The festival session entitled ‘2008: Women and the Vote’, which was hosted by Cathie Peattie MSP, heard contributions from Lesley Sutherland of Engender, Beatrice Barleon, Women’s Officer with the Electoral Reform Society and Labour MSP Bill Butler on the issue of women’s representation in Scottish and UK politics and what needs to be done to achieve a more gender equal, representative political system.

Lesley Sutherland told the festival that the Scottish Parliament had 39 per cent female representation in its second session, amongst the highest in the world. However this has declined to the current level of 33 per cent since the 2007 Scottish elections. The high proportion of 37 percent achieved in 1999 according to Sutherland was partly due to the fact that the Parliament was starting from scratch and working from a “clean sheet”. Real efforts must be made by parties to prevent this downward trend continuing she warned the audience.

She said: “The difficulty is that this is about shifting power, about moving power and extending it and enfranchising people. And that shift of power has not yet been executed properly.”

Bill Butler outlined the positive measures to secure greater representation of women in the Scottish Parliament employed by the Labour Party in the run-up to the 1999 elections including ‘twinning’ constituencies whereby two constituencies were twinned with a man selected for one and a woman for another. He advocated positive discrimination as the only way to make an impact: “If you wait for things to happen naturally in the course of time you will wait forever.” Butler said there were now more female than male labour Members in the Scottish Parliament but remarked: “But I don’t feel put upon… I’ve always supported 50 per cent representation of women in politics. I’d even support a 49/51 per cent split in favour of women as that mirrors the reality of society.”

Beatrice Barleon told the audience that only one in five Westminster MPs is a woman and it is predicted that, given political shifts, this proportion will fall further after the next election, following the Scottish Parliament’s trend. She said that in terms of women’s representation the 2007 Scottish elections were characterised by complacency by the political parties. The local government elections last year however, demonstrated that different voting systems can make a difference she said as the use of PR-STV saw more women elected to local government than at the previous election despite fewer women standing.

In response to a question from the audience about why only women should be able to adequately represent women Sutherland said: “It’s not a question of only women can represent women or only men can represent men but about having a balanced, representative parliament – a balance of perceptions and a balance of experience. It’s about our institutions using that differentiated experience in their work and we have seen that in the Scottish Parliament with issues like violence against women getting a higher profile.”

The ‘2008: Women and the Vote Campaign’, timed to coincide with the ninety year anniversary of the Representation of the People Act and the 80 year anniversary since the entire female population won the right to vote, is being run by a number of organisations to put the issue back on the government agenda. More information on the campaign can be found at: http://www.womenandthevote.com/index.html