Why are there so many men in politics? – Inside track

Today is International Women’s Day. A day marked around the world, celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women.

Last week, the House of Commons debated ‘International Women’s Day: language in politics’, a particularly pertinent issue in mainstream media and politics of late, with the ongoing safety of MPs and their staff increasingly in question.

Why, then, did not a single male MP speak in the debate?

Having spent, in my previous roles, more than five years working in Westminster, I’ve only recently had time to properly reflect on some of my experiences, many of which feel relevant to this question.

Ironically, one of the main reasons I left my first job at the Environment Agency after university was because I was a young woman in an overwhelmingly male work environment, often finding myself as the only woman on a construction site. I was regularly undermined and told I was too young to do the job, as well as having to deal with comments about my clothes (“you don’t often see women in shirts these days”) and my hair (“I didn’t know buns were back in fashion”).

Some may then question why I saw fit for the next step in my career to be in Westminster, which was not only more of the same, but arguably significantly worse? I still don’t really know the answer to that.

Much of my work then was also focused on climate and environment. I met many businesses, energy companies, NGOs and academics from across the sector and, for the first year of the job, I kept a tally of who these people were. But I stopped counting before the year was up because it was too depressing. Over three quarters of the people I met in my work (from well over 80 organisations) were men.

Less than a third of MPs and peers are womenWhile there are more female MPs than ever before, women still make up only 31 per cent of MPs in the Commons and 29 per cent of peers in the House of Lords. Not to mention the overwhelming majority of political advisers, MPs’ staff, lobbyists and public affairs people coming in and out of Westminster that are overwhelmingly male, most of them white.

I have always considered myself to be a fairly confident person. But working in parliament, my confidence quickly paled in comparison to the men strutting around Westminster, believing they were born for the positions of power and influence. Sadly, the system as it is proves they are right.

Central to all of this, of course, are the MPs. I was lucky to work with wonderful MPs during my time in Westminster, but others were not so lucky and it is often more junior, female staff who suffer the brunt of the bullying, intimidation and, frankly, a wholly unacceptable work environment.

With few employment protections and minimal HR support or advice, staff are often demeaned, isolated, expected to be contactable at all hours and given impossible workloads. Not only does it make for a toxic work environment, it makes it almost impossible to do these jobs if you have a family or caring responsibilities, something well documented to affect more women than men. Ironic really, given there are multiple accounts of staff having to babysit for their MP’s children.

Westminster should be setting the exampleOf course, many of these issues are not exclusive to parliament. They are experienced by women in workplaces across many sectors, but it particularly matters in Westminster because that place is meant to be setting an example to the rest of the country about what we want society to look like. I’m not alone in saying that, on the whole, they’re not doing a great job of it.

Often MPs reach their positions having never managed people before, let alone having managed a whole team, and they are fundamentally ill-equipped to do so. This, combined with the lack of training on policy, procedure and the archaic rules of parliament means that many of them are out of their depth, through no fault of their own. As such, the only control they have is over their teams, which often leads to the bullying and harassment, now well documented.

Obviously, this is not only a gender issue, but gender plays a part. Often public school educated men have particular strengths in thriving under pressure and confidently pretending they are specialists in subjects they know little about. Female MPs and female staff, less inclined to front it out in this way, feel disadvantaged in a system rigged in favour of this distinctly masculine behaviour.

Repeated cases exposing this culture are one reason the public say they are losing faith in politics. Having seen it from the inside, I understand why. Bullying, undermining, blame-culture is not what the public want to see from our elected representatives. Trust in elected politicians at both a local and national level is at an all time low and this may well have an impact on voter turnout at the next election.

In contrast, the charity and environment sector feels very different.

According to a report on women in the charity sector, 68 per cent of UK charity employees are women. While it is important to note that this isn’t reflected at the most senior level, with only one in three of the biggest UK charities having a female CEO and men outnumbering women on boards two to one, there can be little doubt women are much better represented – even, arguably, over represented – than they are in Westminster.

Green Alliance is no different. In fact, five out of six members of the politics team are women and I am constantly impressed by the myriad intelligent, capable and inspiring women that are now my colleagues. It has made me realise how few of these people I have been able to work with in recent years.

Why isn’t more female expertise represented in parliament?There has been an effort to recognise the huge impact of women in the environmental sector, and their impact on the political landscape, with initiatives like the Planet Power List, launched by BBC Women’s Hour a few years ago. But there are still questions to answer around why many more of these women aren’t being better represented in the corridors of Westminster itself and, conversely, why men are less likely to feel they have a place in the environmental NGO sector.

Do women feel less welcome in Westminster because of the culture? Or is it the inflexibility, making it almost impossible for those with caring responsibilities? Do men feel environmental NGOs aren’t for them because of the reputation of environmentalism as feminine? Or is it the lower salaries?

I’ve no doubt lessons could and should be learned by both sides, not least because the environmental policies we advocate can only be successful if they have political saliency and cut through. This means we need to better understand the motivations of those walking the corridors of power and they need to be receptive to our evidence and views. One change that would help with this is if both sides had a more equal gender balance, as well as making major strides to improve staff diversity with regard to class, ethnicity, sexuality, age and educational background. This would ensure the concerns and priorities of a bigger cross section of society was represented and it seems like a no-brainer that everybody would see the benefits of levelling the playing field.

There’s a lot to be done. But I am hopeful that change will come and that the inspirational women I have the pleasure of working alongside will be central to that. Maybe next year, with the new parliament in place, more men in Westminster will see the reason to speak up for and celebrate women’s contribution to politics in the International Women’s Day debate.

[Image: parliamentary copyright image reproduced with the permission of parliament.]