Why Women Shun the Big Beasts of Politics

Evening Standard

Every so often a women politician emerges who lights up the political firmament. Labour Cabinet minister Barbara Castle was a star in her day. Ireland’s Mary Robinson got lavish press attention when she became the first female president of Ireland. And now the female French Socialist candidate for President Ms Segolene Royal has the international media village in frenzy. In recent months she has got more coverage than all her rivals put together, even in British newspapers that do not normally pay much attention to the intricacies of French politics .It helps that all these women take a good photograph. Picture editors automatically go for an attractive image to improve the look of a page. But more fundamentally, the very fact that they are women is seen to signify change in the body politic.

But does the periodic emergence of female super stars mean that anything has really changed in the role women play in politics. The classic example was Mrs Thatcher. She did not actually start off a star. In the 1979 election she lagged behind her party in popular appeal and seemed like a slightly deranged housewife compared to the avuncular figure of “Sunny” Jim Callahagan. But, to the amazement of even some in her own party, the deranged housewife won and went on to achieve true superstar status. She is still one of the few living British politicians that people abroad have heard of. Mrs Thatcher dominated her era but how much actually changed for women politicians because of her? There were actually fewer women in her cabinet than under previous male Tory prime Ministers. Though some feminists see her as a symbolic figure, Mrs Thatcher certainly did not see herself as a feminist and she was not interested in giving encouragement to other women.

More recently, although the Labour Party’s positive action measures did produce more women MP’s, it is striking how women Cabinet ministers are relegated to traditional caring roles like health and education. And not a single Labour women Cabinet Minister is seen as a serious candidate for the Labour leadership. In America, Britain and the rest of Europe the changing role of women in society has taken an inordinate length of time to be reflected in the political. Maybe it is because politics is so sacred and special that it is the last arena that men give up. But a sacrilegious thought occurs to me, the professional politician, maybe young women have worked out that party politics just does not matter that much any more and are putting their energies into jobs like marketing and communications. Because these, in the twenty first century, seem to the professions that really have the power to change the world.

 

 

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