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All-women shortlists
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The use of all-women shortlists (AWS) is a political tactic of reverse discrimination intended to increase the proportion of female Members of Parliament (MPs) in the United Kingdom. Though the tool is available to all parties, only the Labour Party uses it.
Labour Party first began using all-women shortlists to select candidates in the run up to the 1997 general election. However at an industrial tribunal in January 1996 it was ruled that all-women shortlists were illegal under the Sex Discrimination Act 1975.
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Encyclopedia
The use of all-women shortlists (AWS) is a political tactic of reverse discrimination intended to increase the proportion of female Members of Parliament (MPs) in the United Kingdom. Though the tool is available to all parties, only the Labour Party uses it.
History
The Labour Party first began using all-women shortlists to select candidates in the run up to the 1997 general election. However at an industrial tribunal in January 1996 it was ruled that all-women shortlists were illegal under the Sex Discrimination Act 1975. Candidates who had already been selected by all-women shortlists were not forced to seek re-selection, but all the unfinished all-women shortlist selections were abandoned.
After protests in the 1990s from prominent female politicians like Harriet Harman, Clare Short, Tessa Jowell, and Mo Mowlam all-women shortlists were legalized under the Sex Discrimination (Election Candidates) Act 2002. They will remain legalized until 2015.
Prior to the legalization of AWS, the Liberal Democrats used a system called "zipping".
Usage
Labour is the only political party to use the tactic. Because of this, 27% of all Labour MPs are female, as opposed to 19% of the Commons as a whole.
The Conservative Party was opposed to the tactic and the Liberal Democrats were divided.
Opposition
There was some opposition to the tactic in towns Labour employed it, including Slough. Another concern was that AWS were being used as a device to keep out certain men who might have made trouble for Tony Blair, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom at the time.
In 2005, a Labour-controlled "safe seat" was lost because of a dispute over AWS. Independent candidate Peter Law won the Blaenau Gwent constituency in Wales beating Maggie Jones who lost almost 40% of the previous Labour vote because of voters rebelling against Labour's All-women shortlist policy. The seat's former MP, who retired at that election, had held one of the largest majorities of any Labour MP in Britain.. Jones was made a life peer later in 2005 in spite of her parliamentary failure.
In 2006, when Conservative leader David Cameron tried to institute AWS, there was opposition from some women MPs, such as Nadine Dorries and Ann Widdecombe.
In 2008 Widdecombe again criticised the use of all women shortlists. She stated that women in the past who fought for equality such as the suffragettes "wanted equal opportunities not special privileges" and "they would have thrown themselves under the King's horse to protest against positive discrimination and all-women shortlists".
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