Women and the Vote

We continue to be involved with the Women and the Vote campaign which is going from strength to strength!  The organisations involved in the campaign are the Electoral Reform Society, Unlock Democracy, The Hansard Society, Centre for Women and Democracy, the Fawcett Socity and Engender.  
Following the decision to continue the project into 2009, we held a fantastic event at the Scottish Parliament in December
where MSP’s Angela Constance and Cathy Peattie talked about their experiences as women in politics and took questions from the floor.  The night also saw the launch of the campaigns ‘6 Asks’. Each organisation put forward what they want to see done to improve the level of women’s representation in political life.  Engender’s ‘ask’ is:
“Since our political processes and institutions were engineered, indeed MAN-made, to reflect a different era than the one we now live in, Engender believes it is crucial that they are re-designed to reflect the participation of women and men in modern society. Engender therefore urges political parties to adopt positive action and quotas as allowed under the Sex Discrimination (Election of Candidates) Act 2002 and challenges political parties to make good their commitment to equality so that women are equally represented in our governments.”
Similar events took place in the Welsh Assembly and at Westminster in February.  The campaign has a new logo and a revamped website which is a brilliant source of information about the levels of women’s political participation.  The focus of the campaign is still very much on getting politicians and the public to sign up their support so – please visit the site www.womenandthevote.com or go straight to the sign-up page  and be counted!