Cameron’s pledge on women ministers unlikely to be met
David Cameron seems, in effect, to have ditched his long-held pledge that one third of the members of his government will be women by the end of this parliament. Ministers, government advisers and spokesmen all insist the target still stands, but the striking evidence from this week’s reshuffle suggests that’s ludicrous.
Of the 121 government posts – ministers and whips – just 23 are now held by women. That’s only 19 per cent, well short of the 33 per cent target.
Five women departed in the reshuffle: four Tories – Caroline Spelman, Cheryl Gillan, Angela Watkinson and Baroness Wilcox, and one Liberal Democrat – Sarah Teather.
And eight new women came into the government: six Conservatives – Helen Grant, Esther McVey, Anna Soubry, Elizabeth Truss, Nicky Morgan and Karen Bradley, and two Liberal Democrats – Jo Swinson and Baroness Randerson. That’s a net increase of just THREE women.
Many people – me included – expected there would be a disproportionate number of women among the new people appointed to the government, and that if you were a male backbencher your chances of promotion were virtually non-existent.
Far from it. Of the 31 new people appointed to the government, only eight were women, or just under 26 per cent. So even in his new appointments Cameron has failed to reach his target of one third women.
And even if you leave out the Liberal Democrats, and peers, David Cameron failed to hit the target among MPs he promoted from within his own ranks in the House of Commons. Sixteen male Tory MPs got new jobs, and just six women Conservative MPs, a rate of just over 27 per cent.
And the strange thing is that there are several other women on the Tory backbenches who were widely tipped for promotion, and well-qualified for office – Margot James, for example, Mary Macleod, Claire Perry, Harriet Baldwin and Jane Ellison. All of these were steadfastly loyal during the two big controversial votes of the last twelve months – on an EU referendum last year, and Lords reform this summer.
It’s reported that David Cameron plans only one more reshuffle before the end of this parliament. If he’s to reach his target at that point, he will need to bring 18 more women into the government, and that’s assuming he loses none at all.
On the current rate of progress, he won’t reach his target until about 2027, by which time I suspect he will no longer be PM.
Follow @MichaelLCrick on Twitter.
There are 4 comments on this post
There are 56 women MPs in the coalition: 15.6% of the Conservatives, and 14% of Lib Dems. 19% is already over-representation, given the source population. 33% would be 40 appointments, meaning an average chance of 71%, compared with just a 26% chance of a man securing an appointment – hardly equality of opportunity. Gender targets are an absurd way to select ministers. They should be selected on competence.
I’m delighted to see that a number of women and men have been chosen on exactly those criteria, unhappy at some of the men and the occasional woman whose competence I doubt but whose loyalty to Cameron preserves them, and unhappy that there people of both sexes who should probably have been appointed in preference to some of the appointments that have been made because they are more competent than the incumbents.
Plainly, Michael Crick prefers an excuse to install incompetent ministers, so he can then criticise them.
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Of course there will be one female MP less shortly – whenever Mrs Mensch finally has her application to an appointment of profit from the Crown approved.
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re your final sentence – It seems to me that MC was just pointing out the unlikelihood that Cameron would meet a pledge. You might argue it was a stupid plegde. You might argue it was unachievable except with massive over-representation of women within the Government. But MC didn’t say Cameron SHOULD promote all these additional women. He just pointed out what would be required to achieve it and yyour final point seems to me to have no basis in fact.
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