Yes, but which women?

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The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has said today that she wants to use her time as the UK’s first female chancellor “to improve life for women”. It’s a worthy aim, and one in which, in principle, I wish her every success. There is much to be done still. I can’t help wondering, though, which women she has in mind, and how general her concern is. It’s clearly not for those over pension age, whose lives she’s already decided to make worse by reducing their disposable income. And it’s not those on low incomes who have more than two children, who she has already decided should remain in poverty, with no relief in sight. And clearly, it’s not the women of tomorrow either, if they happen to be girls growing up in a household impacted by her decisions on benefits.

Given that her remarks were associated with promoting the Investing in Women Code, and that the Treasury has backed up her remarks with statistics suggesting that, despite being a majority of the population, women “…represent only 21% of business owners, with less than 6% of active equity backed companies founded by women”, we can make a reasonable stab at guessing which subset of women she’s actually talking about. It is clearly a travesty that women are so under-represented in that particular sphere, but it’s also the case that the minority of women who are represented will tend to be the more well-off and better-educated overall. What one might call middle class. There is no doubt that this is an issue which needs to be addressed, and not all business founders and leaders become rich, but it does look as though the target group whose lives the chancellor wishes to improve are those whose lives are already better than average anyway. People a bit like the chancellor, perhaps, reflecting once again her detachment from the real problems faced by many, problems she is making worse. The aim is a worthy one, and the initiative deserves to succeed. But if the aim is to improve the lives of women more generally, it isn’t exactly the most obvious starting place, and it’s being undermined by other decisions which she has taken and is threatening more of.

Inconsistency, poll ratings, and boardrooms

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I don’t quite know what to make of David Cameron’s recent evangelising on the subject of women in the boardroom.  He’s certainly right on the point of principle; the low level of female directors in our major companies represents a significant loss of potential talent if one assumes, as I do, that talent and ability are fairly evenly distributed between the sexes.

I’m not convinced, though, about his claim that this failure alone accounts for such a significant degree of economic failure in the UK, nor that putting it right will have the claimed level of economic impact.  The fact that Norwegian business, with its much higher level of female representation in the board room, is doing well is not proof that the one is the result of the other.  There are a lot of other differences between the Norwegian and UK economies.

I wonder whether his alighting on this particular issue might not have more to do with his poll ratings amongst female voters than it has to do with economics.  I also wonder how his hint that the Government will legislate if necessary to impose quotas sits with his repeated claims that businesses are already over-regulated and must be freed from state interference in the way they operate.  It doesn’t look or sound consistent to me.

I’d actually support such legislation if it were to be introduced, but I’m not expecting to see it any time soon.  And I can’t escape the nagging doubt that criticising the lack of women in the board room is a bit of a diversion from the fact that the government’s economic policies can hardly be described as successful.  It almost looks like blaming somebody or something else.

Selecting the team

Tweet Nick Bourne's attempt to recognise the serious deficiency of female candidates and elected members in his party was met by a pretty ferocious response from one of his party's parliamentary candidates. It would be wrong, of course, to see that as a rebellion within the ranks; on my understanding Bourne is not actually the leader of the Conservatives in Wales (although he's often inaccurately described as such) - he's only the leader of his party's group in the National Assembly. His authority, such as it is, does not therefore include the party's MPs, parliamentary candidates or councillors in Wales; they answer only to Cameron.

The spat does highlight one of the problems faced by Bourne in his attempts to adapt his party to a Welsh context, namely that the real authority lies elsewhere. That was certainly one of my concerns about the much touted 'rainbow' coalition - were we dealing with someone who had any real authority to speak for his party? Could he really deliver?

Back to the issue of imbalance amongst candidates, however. Although his authority in the matter is very limited, I do give Bourne some credit for realising that his party has a problem. Only one of their twelve members in the Assembly is a woman (and even that was something of an accident - their expectation was that they would retain Glyn Davies' seat, giving them an all-male team), and they look very much more male-dominated than any of the other parties.

In Plaid, we've had our own problems on the issue, of course. Although the team in the Assembly has a reasonable gender balance at present as a result of a decision we took to prioritise women for the list seats (which is one of Bourne's proposals for his own party), the reality is that if we had done even better than we did in the constituency results, then the balance would have looked very different. Any party that wants to end up with a balance in the Assembly must address both parts of the electoral system, not just the one.

There seems to be no real debate – either within parties or between parties – about the desirability of reaching a position where the make-up of the team of candidates put forward is more similar to the make-up of the population as a whole; the argument is more about the means by which that is achieved. That argument mostly revolves around the question of a formal mechanism to address imbalance - and the most common counter argument is that put forward by Guto Bebb, that candidates should be selected entirely on 'merit'.

For me, there are two major problems with the simplistic 'merit' argument. The first is about how we define and measure 'merit' in a way which is fair and equal – far too many aspects of the selection processes concentrate on a fairly narrow range of skills which are, in my view, indirectly discriminating in favour of a particular type of candidate. And the second is that parties need to think in terms of selecting teams - and 15 brilliant outside halves do not usually make a winning team.

(And that isn't just about achieving a gender balance. It has also to do with a range of other talents, skills, and abilities.)

It means treading a difficult line between taking a more centralised, strategic view of candidate selection, and retaining a strong element of local democracy in the process. I'll admit that Plaid haven't got it right yet; we're still struggling to find the right balance. I think that Bourne faces an uphill battle in his party on the issue – but I'm certainly not going to criticise him for at least trying.