party members.
Female party members
The Party Membership Project has been
surveying rank and le members of six political
parties: the big four we focus on here plus
the Greens and Ukip. The latest survey was
conducted just after the 2017 General Election.
These surveys – conducted by YouGov, with
respondents taken from their internet panel –
constitute a rich resource for anyone wanting
to understand who joins political parties, as
well as why and how they do so. They give us
an insight into their ideas and their priorities.
And they give us a sense of what members do
for their parties at election time, how they see
candidate selection, and their impressions of,
and their satisfaction with, the organisations
they’ve joined. The 2017 surveys generated
more than 5200 respondents, with just over
1000 coming from each of the big four – the
Tories, Labour, the Scottish National Party and
the Liberal Democrats.
When it comes to female members, the rst
thing worth noting is that the big dierences
Political Insight June 2018 NEW.indd 7 02/05/2018 15:39
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