WUNRN
Women's Feature Service
Rushanara Ali is the third Asian Muslim woman to have won a
seat in this General Election. She is seen here interacting with
youngsters from her constituency of Bethnal Green and Bow in London.
(Credit: rushanaraali.org)
By Barbara Lewis
London (Women's
Feature Service) - Britain's general election has been tortuous and confusing -
but it yielded at least some clear winners as British Asian women were for the
first time elected members of parliament. After a record 22 Asian women stood
as candidates, the odds of their success were good.
It's a breakthrough,
nonetheless, that nearly 120 years after the election of Dadabhai Naoroji as
the first Asian Member of Parliament in 1892, six Asian women have at last won
seats. They include three Asian Muslim women, a section of the population often
regarded as among the least likely to enter politics.
Shabana Mahmood was
chosen to represent Ladywood in
Both are Muslims,
both are barristers and members of the left-leaning Labour party, which ruled
Britain until the May 6 general election - in which the more right-wing
Conservatives won the most seats, and went on to form a coalition government.
Contrary to popular belief, said Mahmood, Muslim women were very interested in
politics. "The image of the voiceless Muslim woman who cannot leave the
house is just not true," she told the BBC in the run-up to the vote.
"Parliament is for the people - all of the people and the ethnic minority
population should claim it."
The third successful
Asian Muslim woman was Rushanara Ali, also for Labour, who took Bethnal Green
and Bow in
"My family's
migration is part of a long tradition of people who came here to build a better
future for themselves and the people around them," said Ali.
In addition, three
other British Asian women have risen to power. Priti Patel gained the
Conservatives a seat in Witham, southern
Another notable
female, although non-Asian, victory was the election of
Women's campaigners
are, however, less than satisfied. British-based equality campaigner, the
Centre for Women and Democracy noted the 142 women elected to be MPs
represented only 22 per cent of the total of 649. That is a small advance on
the 126 women - 19.5 per cent of the total - when parliament was dissolved
ahead of the election. What is even more telling is that only four women have
made it into David Cameron's 29-member Cabinet. The Conservative Party's
Sayeeda Warsi, a British Pakistani - the only non-white member in the Cabinet -
has not been elected into parliament and holds no portfolio.
"No party will
be able to govern with authority or democratically without women or without
immediately addressing the shocking state of women's representation in politics
that this election campaign has exposed," said Ceri Goddard, chief
executive of the London-based Fawcett Society, a long-standing champion of
equality between women and men.
Women might well feel
they have common cause with Britain's third largest party the centrist Liberal
Democrats, led by Nick Clegg, who did well in opinion polls ahead of polling
day, but whose performance in the final vote (the party won fewer seats than in
the last general election five years ago) did not echo their levels of
popularity, known as Cleggmania, during the campaign. The Liberal Democrats
have long argued for reform of the voting system, which they say favours the
most established parties.
Political campaigning
in the run-up to election day was so focused on women the press spoke of the
WAGs (wives and girlfriends) election. The wives of Labour leader Gordon Brown
and of Conservative leader David Cameron were everywhere to be seen, although
Clegg's wife chose to keep a lower profile.
The press also coined
the phrase the Mumsnet election, a reference to the high-profile British
parenting website, courted by the main political leaders as potentially
instrumental to triumph. "All the parties have decided that women are key
to electoral success, that the family will be a crucial issue ... and that the
internet is a vital campaign tool," wrote an article in 'The Times', ahead
of the May vote.
Perhaps it worked in
part, but the spirited women who engaged in debates on the Mumsnet website were
determined not to be stereotyped. "I dislike the attempt, in this
pre-election period with the 'Mumsnet election' and all of that to suggest
women are likely to vote en bloc," one of them wrote on the site. "Can
you imagine commentators asking how parties were going to court men? Of course
not because they are credited with being a diverse complex bunch with lots of
different kinds of motivations based on circumstances other than their
sex."
The point is women of
all backgrounds are as important as men in politics - neither more so nor less.
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