Why so few working-class women? A comparative case of British and Scottish Elections

In the UK, less than three percent of members of parliament (MPs), and none of those newly elected in the 2017 and 2019 elections, have a genuine working-class background, which unfavourably compares to the 34 percent of the British population with a working-class background.

At the same time, while women are still underrepresented in politics their share of MPs has been constantly rising, constituting now 34% of all MPs compared to 3% in 1979. Nonetheless, the significant changes in the socio-economic profiles of elected politicians have mostly gone unnoticed. These changes have resulted in a fundamental shift in political representation.

Though politicians never closely mirrored society, over time there is even less resemblance between political assemblies and society in socio-economic terms. This project will explore gender and class inequalities within representative institutions in the UK and Scotland. To do this, the project will first, provide a new theory on the intersection of gender and social class.

How should we best conceptualise and measure women candidates' social class? Second, the project will analyse and code data on Westminster candidates from 1974 to 2015.

These data, which include information on candidates' education and profession, have been collected by professors Rosie Campbell and Jennifer Hudson and shared with Dr Alexiadou.

This analysis will be the first time we will record temporal changes in the numbers of top candidates and British MPs in terms of both their gender and social class.

To this day, there is no report of the socio-economic backgrounds over time of the men and women that run for office and/or have entered parliament.

Finally, the project will be the first to collect data for the latest election in Scotland on the top candidates and MSPs in the latest Scottish elections, in terms of both their gender and social class.

Much of what we understand about democratic political representation stems from a premise that voters have greater faith their personal interests will be represented when those representing them have some shared or similar life experiences.

We know women are less likely in general to run for office, further those from working class backgrounds face challenges like a lack of financial resources and social networks when wishing to enter politics.

Further, political parties do not appear to value diverse class backgrounds for their candidates or MPs, instead focusing on individual eloquence.

As a collaborative project, partnered with Elect Her CIC (Non-profit, Community Interest Company) whose daily focus is on increasing the number of women political candidates, this project will afford a student the opportunity to investigate both the theory and lived experiences of how gender and social class limit the diversity of political candidates in the UK and Scottish parliaments.

This combined theory and real life experience to explore the compounding effect of gender and social class is new terrain in the social sciences.

Finally, this collaborative partnership will aid steps Elect Her is undertaking to conceptualise how issues stemming from social class can be tackled to encourage a more representative and economically diverse pool of political candidates.