Campaign for Gender Balance

Conference welcomes the election of 7 new Liberal Democrat woman MPs since the 2001 General Election, increasing the proportion of female MPs in the Parliamentary Party from 9.6% in 2001 to 16.4% in 2005; 33% of new Liberal Democrat MPs are women.

Conference notes:

1. The Gender Balance Task Force has had a significant effect in improving the number of women PPCs and the proportion of our new MPs that are women.

2. Despite the increased proportion of women candidates, only 25% of non-incumbent candidates, and 23% of candidates overall, were women.

3. That without the added factor of a landslide election as in 1997, the use of all women shortlists by the Labour party had a negligible effect on increasing their proportion of female MPs.

4. The Federal Executive signed up to the National Democratic Institute's Win With Women Global Action Plan on behalf of the party at the beginning of 2005.

Conference believes:

A. That this under-representation is unhealthy for democracy, projects a predominantly male image which deters women and suggests the Party is failing to make the best use of all available skills and abilities.

B. It is the responsibility of the Party and individuals at all levels to ensure that the situation is improved.

C. That quotas, zipping and all-women shortlists are tokenistic and damage local democracy.

D. The approach of training, mentoring and support developed by the Gender Balance Task Force (now known as the Campaign for Gender Balance) has proven to be the best hope for tackling the problem of gender imbalance in the long term, but it needs more continued long-term support and resources to ensure that progress continues to be made.

Conference calls for:

I The Party to work towards a long term goal of gender balance at all levels of representative government in the UK.

II The Party to set a target of at least 40% of its new MPs and at least 25% of its total MPs to be women after the next General Election.

III The Party to set a target of at least 150 additional approved women candidates by the next General Election.

IV The Federal Executive to ensure that the Campaign for Gender Balance is adequately funded in order to carry out its function in finding, training and developing female candidates.

V The Campaign for Gender Balance to continue to report back to every Federal Conference and every meeting of the Federal Executive on progress until this goal has been reached.