I am seeking your support for a letter to the South Australian
Government to encourage the inclusion of women's perspectives and
opinions on the matter of constitutional and parliamentary reform.
Your support involves a quick and simple process of going to the
web site:
http://www.PetitionOnline.com/womensa/petition.html
and filling in your details.
The petition will be open until the 12 June. It would be much
appreciated it you could forward this email (by cut and paste) to
anyone you know who may be interested in signing.
Dr Tahnya Donaghy
Hawke Research Institute,
University of SA
Forwarded by Denise Tzumli
Dear Friends,
Please take the time to do this. I have been slow to respond, and
was shocked to see that I was only the 48th person to sign this
more than a week after I initially received it.
Women's views on the State Constitution are very important, since
it can be changed in Parliament itself without having to go to a
referendum.
Some of you may have received my e-mail regarding the recent
elections in Wales (reproduced below) where 50% of MPs are women.
The Welsh women had to do a great deal of trading and negotiating
to achieve this and it's secure only so long as the deals hold.
If we want equal representation in Parliament, the rules and
processes of elections and Parliament must require that at least
50% of MPs are women. We shouldn't need to rely on either
exceptionally hard dedicated work by women or men's goodwill -
surely by now equal representation is our right.
Please sign the petition now while you are still online, or flag
it to do as soon as you next go online.
Denise
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The original report below, does not celebrate this astounding
event enough. In the new Welsh Assembly women are the majority on
the government benches. It is even a LARGE majority!! The earth
trembles as thousands of women leap up from their computers
jumping and dancing for joy, running and leaping, shouting out
loud "it is possible!"
Denise Tzumli
-------- Original Message
-------- Subject: [femscot-pol] welsh election - comment on nos
of women
Date: Fri, 9 May 2003 17:40:05 EDT
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: list deleted
At last!
The new Welsh assembly is the first legislative body in the world
made up of equal numbers of men and women. Sally Weale reports
Friday May 9, 2003 The Guardian
In a nondescript office block overlooking Cardiff Bay, an
extraordinary moment of political history was played out this
week. It passed without any great fuss or fanfare in the wider
world, but, in the long history of women's struggle for proper
political representation, it was ground-breaking, earth
shattering, almost incredible. Following last week's elections,
the Welsh assembly, created in 1999 following devolution, has
become the first legislative body in the world to be made up of
equal numbers of men and women. Did you catch that? In the 60
strong Welsh assembly, there are 30 men and 30 women. Parity! And
in Wales of all places, home of patriarchal old Labour, born out
of the coal and steel industries, and steeped in male dominated
trade union politics. Better than Sweden, which has long been a
beacon for female political representation, whose parliament is
45.3 per cent female. Better than Blair's Babes. Better than
anywhere. On Wednesday, Crickhowell House, a bland, redbrick
building once owned by the Welsh Development Agency and now the
humble temporary home to the Welsh assembly, was the inauspicious
setting for the inaugural meeting of this record breaking body.
And yesterday, Rhodri Morgan, the Welsh first secretary, completed
the extraordinary overhaul in Welsh politics by announcing his
cabinet, which is also dominated by women, with five females and
four males. Not only are there lots of women, in other words, but
they are in senior positions, making decisions that will affect
the lives of Wales's three million people.
And unlike the last session, this time the Labour party is going
it alone in government, rather than sharing power. Its majority,
however, is slender: it cannot risk a by-election, so Morgan
jokingly urged his members this week not to go skiing, not to
become ill, and not to become pregnant - or, in the interests of
equality, to take paternity leave.
So how was this all achieved? How did this tiny country leap from
a position of abysmal under representation of women in politics
(up until 1997 Wales had only ever had four women MPs in its
parliamentary political history) to parity? According to Julie
Morgan, Labour MP for Cardiff North, wife of Rhodri and a key
campaigner in the battle for equal representation for women, there
is a long tradition of Welsh women who have been active behind the
scenes in politics, but because of the male working class culture
and trade union politics that dominated Wales, they found it hard
to come through the party hierarchy.
With devolution and the creation of the new assembly in 1999,
women like Morgan realised they had an ideal opportunity to
achieve a more representative gender balance. "Within the Labour
party, we felt very strongly that we wanted to go into the
assembly with equal numbers of men and women candidates," she
says. The only way to do it at that stage was through positive
action. Morgan, together with other key women activists in Wales
including Val Feld, who was director of the equal opportunities
commission in Wales, Sue Essex, former leader of Cardiff City
Council and now a member of the Welsh cabinet, and Jane Hutt, now
the health minister, decided to argue for a mechanism known as
"twinning". Labour's policy of all-women short lists, which
resulted in 120 female Westminster MPs at the 1997 election, had
been ruled out following a legal challenge, but twinning got round
the legal difficulties by pairing two constituencies, asking party
members to vote for one man and one woman, and allowing the
constituencies to sort out between them which area got which
candidate.
"It was an extremely difficult policy to get through," says
Morgan. "We had very strong resistance from some ministers at the
time. It was seen as taking democracy from the party." The debate
became divisive, but the policy was finally passed by 0.06 per
cent at the Welsh Labour party's 1997 conference in Swansea. The
policy was put in place and, as a result, an impressive 42 per
cent of Labour's members in the first assembly were women. Other
parties followed suit, and this time the balance has shifted even
further, with 19 female and 11 male assembly members for Labour.
The Liberal Democrats and Plaid Cymru both returned 50 per cent
women, and the Tories did better than ever before, with two women
among their 11 assembly members, including Laura Jones, who at 24
is the youngest member of the assembly.
Isn't there a risk, however, that as a result of using a blunt
political mechanism to increase the number of women assembly
members, some of them are not up to the job? Sue Essex, the Labour
assembly member for Cardiff North, who has moved from environment
to finance in the new cabinet, insists not. "In Labour we've now
got 19 women and they are good quality women too. Twinning was not
easy. It was quite acrimonious, and one of the arguments against
it was that we did not have quality women who were good enough to
fill these positions. "But in the last four years we've found we
do have women of quality, because so many came through and got
jobs in the cabinet. The problem has never been the electorate
voting for women. It's been within the constituency parties and
the selection mechanism." Katherine Rake, director of the Fawcett
Society, which campaigns for fairer political representation for
women, says: "What the Welsh experience shows is that
positive-action mechanisms work. You can transform the political
landscape if you're committed to introducing positive measures. In
Wales it has become an accepted part of the political process.
Because it was a new system, they started with a clean slate. They
wanted it to be modern and representative, and part of that is
getting women on board.
If Wales can lead the way, why not Westminster as well?" In
Westminster, with the amendment of the Sex Discrimination Act,
political parties are now within their legal rights to use
all-women short lists. Labour has committed itself to positive
action - it asked all retiring sitting MPs to announce their plans
before Christmas, and of those, half will be replaced by
candidates from all-women short lists. The Conservatives and
Liberal Democrats have yet to adopt any positive measures to
increase the number of women in the House.
"It's a much, much slower process of change," says Rake. "Only 18
per cent of MPs in Westminster are women. If the other parties
were to adopt these mechanisms as well, we would see much more
rapid progress." Wales, she says, has achieved something
remarkable. "But if you were being very, very cynical, there's a
big question about how much power the assembly has at the end of
the day. There's a very high level of representation of women, but
they don't have any power, because the assembly does not have the
power." It is a point that Helen Mary Jones, Plaid Cymru regional
member for mid- and west Wales, concedes. "But [the assembly] does
formulate all the basic policy on health, education and transport,
and social services. It may be that the parties were prepared to
accept positive action because Wales was seen as less important
than Westminster. But we would expect to get more powers in the
future."
As to whether the presence of large numbers of women in the
legislative body makes any difference to the way politics is done,
there is convincing evidence that it does. According to the
Fawcett Society, research from the Scottish parliament, where
women are also well represented, has suggested that significant
numbers of female parliamentarians encourage a greater willingness
to do cross party work and a less adversarial approach to decision
making. Jones agrees. "It has made a difference to the way the
assembly conducts itself. It's been possible for women to make an
impact without behaving like men. It's also made a difference to
the prominence given to certain issues."
She also points out that the United Nations has suggested that
England follow the lead of Wales in establishing a children's
commissioner, something the assembly instituted during the
previous term.
Other policies introduced by the Welsh assembly include the
scrapping of school tests at seven, the restoration of student
grants for both higher and further education, and free bus travel
anywhere in Wales for everyone over 60, disabled people and their
carers. Labour's election manifesto further promises free
breakfasts in schools and free prescriptions for all. This
assembly's biggest achievement, however, may be in changing the
way that women are perceived in public life in Wales, suggests
Jones. She hopes it will encourage more to come forward for public
appointments. "Having parity is going to send such a strong signal
in public life in Wales and beyond. We have gone from being a bit
of an equal opportunities backwater to being an equal
opportunities star. It's fantastic. We're all so proud."
Special report Gender issues
..
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