Somewhere in the dusty archives of back copies of Tribune, there is an article that I wrote with Patricia Hewitt back in the 1970s calling for greater representation of women in the Labour Party. One of our demands was that we should have a leadership team of three – at least one of whom should be a woman.
For 89 years, we have had a leader and deputy leader. For 84 of those years, both leader and deputy have been men. Out of 30 leaders and deputies, there have only been two women – first Margaret Beckett and now me.
Some say it doesn’t matter whether the party leaders are men or women – it’s just a question of competence and political leadership. I do think it matters for us not to have a men-only leadership. Despite the huge progress we’ve made in the past 20 years and despite the fact that we have more women MPs than all the other parties put together, women are still under-represented at all levels in the party. Labour is the party of equality. Labour should be a team – of men and women working together on equal terms and making progressive decisions on behalf of men and women in this country.
What message does it send to women in this country if the two people at the top of the Labour party are both men? The reality is that women and men still lead different lives. There remains a marked division of labour in the home – with women still taking the lion’s share of responsibility for caring for children and older relatives. For all the progress that women have made at work, men still earn 22 per cent more than women. Even though we have used all-women shortlists for parliamentary elections, men in the Parliamentary Labour Party still outnumber women three to one. So more progress is necessary.
Some argue that we don’t need a specific rule to ensure a woman in the leadership because the party has now moved so far on equality that there will always be a woman in the leadership in the future. I wish that were the case. Women play a vital role throughout our party, but I believe that, despite the progress over the years, the default position is still two men at the top. Were we to revert to that it would be – and would be seen as – a big step backwards.
We now have the opportunity of the party’s organisational review – which Ed Miliband has asked Peter Hain to lead – to make proposals on ensuring a woman in Labour’s leadership. Peter Hain will be issuing a Labour Party consultation document next month and decisions will be made at our conference in September.
My suggestion is that at the conference we agree in principle that we must have a woman in the leadership. Once endorsed in principle, it could be implemented in a number of different ways. We could have a leadership team of three with at least one woman. Or we could have a leadership team of two elected as a joint ticket of a leader and deputy – at least one woman. The many options for the specific mechanism could be researched and consulted on.
Nearly 40 years on from my first Tribune article on this and on the centenary of International Women’s Day, let now be the time to make sure that we have a 21st century leadership team – a man and a woman working together.
Harriet Harman is deputy leader of the Labour Party, Shadow Secretary for International Development and MP for Peckham
