By Nan Sloane, Centre for Women & Democracy

WRC Source magazine - December 2008

Nan Sloane from the Centre for Women & Democracy requests a little more understanding for women brave enough to enter the lion’s den of politics.

Twenty years ago, a male politician observed that he didn’t like women being at meetings because they changed the dynamics of them in ways he didn’t understand. He was not alone in this view then, and is probably not alone in it now.

Nowadays, many of us want women to be at the table precisely because their presence there changes the culture in one way or another. But equally for many of us presence alone is not enough – we want something more, something proactive, something that will break the male-dominated political establishment apart and create a new, feminised politics in its place.

And just to keep our sisters on the ball, we also want elected women to advance the cause(s) of women generally, to influence legislative programmes, to be role models, to be good constituency MPs/councillors, and to rise to the top in heavily male environments. And we want them to do all this whilst remaining essentially female in their political style, and resisting the pressure to become ‘honorary men’.

In other words, we want superwomen in a profession currently reviled by large sections of the population – including many feminists – for being venal, self-interested and untrustworthy. Hardly surprising, then, that women entering politics find the required balances tricky to strike.

Women in the political system have to develop their own relationship to it, and finding a sense of identity within it is difficult for many men as well as women. Yet all women politicians – both local and national – occupy a grey area almost unknown to white men.

Male councillors and MPs are judged as politicians rather than as men, and are not expected to represent a whole gender as well as their constituents. Other men do not write articles about them asking what they’ve done for men as a whole or accusing them of ‘king bee’ tendencies.

Women, on the other hand, have to answer both to their constituents and their sex. They are also much more likely to be subjected to personal attacks in the media on the basis of their gender rather than anything they’ve actually done (or not done). All this can be very isolating, and create a situation in which the safety of conformity looks very attractive. What is surprising is not that so many women give in to it, but that so many hold out.

So perhaps we need to be more understanding of what that male politician twenty years ago knew instinctively – that women change the political culture simply by being in it. And perhaps we should recognise that as our starting point, and be more supportive of women who make a difference to our politics simply by being brave enough to be there.

• The Centre for Women & Democracy works, both alone and together with other organisations, to increase women’s representation at all levels of the democratic process. It is the only organisation of its kind based in the north of England, and can be contacted through its website at www.cfwd.org.uk.
• Read a comment by Vivienne Hayes, WRC's Chief Executive, on the same topic