October 21, 2009

Tories in a Tizzy

Posted in Cameron, Conservatives, Feminism and Gender Equality, Other blogs, Politics, Society at 10:23 am by Paul Sagar

David Cameron has dropped his opposition to all-women shortlists when selecting Tory candidates for Parliament, and sections of his grass roots have gone predictably cuckoo.

Tim Montgomerie of ConservativeHome complained that this was “an unacceptable departure from Conservative concepts of meritocracy and trusting people. It would be unfair and unmeritocratic for associations to be denied to choose male candidates who have given so much to the Conservative party over the years and have great talents to offer the country in the future.”

Iain Dale has followed suit, calling the move “unmeritocratic”.

It’s a wonderful demonstration of the simple, simple world these sorts of Tories choose to live in, where a deeply complicated issue like the under representation of women in Parliament – and in turn, the complex nature of “merit” and what that might actually mean – can, through Kafkaesque logic and intellectual myopia, be reduced to soundbites about offences against “meritocracy”.

Perhaps in Dale and Montgomerie Land the reason that only 19.5% of MPs are female is that only 19.5% of women are good enough to be MPs. That, at present, becoming an MP is wholly due to individual merit, completely irrelevant of gender, and that it’s just a fact that for every female MP with enough merit to have gained the position, there are 4 male ones.

Which has the interesting implication that Dale and Montgomerie apparently believe that women are, on average, simply less merituous than men when it comes to being MPs (on a ratio of about 4-1).Would they like to come out and say that?

Obviously there’s a get-out from this less-than-acceptable position, assuming the two would rather not declare themselves raving misogynists. Dale and Montgomerie could accept that perhaps there are structural factors which disadvantage women from becoming MPs, and which also work to dissuade more women than men from even considering becoming MPs in the first place. That is, they might agree – as any sensible person who looks at the distribution of power, wealth and influence in the UK would – that becoming an MP is not simply about who has “merit” (however defined) at the selection stage, but a whole host of other factors, such as what is counted by selectors as “merit” in the first place, and prior to that, the opportunities open to people of different genders to acquire that “merit”.

So we might want to start thinking about factors such as how PPC-selectors, and in turn voters, perceive candidates against the background of a society with deeply gendered perceptions; what candidates’ socio-political expectations of themselves are in a gendered society; how being a member of the sex expected to bear and raise children in favour of career advancement is likely to affect career paths and the acquisition of “merit” in a world where bearing and raising children is not valued as regards the skills deemed necessary for a career in politics, and so on.

But as soon as one recognises the basic fact that the world is incredibly complicated, and in turn, so are the concepts of “merit” and “meritocracy” within that complicated world (and I suggest, that to avoid the charge of rampant misogyny, Dale and Montgomerie do recognise that) it becomes patently clear that to claim that all-women shortlists are “unmeritocratic” is at best disingenuous, and at worst pretty stupid.

Let me be clear: I am not saying that all women shortlists are definitely the right thing to do. There may be good arguments against them (that they are insulting to women, cause resentment inside and outside parties, and so on). But what I am saying is that to simply dismiss them as “unmeritocratic” is laughably naive. It is to hold that with regards to the deeply complex issue of female under-representation in Parliament, the debate could possibly be so simple as for a measure designed to address this to be “unmeritocratic”, and that be the simple end of it. In the words of the wise Ben Goldacre: I think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that.

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