I’m on a business trip in the States this week, so feeling very out of touch with what’s happening in the UK. So here instead a more general piece prompted by events from the last month or so on diversity and representation in politics.
Much has been made of the straight(ish)-white-male composition of the new cabinet over the last few weeks. Let me throw in my 2 Eurocents. Incidentally, this post deals mainly with the “how” of diversity and representation, and not with the “why”. I am assuming that the case for diversity has been made loud and clear – though some recent events and comments do make me wonder. But that’s a thought for another day.
Jane Manning writes over at LDV:

Racial integration is a marvellous bridge. If representation is about sending a message of inclusion to a part of society that has been marginalised before then I don’t need a Brown face at the top to make me feel included. Those days of John Taylor not being selected as a Conservative candidate in the 1992 general election because of his colour is what made me feel deprived and hopeless and gave me sleepless nights. The gates of politics have since opened wide to people like me. We aren’t excluded. If we don’t go through the gate it is because we choose not to for reasons based on individual choices, not because we are barred.

I agree with Jane that a lot progress has been made in the area of diversity and representation in politics. But I strongly disagree that the gates have been opened wide; a crack perhaps, but most certainly not wide, and the make-up of the current cabinet only serves to underline this.
Unlike Jane, I am not writing this from an ethnic minority point of view. I’m writing as a woman and with some insights into the LGB community. However, I do believe a lot of the points I’m making apply across the six pillars of diversity and beyond, and I’d be very interested in hearing other thoughts, especially from those six pillars of diversity[1].
The first thing to realise is that it’s not enough for anyone, and especially not Parliament, to just put up a sign saying “Women (or of course any other of the 6 groups) welcome”. It’s just not as simple as that. While outright direct discrimination has become very rare, there are still deep structural issues which act as barriers to entry. Jane in her article claims that the doors are wide open and it’s only a matter of personal choice that we aren’t seeing more women or people from ethnic minority backgrounds in politics. I would argue the opposite: It is very easy to make the choice to go into politics if you happen to be a straight, white, middle-aged, upper/middle-class man; if you don’t happen to fall into that category, suddenly a lot of other barriers pop up that are easily disguised as personal choices but really are not.
I have been known to quip that one of the ways to address gender equality in politics is to turn some of the 47 bars in Westminster into creches. People are amused by this, but there is a more serious point behind it. Providing 47 bars and a shooting gallery but no child care arrangements for your employees is on the same continuum of discrimination as not having ladies’ toilets or as City firms doing business in strips clubs. The latter is obviously worse as it is actively degrading for those companies’ employees to work in that kind of environment but the former is one of those things that allows us to point at the absence of women in politics and say “It’s a personal choice” while we haven’t actually set up the infrastructure to allow women to make that choice freely.
Here’s another example to reinforce this: Yvette Cooper was questioned a couple of weeks ago over whether she would like to stand as a candidate for the Labour leadership. The reason she gave for not doing so was that she had three children under the age of 14. Yet Ms. Cooper’s husband, Ed Balls, seems to have no such issues. This is an issue so deeply ingrained in the structure of our society, it’s only in these rare cases that the true absurdity of it becomes visible.
And another one: Recent quips about colour-coded ties notwithstanding, male politicians rarely get judged on their outward appearance, provided they meet a basic standard of appropriate dress (i.e. wear a suit). Yet Theresa May’s shoes and the jacket she wore to her first BBC Question Time appearance as Home Secretary somehow seem to be more worthy of media comment than her attitude to gay people.
Now, I’m an agency over structure kind of girl most days. I firmly believe in the power of individual action to overcome structural barriers. But to do so, we first need to recognise that the barriers are there. Here is a non-exhaustive list of structural barriers to wider diversity and representation in UK politics – feel free to add your own:

• The way Westminster works is based on the premise that either all MPs are single gentlemen with housekeepers or that they have a 1950s-style family with a devoted wife waiting at home with their dinner. And let’s face it, this doesn’t just harm women – any man who wants to be a part of his children’s lives would be put off by the hours, the travel, the sheer family-unfriendliness of the place. And these are the people we expect to pass laws to increase the family-friendliness of our work places. Having said that, having a Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister both of whom have young children and both of whom appear to genuinely want to be involved in their children’s lives seems to be doing wonders for the family-friendliness at least in the Cabinet. I found this article utterly delightful.
• The absence of visible role models – for any disagvantaged group – doesn’t help either. It sends a subliminal signal to women, people of ethnic minorities, gay people, etc. that this place is not for them; that they aren’t welcome; that they can’t have a meaningful career in that environment. New Labour was pretty good at providing role models for some kinds of disability, with both David Blunkett and Gordon Brown (I didn’t realise until fairly recently how significantly visually impaired Brown is.), as well as Alastair Campbell speaking about his depression. But even they rarely spoke out about how they got to where they were. It is not enough to be the first woman/gay/disabled person in your position, as I’m sure we know from the Margaret Thatcher experience. You have to help other people like you see the way from where they are to where you are.
• The power of networks is huge in male-dominated workplaces. There is actually a good reason why there are 47 bars in Westminster, and it’s that a lot of the actual business gets done there. There is a certain stereotype that women tend to have the meeting in the meeting, while men tend to line up their ducks in the coffee breaks and use the meeting only for rubber-stamping purposes. This, too, is an extension of the power of networks. Yet, it can be remarkably difficult for women and members of minority groups to gain access to those networks in the first place. There is something cultural about the way women are raised that makes a lot of us instinctively cringe away from doing business that way, and from self-promotion. The same applies to some ethnic minorities too. I have been challenged on a number of occasions at work as to why it is right to organise women-only networking events, or awareness trainig for LGB issues in the workplace, when there is no such support available for white, straight men. The answer is simple: Everyone is being forced to play by straight, white men rules. Straight, white men do not need help to understand or adjust to those rules. But our efforts to bring everyone else up to speed with the rules still don’t seem to be paying off. Perhaps we need to consider changing the rules.
• Another one on the cultural front, and this one applies especially for women, is the social taboo surrounding the expression of ambition. Women who openly express ambition tend to be seen as pushy and aggressive. Men doing the same thing are strong leaders. There was a very telling interview with three new women MPs (one from each main party) on Woman’s Hour the weekend after the general election. Each was asked what her ambition was as a new Member of Parliament. And each in turn answered that this was a great new challenge for them, they still needed to learn the ropes, they were committed to their constituency, and wanted to do the the best by their constituents. None of them expressed ambition beyond that. When was the last time you heard a new male MP admit that they had a lot to learn?

There is still a lot of work to do before Westminster is truly representative of the people it is supposed to represent. To achieve this in a sustainable way, we need to not only use the short-term measures some parties are already using, such as all-women shortlists; we need to take an in-depth look at the basic underlying structures of our political system, identify structural barriers to entry, and actively work to eliminate them.
[1] Gender, race, sexual orientation, religion, disability, age, for those who don’t know what the six legally protected pillars of diversity are in the UK.