Women outnumbered 3 to 1 by men in Tory grassroots, study finds

Female activists in the Tory party are outnumbered more than three to one by their male counterparts, and there are significantly fewer women than men in all the main parties. The lack of women in grassroots politics is revealed in research by academics investigating the future of UK political parties.

Jo Swinson, the deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats, where women are outnumbered by men 2:1, said: “We’ll never get to gender equality in parliament when membership of parties is so unequal.”

The House of Commons is less than one-third female after the 2017 election, even though a record 208 women were elected. The UK ranks 48th in the world for women’s representation. “This shows there’s a way to go for modernisation,” said Nicky Morgan, a former Tory cabinet minister and chair of the Treasury select committee.

The analysis of party membership in 2017 , by Dr Monica Poletti of the ESRC-funded Party Membership Project based at Queen Mary University of London and Sussex University, draws a bleak picture of activists in all parties as an ageing and unrepresentative breed. People who become members, even in the Labour party, which claims to have nearly 100,000 members of its youth wing, are disproportionately older, whiter and better off than the population as a whole.

Labour has the smallest gender gap, only six points, perhaps because the research finds that women rate the likability of the party leader as a reason for joining more highly than men.

Source: theguardian