“Ill-educated housewives”
I usually quite enjoy Tim Worstall’s blog - I mean, it’s a pretty challenging read for a Guardian-reading Labour feminist, but that’s not always a bad thing. This, though, made me really cross (full disclosure - I’m on the board of trustees of the Fawcett Society).
Tim wrote:
Worth noting that Ms. Rake is from the Fawcett Society. Last year they published a report bemoaning the lack of BEM (Black and Ethnic Minority I believe) women MPs. In the annex they helpfully gave more data about who those BEMs were. There were, not surprisingly, hugely less educated (in the sense of University degrees) and vastly less likely to have worked outside the home than either men of the same ethnic background or women in the general population. Complaining that the country is not being run by ill-educated housewives always seemed a little odd to me.
There are currently two black women MPs - Diane Abbott and Dawn Butler - and have only ever been three. (Oona King is the other). There has never been an Asian woman MP. The two current woman black MPs make up 0.3% of Parliament; in order to get a representative chamber, bearing in mind that black and ethnic minority women make up 3.8% of the UK population, we’d need to increase that tenfold at least. I’d quite like a parliament that reflects the UK population and the variety of life experiences of that population, thank you very much. Why should the experiences of people who didn’t go to university and who raised families not be represented in Parliament? After all, the House of Commons makes laws for them too.
“I’d quite like a parliament that reflects the UK population”.
I wouldn’t. I’d like a Parliament made up of the economically and philosophically literate.
21 million adults, so we have recently been told, (some 40% of the population) are functionally illiterate and innumerate. Should 40% of MPs be as well?
Of those who rule in our name I care precisely and exactly nothing about their possession of a Y chromosome or not, their taste in sexual partners, the melanin content of their skin, the part of the world their forefathers came from or even their religion.
I do hope for competence however, possibly even a vague knowledge of how business and the economy actually work: clearly I shall be bitterly disappointed but I can dream can I not?
Tim - we’re going to disagree on this. I hold a pretty-tradional feminist position that one’s experiences and background contribute to one’s effectiveness as a politician as much as formal competences and qualifications.
Tim, at the moment we seem to be moving towards political representation being locked into a very small selection of the community.
some days I despair when yet another lawyer or accountant is voted into parliament by either party. You have to admit that these professions are hugely overrepresented in both major parties today. The problem with this is that it results in an exceptionally narrow view of the resolution of any problems (Theres an old saying, when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail)
Do we need more female and minority politicians to just increase their representation? no that would be a simplistic argument. What we need a wider representation in government for is to increase the nomber of outlooks held amongst our politicians, and allow us to be more flexible in our approach to problems.
Tim, you’ve said above in Antonia’s quote that you’d rather not increase the number of BEM women in parliament because they are statistically less likely to be up to the job (by your criteria - put that aside for the moment).
If I was a BME candidate and you were on my interview panel, I would therefore be rather concerned that you would have these statistics in the back of your mind, along with the question “Can she first prove to me that she’s not an ill-educated housewife?”
You say that you care nothing for gender, race etc - so why mention statistics at all if you take every individual at face value?
Statistics should be absolutely irrelevant when making a judgement about an individual - just because crime is higher on my street does not make me more likely to be a criminal.
It’s facetious to draw a parallel between BME women and illiterate adults. Being a BME woman does not say anything about your abilities.
Antonia: So you do think that we should work to increase the number of illiterates in Parliament? They have valuable life experiences after all, do they not?
ceebs: I agree absolutely about the lawyers: I actually think accountants are under-represented: there would be greater clarity about tax laws if there were a few more. I’d be interested in seeing more of those with backgrounds in business as well. That is the sector that produces all the wealth that the political process goes about dividing and distributing. A little more knowledge of how to pluck the goose without killing it would be useful.
In my version of a decent world failed polytechnic lecturers (Stephen Byers) would not end up trying to run swathes of British industry (Rover, Notwork Rail etc, Stephen Byers). Which is one of the things that leads me to my rather uncompromising minimalist state views. As I can conceive of no form of democracy where bad law lecturers could not find themselves both elected and then appointed to Ministerial positions, and I also do not want people with such paucity of economic knowledge to be trying to run the economy, inevitably, I support a minimalist state, where Minsters have as little to do with anything important as is possible consistent with there not being anarchy.
“It’s facetious to draw a parallel between BME women and illiterate adults. Being a BME woman does not say anything about your abilities.”
But that very Fawcett Report went into great detail about the educational and life experiences of those it wanted to be considered for Parliament. That was the whole point of my post.
Of course every individual must be treated entirely as an individual: which is rather something that complaining about group representation misses.
Personally, I’d much prefer it if Parliament was far more representative of the people it seeks to reprent. Yes, one one level that means more women MPs, more BME MPs and so on, but if you ask me, Parliament is filled with far too many middle-class, university-educated “professionals”. I truly believe that we’d be better off if our legislators came from all walks of life with a broad but different range of experiences. How else can we ensure that legislation and services meet the needs of the majority of people in this country?
Tim,
One of your reasons not to worry about black and minority ethnic women being under-represented in parliament is that they are less likely to have university degrees, but your decent world is undermined by the presence of bad law lecturers (who are on average going to be better academically qualified on your definition then people with a background in business). I would suggest that the test of whether or not someone has a degree is not a good one for assessing their suitability as an MP.
Having MPs who come from a wider variety of backgrounds doesn’t imply depriving them of advice from experts on the economy or business - sorting out of clarity on tax laws is much more a function of the quality of advice then the background of MPs. Division and distribution of the national wealth, though, is something which everyone, whether or not they are functionally literate, should have an equal say in. The skill of being functionally literate is important for an MP in their day-to-day work, but there’s no particular reason that with proper training and support, someone who is currently functionally illiterate couldn’t be a perfectly good MP come the next election.
Take care
Dan xxx
Its time we encouraged our MPs to ‘moonlight’, especially if he or she is a backbencher, since they do not have an official role in Westminster notes Charter88. In addition, the current working practices and procedures are not designed to facilitate the effective scrutiny of Government, nor give MPs a meaningful role in the policy process. Therefore, a bored MP has two options become a glorified and overpaid social worker or find some lucrative employment in the city, the courts or the media.Since many of our MPs consider that despite earning, at least four times the average salary, that they are not paid enough, we should encourage them to moonlight, so that outside interests can fund their demands for extra income rather than us taxpayers.Such encouragement would have the added advantage of resolving the complaint that there are too many career politicians representing us, who have no real experience of the working world outside politics. Perhaps being an MP should be like being a member of the TA, you should have a full-time non-political job, where your employer lets you have limited paid time off to conduct your political duties.As for MPs with a heavy constituency workload, it would be cheaper to employ a professional social worker to do much of the work. This would probably mean even less need for the current high number of MPs that represent us in ParliamentInstead, we should follow Hong Kong’s Legislative Assembly and have representatives elected to sit in the House of Lords, representing their profession, pressure group or trade union. At least if a House of Lords representative appointed by the legal profession announced proposed government legislation to reform the legal system was unjust, it would be clearer to the public, that he was fighting to protect the outrageous income that lawyers in his profession currently earn.to read more http://oxfordprospect.blogspot.com/
I love your blog Antonia. I am a city manager in the United States. I am a friend of Griff Wigley’s. I have been a local government blogger for over three years now. It’s been the smartest move I’ve made in my career. You have an informative and easy style to follow. I especially like you photo in your banner. Very nice.
Cheers.
“Division and distribution of the national wealth, though, is something which everyone, whether or not they are functionally literate, should have an equal say in.”
Really? So someone who says “Well, I just think that everyone should get the same ’coz that would be fair like” should have an equal voice to someone who understands the roles of incentives in the economy? The trade offs that have to be made between a more egalitarian distribution of the wealth and the creation of that wealth in the first place? You seriously want people who know nothing of the subject under discussion to be making law on that subject?
Tim
You say that we shouldn’t have people from these groups, because they are under educated, then in the next paragraph you go on about Stephen Buyers, being a lecturer and thus not up to the job
Now unless he’s not up to the job because you have personal experience of his teaching, that smacks of Snobbery.
Please explain how this makes any sense.
Tim, your comments ask for a simple question — educated in what? It is not unreasonable for the elctorate to want a wider variety of expertise in the House — and as Antonia says, that expertise is not all measured in degrees.
Frankly, Tim, the quality of your argument here lowers your status in my eyes. Setting up your own straw woman to jeer at looks like dodging the real points that Antonia and Fawcett are trying to make.
We need the best team of MPs we can get, and the “best team” must imply variety of life experiences. Excluding this particular pool of talent is unwise. The exclusion is partly due to the structure of our electoral system, and that points to a need to change the system. In the meantime, we can make real efforts to overcome its limitations.
I might have misunderstood, Tim, in which case please correct me, but you said in your original post that the data about the BME population was in the appendices of the Fawcett report, not the text. I couldn’t find the report, but from what you were saying I didn’t get the impression that it was using these statistics directly to argue that this section of the population lacked education and experience and therefore should have greater representation. I think that you were the first to make that correlation - ie you’ve looked at the stats which were there FYI and have used them to make a judgement about BME women who might stand for Parliament. I appreciate this is unfair if this is not the case and will be happy to withdraw my comment - a link tot he report would be good.
I can’t see the report on their site so perhaps we should ask Antonia for a copy?
Yes, I was the one making the correlation. The report argued that there was something unfair about the low level of BEM representation in P. I then looked at their own statistics and this is what I actually wrote 18 months ago, when the report actually came out:
http://timworstall.typepad.com/timworstall/2005/02/hugh_muir.html
“For just last week there was a report from the Fawcett Society into just this issue, the supposed under-representation of Black and Ethnic Minority women (BEMs). Now this isn’t what they said but it is what they showed. That 90% of BEMs over 45 are immigrants, that levels of education and workforce participation in this group are vastly lower than in any other group in the country. In the lower age cohorts, while there are still differences in such matters between BEMs and the general population, they are smaller (and in some cases, better) than. So it would appear to be a problem that will solve itself in time, for as education and participation in the wider economy away from home meet the general levels so will representation. (I am assuming that mid forties is a likely or reasonable time to become an MP…not unfair I feel.)
What is really being complained about is that ill-educated immigrant housewives are not running the country. Not an issue I can get worked up about.”
Two things to consider though:
1) BME women are disproportionately underrepresented in politics as compared to other professions, which is a problem for the “give it time” argument.
2) Chicken or egg? The critical factor in getting women of any ethnicity interested in government is seeing other women involved (modelled in every country in the world where improved levels of representation have been achieved) - giving it time hasn’t worked for white women, and even less likely to work when there are only 2 role models. Another aspect of chicken or egg (although one I don’t agree with personally, there is some evidence for argument) - is comparative low social/educational status of BME women an effect of them not being publicly active as well as a cause? which would indicate a circle in need of breaking.
To your last point, the comparative low educational status. As I imply in the above that is a function of the age cohort. The younger generations are as educated (and in certain groups, more so) than the general population.
So, yes, time might well be a sufficient answer.
“So someone who says “Well, I just think that everyone should get the same ’coz that would be fair like” should have an equal voice to someone who understands the roles of incentives in the economy?”
That is rather the point of democracy.
There is a distinction, which I think you are missing, between “what to do” and “how to do it”. Questions about what to do should involve everyone having an equal say, but be informed by the implications of what would happen if these things were done (’how to do it’).
So people might decide that the only priority of government should be to intervene or not as required to maximise wealth creation, or they might decide that there are some other goals which are desirable even if they mean that the UK does not maximise the amount of wealth that could be created. Trying to work out what the implications of particular policies would be is a job for experts. Trying to decide on which of these priorities is most important is a job for everyone, even if they come up with answers that you don’t like.
Take care
Dan xxx
Sure Dan. And the MPs are supposed to be those experts aren’t they?
No tim, the civil Servants, and the individual experts are meant to be the experts, the MP’s are just our representatives.
They are the people who drfive the car, they don’t need to know how it works entirely
An MP who thinks they have to be (or worse, that they are) the experts would be the most unsuitable person you could find for the job.
I know I brought it on myself by giving a third comment “for debate”, but it’s a shame you missed the two rather more important points!
They may not need to know how the car works, but they do need to know enough to recognise when the car needs the services of a mechanic, and they do need to know enough to assess whether the mechanic is being entirely accurate, or is merely suggesting that the car needs a change of tyres because he happens to be a tyre fitter.
1) BME women are disproportionately underrepresented in politics as compared to other professions, which is a problem for the “give it time” argument.
It’s interesting, certainly, and leads one to ask why this is. Is it a cultural thing - do these women think that running the country is “men’s work”? Do these women just see more value in being doctors, accountants, lawyers or whatever they are than in being politicians? Politics is well-paid for those who become MPs and maybe minsters, but fairly short of tangible rewards otherwise. Are there hordes of BEM women clamouring to be allowed into the political sphere but being kept at bay by a conspiracy of middle-aged white men?