Gender and politics

Guest blog by MP Katalin Ertsey

On a sunny August afternoon I received a phone call from the British Embassy asking if I would be able to attend an important gender politics conference in November. I was thrilled and humbled to find out that the Embassy would nominate me to represent the Hungarian Parliament at the International Parliamentary Conference on Gender and Politics.

As the most active MP on gender issues I was proud to accept the invitation. On November 5th I arrived in London to find that my hotel was right next to the London Eye and just opposite Portcullis House and the Palace of Westminster, the venues of the conference. What a great way to start a working day: walking over the bridge in the sun. Next morning I found myself in the middle of a beautifully diverse group of women MPs from all around the world: each national parliament was represented by one female MP, so I had the chance to network and learn from politicians from about 60 countries. The organization was smooth and professional, the local staff moved around such a large and diverse group with invisible effort.

You can find all the information about the conference on the website, so I would rather share my personal impressions and highlight the most important messages that I take away from this conference. But it is really important to note that the cream of the cream was present from Westminster: we had the privilege to listen to a lively, fun and brave speech by the speaker of the House of Commons, the Rt Hon John Bercow MP. He proudly described his battle over finding a venue for a child care room in a 500 year old British Parliament which eventually happened under his leadership. I asked him if he was willing to talk about these efforts at the regular speakers’ conference to influence and inspire other speakers. He happily agreed to make family friendly parliament one of the focus topics of the next G8 speakers’ summit hosted by him in London in 2013. I wish I could arrange a meeting on this topic between him and our speaker.

We listened to a panel including two outstanding speakers, the Rt Hon. Baroness Williams of Crosby, Former Minister, Former Leader of the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords and Jane Martinson, The Guardian Women’s Editor who were talking about the sad state of journalism and the stereotypical representation of women in the media.

I am always amazed at how similar and how different our struggles are wherever we work. Women still only make up about 20% of representatives on average in the world. We debate about quotas or other means to promote women, but the situation has hardly changed; a 6% increase in 10 years could not be called a success. I was particularly interested to find out how the number of female MPs can be raised in such a unique and rigid election system as the one in the UK. We had a chance to listen to probably the best gender politics researcher in the UK, Sarah Childs from Bristol University. I especially liked her approach of talking about overrepresentation of men, instead of the underrepresentation of women. I asked her if she would agree that the reasons for the lack of women in various parliaments are highly diverse: cultural, political, electoral, etc. while the reasons for overrepresentation of men seems to be very similar or the same: male dominance. She said at first glance she would tend to agree but further research is needed on that.

I could go on for hours about the lively discussions and fun social events of the conference but let me just thank the Embassy here for their invitation and make a public promise to convey the conference’s message to my fellow parliamentarians.