Ellie Cumbo on the rise of Britain’s female leaders: In the UK there is a sudden shift in the visibility of senior women politicians – a movement prompted by various developments in the substance and the style of British politics. In a country where women’s political representation remains among the worst in Europe – 25 years after its first and only female Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, left office – that’s certainly a trend worth watching.
But on April 2 this year, in an event broadcast on the United Kingdom’s major commercial channel, ITV, seven leaders strode out to claim their share of the airtime – and three of them were women. Two weeks later, in the BBC’s “challengers’ debate” held among the five parties not presently in government, these three women outnumbered the men for one historic moment.
In the intervening five years, change has been effected as much by the extraordinary state of UK politics as by the qualities of the women concerned. The reality of coalition government itself has had an impact:
Longstanding dissatisfaction about the convergence of the main parties at the political center has fueled the rise of more radical alternatives on both ends of the spectrum: on the right, the UK Independence Party, led by Nigel Farage, and on the left, the Green Party, led by Natalie Bennett, who is the only female leader of a UK-wide political party.
But the most recent and explosive change of all was last year’s referendum on Scottish independence, which saw support for the Scottish National Party rocket upward, with mortifying results expected to ensue for UK-wide parties at the upcoming polls Scotch Labor leader, Nicola Sturgeon, is generally acknowledged to have put in a formidable performance – a revelation only to those south of the border. Sturgeon has since been labeled both as a kingmaker who will decide whether or not to push a liberal-left coalition between Labour and the Liberal Democrats over the line.
Leanne Wood of Wales’ Plaid Cymru. The Welsh party has more seats in Parliament than UKIP and the Greens, yet Plaid Cymru had long been treated as a political irrelevance by the United Kingdom’s notoriously London-centered media.
Of course, a few over-egged headlines and some decent YouTube ratings do little to alter the fact that none of these women has the slightest chance of becoming prime minister in an electoral system which will favor the two major parties for the foreseeable future. But change may also be in store from that direction before too long.
