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Underrepresentation of Women

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Underrepresentation of Women
Female MP's representation in the UK
Female MP's representation in the UK

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/

This chart shows a percentage of female in Parliament in the UK between 2005 and 2010. There is a big imbalance between man and women MP's. According to national statistics, while 51% of the UK population is female in 2010,only 22% of MPs in the Parliament were women.
The number of Conservatives women MP’s has grown from 9% in 2005 to 16% in 2010. In 2005 in his election speech David Cameron mentioned an increase of women in parliament. His promise was to transform the Conservative party and he introduced an A-List which aimed to have an equal numbers of men and women.1 These figures are still relatively low, even if the number of it’s women MPs more than doubled in 2010.2
Comparing the Conservatives Party to Liberal Democrats across same amount of time, we can see that the Liberal Democrats number fell from 15% in 2005 to 12% in 2010.The reason, it is a third party in the Parliament that has not much influence.3
It can be clearly seen that despite some re-balancing between the parties, Labour remains way ahead of the other parties. Labour party has increased by 3% since 2005, because of the shortlists, which helped to increase the number of female MPs in Parliament during general election.
In conclusion, we can see that in the 5 years there has been a very small increase of a number of women in Parliament. Government need to review and develop new ideas on how to improve.

1W. Woodward and T.Branigan, 'The A-list: new leader's drive for women and minority candidates', The Guardian, 19 April 2006 http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2006/apr/19/uk.conservatives

2Professor S. Childs, University of Bristol, ' Cameron's broken promises on women MPs mean quotas are essential’, The Telegraph, 06 November 2012 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-politics/9655735/Camerons-broken-promises-on-women-MPs-mean-quotas-are-essential.html 3M. Fealty,
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