Talk:All-women shortlist

A fact from All-women shortlist appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 9 January 2009, and was viewed approximately 1,200 times (disclaimer) (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that the imposition of an all-women shortlist caused the Labour Party to lose one of its safest UK Parliamentary seats in 2005?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2009/January.

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This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Emlou9. Peer reviewers: Rayrhone4.

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Confusing statement

Tha text states that "Conservative leader David Cameron tried to institute AWS in 2006." and then that "in October 2009, the subsequent Conservative leader, David Cameron stated that the under-representation of women and ethnic minorities was "a real problem for parliament and for my party", and reversed his opposition to AWS". This may be factually correct (I am not sure), but the text is nevertheless confusing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.20.1.126 (talk) 07:49, 13 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Basic definition

Can someone please provide a basic definition of what this actually is? What role does a shortlist play in the election system? Can there be all men shortlists? By accident or by design? Are there multiple candidates per party going into the main election or is this for the selection of a single candidate within a given party? --Stephan Schulz (talk) 12:52, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

We have such a thing in Canada in the New Democratic Party (check their sites--provincial and federal). It's a sort of forced equalization technique to encourage the election of women, the disabled and visible minorities via percentages, hopefully to reduce and neutralize the mainly white-rich-male-dominated political scene--the loudest and most aggressive group, as well as the most destructive.

This sort of thing needs to be done, however onerous it may be. Because of their unique vantage points, disadvantaged groups tend to have a more realistic and holistic view of the planet and ourselves in it, rather than a tunnel vision of economics and the idiotic belief that you can have economic growth forever on a finite planet.

Wars are and have been mainly male pursuits, worldwide. While clearly Margaret Thatcher liked wars, most women want to avoid such destruction and deaths. Few women are CEOs in munitions companies or any other warlike endeavours. If we'd been successful at getting more women of modest means to run for public office and get elected, it's unlikely that ANY public funds would go towards commercially-oriented wars or towards building HUGE rinks and stadiums for male-dominated commercial hockey/football leagues. All human needs would be met, first: childcare, healthcare and education. There would be more negotiations for peace, with less bullying and frivolous posturing. When I last checked the national stats, women committed only 3% of the violent crimes in Canada (my country---the USA has slightly higher rates of females committing murder) -- so wars are not on women's lists of Things to Do. Peace might stand a chance with women in office--but not in the USA, with something like Sarah Palin at the helm. Most First Nation groups are generally pacifists, with a few exceptions.

With more First Nations elected in my country, less public money would be wasted on "grants" to American billionaires for destructive fracking in our country and/or draining the water table under adjacent farmers' fields. Also, maybe the poor people downstream from Fort McMurray would stop dying of numerous cancers.

If more disabled people were elected, healthcare, eldercare, childcare and educational access would likely improve.

But the problems of getting minorities, disabled and women elected are threefold:

1. most women, minorities and disabled don't have the money to run for office.  Because of prejudice, women, the disabled and minorities are sneakily discriminated against, and don't tend to get good-paying jobs, even though it's supposed to be against the law to discriminate in such a way.  In Canada, women receive on average only 61% of the wages that men get, and generally get stuck with the major expense and job of child-raising (our male-dominated governments are reluctant to go after deadbeat dads). The disabled often suffer wage-discrimination and promotion difficulties, too. It's hard to get the education you need to run for office under those conditions.

2. women often feel inferior, and often transfer that inferiority onto other women, including those running for office. It's worse if they are also disabled and aboriginal. We've had several hundreds of missing aboriginal women in Canada, and the mainly male police won't bother finding out what happened to them. Women, the disabled and minorities often feel helpless and irrelevant, so they often stay in the background. Some don't even vote, so it's hard to entice women to run for office when they often have to face gruff, bullying men, many similar to the infamous Toronto Mayor Rob Ford. Men are generally more aggressive--which most women and first nations find intimidating, not to mention offensive. Women, thus, tend to accede to them, rather than challenge them, risking a black eye and being called fowl names. Also, because TV news mainly cover male interests, girls grow up thinking they and their interests are not as important as males and their interests. So feelings of being prejudiced against and a "what's the use?" attitude present serious problems in our supposed democracy.

When too many women don't vote, males (and usually the worst of them) get elected --Harper, for example, in my country IMHO; then women's needs and interests-- healthcare, education, childcare, eldercare, etc., --are sacrificed in favour of specious gladiatorial pursuits, and rotten and unsustainable commercial ventures.

3. If our governments persist on concentrating solely on corporate interests and commercial sports to the exclusion of the planet's welfare, none of us will survive--male, female, disabled--regardless of race. We'll, also, take other innocent species with us.

So, we need to have MORE democracy--even an enhanced democracy to counter unreasonable prejudices to ensure an egalitarian state, and to ensure that all relevant issues are considered--environmental sustainability and preservation, education and healthcare and the wellbeing of us all:)

It's time to renew our democracy if we want our planet (and ourselves) to have a future. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Marysue5252 (talk • contribs) 23:13, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Why have this phrase?

Why have the phrase "Because of this, 27% of all Labour MPs (including Clare Short) are female" Are you saying that people are unaware that Clare Short is female? Or is there a reason that she might not be counted and who ever wrote this felt the need to include her. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.122.64.88 (talk) 13:14, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I agree and have removed it. The reason for that clarification might have been that after Clare Short left the Labour Party to sit as an independent the figure of 27% was longer accurate. I have checked the figures and rounding to the nearest whole number it is still 27% (the change after her departure was 0.29%). Annexed (talk) 15:46, 20 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Page move

I made a real mess of this; apologies! Ericoides (talk) 13:29, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

fixed.--Grahame (talk) 13:33, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Ericoides (talk) 13:47, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Neutrality and original research and synthesis

This article needs to be cleaned up from the original research and synthesis, poorly cited material and lack of neutrality. Even a cursory look at the sources shows that only one version of this tale is being told here. For example, this report [1], which apparently comes out as strongly in favour of lists, is used as a citation, but not for its main point, for some reason. [2]. I have gone through the first few paragraphs to point out some specific problems with the citations, failed verification, and synthesis. I don't doubt there is more, but that is enough to justify the tags for the whole article. --Slp1 (talk) 21:25, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. I am considering reverting about half the edits ever made to this article and reducing it to this version to remove the POV. Bsimmons666 (talk) 21:43, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If you revert to that version you'll just be making things worse, the more recent edits are the best sourced, it's older content which has the problems in terms of not matching the sources. Also I haven't looked int it in details but I really can't understand the usew of the 2nd "original research" tag - could you possibly explain the issue please as i think that must be a mistake. Anyway, I'll try to fix some of the older sources thanks for pointing out the issues with them.--Shakehandsman (talk) 22:48, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that the other version also contains many problematic elements. The new sources and references are good, but the problem is that only the negative parts of the references have been included in the article, possibly because it has been written by those who think "all-women lists" are a "bad thing". As a result the whole article is unbalanced: it should be NPOV, leaving the readers to make up their own mind.

The problem with the sentence Labour leader Tony Blair had described all-women shortlists as "not ideal at all" in 1995, but after protests from prominent female Labour politicians such as Harriet Harman, Clare Short, Tessa Jowell, and Mo Mowlam, all-women shortlists were legalized under the Sex Discrimination (Election Candidates) Act 2002 is that it is original research, and in particular, synthesis. None of the references stated that Blair and/or labour changed their minds because of the women politician's protests. Three separate references have been put together to make an entirely new point. In fact, the Guardian article doesn't even say that they protested against Blair at all, just that they supported the lists. This synthesis and lack of fidelity to the sources is very problematic indeed. The whole article needs a radical rewrite based on the actual sources to improve verifiability and neutral point of view. --Slp1 (talk) 01:32, 13 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, from the placement of the tag I thought people were implying the later part of the sentence was original research (it's actually very well sourced), people just mean the part about the protests is problematic. I can't find anything about those protests online so i've just deleted that part for now, though obviously more detail will be needed. However, I completely disagree with the point about the re-write, this article is very well sourced and although it needs more work, the content already there is very useful and accurate. All Women Shortlists have been very controversial - not only because of the very obvious sex discrimiantion issue - on top of that you've got the way they've allegedly been misued and the instances where they've been forced upon certain constituencies. The article is quite right to cover such things. Yes, more about their impact should be added but then there's plenty of other content missing too e.g. not a single one of the 2009 shortlists is even mentioned despite all the coverage of them in the media.--Shakehandsman (talk) 04:45, 13 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Jacqui Smith?

Currently, the lead to this article states 'a prominent beneficiary of the process was Jacqui Smith'. While it's undisputable that she was elected via an all-women-shortlist, I think it might be POV to describe her as a beneficiary of the process - that implies that she wouldn't have got elected without one, which is impossible to say. Does anyone else agree that this is a problem? (To be clear, I don't mind mentioning her on this page - it's the use of the word 'beneficiary' which bothers me.) Robofish (talk) 01:24, 2 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've changed it to "Jacqui Smith, who served as Home Secretary, was one prominent politician elected on an all-women shortlist." Reword it further if you see fit. Bsimmons666 (talk) 01:31, 2 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. It's a start. But the whole article needs similar work, sadly. Maybe I'll get to it one of these days. --Slp1 (talk) 01:57, 2 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Universalization of the article ?

This article deals only with the British situation, while I have found no wikipedia article covering the Reserved political positions for women, which would be a more universalistic approach of the problem. The more general Reserved political positions article already exists but as a stub and poorly sourced. --Pylambert (talk) 10:59, 29 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I added a citation for the article's information on Iraq. The source I cited also examined similar policies as enacted in Afghanistan, and adding that information would help to universalize the article. Emlou9 (talk) 16:30, 3 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion related to this article

I have proposed that the articles of MPs who were elected by all-women shortlist should not state that such shortlists were declared illegal. If you have thoughts on this proposal, please comment at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Politics of the United Kingdom#All-women shortlists. Robofish (talk) 19:35, 2 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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