Jayne Dowle: Will towns like Barnsley ever accept a woman as MP?

The Women and Equalities Committee has found that the UK ranks at just 48th globally for representation in the lower or single legislative chamber – a fall from 25th place in 1999.

How can this be, you might ask, in a civilised country where girls out-rank boys academically at every educational level, and there is no shortage of able women making their voices heard in the media and public life?

Only the other night, I watched Kirsty Wark present an edition of Newsnight in which Don Valley’s Labour MP Caroline Flint and human rights activist Dame Shami Chakrabarti held a fine debate about the Labour Party’s current mess. Whatever you think of their politics, you can’t deny that these are the kind of intelligent, personable women who deserve to hold positions of influence.

However the question is this: why aren’t there more of them willing to step up to the plate? When I think about my own town of Barnsley, there are lamentably few women in positions of any political influence or indeed, power.

When I look at my daughter, who is 11, I wonder if she will ever see a female MP representing her interests in her own lifetime. I’m certainly beginning to doubt I will ever see one in mine.

This is no disrespect to our own Barnsley Central MP Dan Jarvis, or his Labour colleague Michael Dugher who represents the adjacent constituency of Barnsley East. Neither is it a criticism of Labour’s Sir Stephen Houghton, the leader of Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council, who continues to do a remarkable job under very trying financial circumstances.

Rather it is a bafflement that in a town which is renowned for its outspoken, upfront women, there seems to be such a reluctance on our part to get involved. It pains me to say this, but I believe the day when we elect a woman to represent us in Westminster to be so far away that it is nothing but a distant dream.

Of course, there is Labour’s Angela Smith, who takes her seat on the green benches for Penistone and Stocksbridge, but the foothills of the Pennines are a very different place from the centre of Barnsley and the areas of deprivation which surround it.

And there’s another major point which cannot be ignored. As politics becomes ever more divided and nasty, the climate for candidates is increasingly too cut-throat for many to even consider it.

The problem in Barnsley, as it is in many “safe” Labour seats in the North of England, is just that. It’s a safe Labour seat and shows no signs of budging. The Labour Party has had a stranglehold on political representation for generations. The idea of anyone representing Barnsley in Westminster who is not a Labour supporter is, as yet, inconceivable.

Of course, I’d like to encourage all women, of whatever political affiliation, to take an active part in political life. Yet, we have to face facts. When we look 
the problem of under-representation straight in the eye, we see in towns 
like Barnsley that it is as much a 
problem of the current Labour party leadership and hierarchy as it is of anything else.

And, I’ll stick my neck out here and say that while Jeremy Corbyn remains in charge, politically-ambitious women in such towns will be reluctant to come forward out of fear of being ridiculed, patronised and put down.

His henchmen – and I use the word guardedly – might pretend to be liberal and equality-seeking, but all too often they hold views of women so unreconstructed they would have been considered antediluvian in the 1930s.

What sane women would willingly run the gauntlet, only to be shot down in flames? These ultra-left-wingers can’t even stomach the moderate Dan Jarvis as our democratically-elected member. What chance would he stand if he happened to wear a skirt? We’re truly in a double-bind, and until the mess really starts to unravel, I can’t see any way out.

And although what I talk about is peculiar to the Labour Party right now, similar discrimination still exists across the political spectrum, with the possible exception of the Green Party. With a series of women at the helm, this organisation seems to have achieved a fairly equitable approach to fielding candidates of both sexes.

The House of Commons report, chaired by MP Maria Miller, makes 
some strong recommendations for enforceable quotas, fines and so on.

Although these ideas are interesting and commendable, too many of them seem to focus on only one half of the story. The real challenge is not to persuade more women to have the confidence to come forward and stand up. It is to persuade the overwhelming majority of men to welcome them, support them and give them the credit they deserve. Until we reach that day, towns like mine will still have to wait 
for a woman to represent them in the Houses of Parliament.