Re-gendering the UK House of Commons: The Academic Critical Actor and Her ‘Feminist in Residence’
| Date | 01 November 2019 |
| Author | Chloe Challender,Sarah Childs |
| Published date | 01 November 2019 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1478929919866388 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1478929919866388
Political Studies Review
2019, Vol. 17(4) 428 –435
© The Author(s) 2019
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/1478929919866388
journals.sagepub.com/home/psrev
Re-gendering the UK House
of Commons: The Academic
Critical Actor and Her
‘Feminist in Residence’
Sarah Childs1 and Chloe Challender2
Abstract
Parliaments are everywhere highly masculinized institutions, created by and for men. Yet they are
not unchanging institutions. The UK has just undergone an Inter-Parliamentary Union’s Gender
Sensitive Parliament’s audit. This was one of the recommendations of the 2016 The Good Parliament
Report. With its 43 recommendations, The Good Parliament Report was a blueprint for a diversity
sensitive House of Commons. Since then, and through the newly established Commons Reference
Group on Representation and Inclusion, Westminster has addressed some of its diversity
insensitivities. This article reflects back on the author’s secondment to Parliament and how her
relationship with a feminist official was critical to the success of Report and indeed the day-to-day
practice of seeking to be an impactful academic change actor.
Keywords
Parliament, gender, diversity, institutional change, critical actor
Accepted: 30 January 2019
Introduction: Centenary Celebrations
The year 2018 was the centenary of two pieces of legislation – The Representation of
the People Act and The Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act – that, respectively,
gave some women the right to vote and all women the right to stand for election to the
Commons.1 There were numerous #vote100 celebrations: statues, marches, plays and
exhibitions. In the Chamber, Harriet Harman MP hosted women parliamentarians from
around the world,2 and on the centenary of the Qualification Act, members of Parliament
1Birkbeck, University of London, London, UK
2House of Commons, London, UK
Corresponding author:
Sarah Childs, Birkbeck, University of London, London WC1E 7HX, UK.
Email: s.childs@bbk.ac.uk
866388PSW0010.1177/1478929919866388Political Studies ReviewChilds and Challender
research-article2019
Article
To continue reading
Request your trial