Speech of Mrs Jones (Soc.) at the Plenary Session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, 1999

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 650.

Text 4.1

President (as interpreted by the female interpreter in the English booth): I now give the floor to Mrs Jones from the United Kingdom and she will be speaking on behalf of the Socialist Group.

Mrs Jones, you have the floor.

Mrs. Jones:Thank you, Mr President.

The underrepresentation of women in political life should be of great concern to everybody in this Assembly. After all, the Council of Europe was set up, amongst other things to promote democracy. I would first of all like to start off by congratulating Mr Staes on his comprehensive and excellent report. It is a report, which the Socialist Group welcomes and broadly supports. Report rightly highlights the barriers which women face when they are entering political life. And there's ample evidence for this. And the Rapporteur in his introduction spoke about the many conferences and seminars and debates that we have. As we know, it's the structure of political parties, the conventions within Parliaments. But also it is the restraints and constraints of domestic and personal life where women are still expected to do the majority of the caring for dependent relatives. And myself – it took me twenty years to enter Parliament in the United Kingdom and I personally think we certainly need equality in political life, but, perhaps, we could with a little bit of parity at home as well.I think the argument is no longer whether women are capable of holding down jobs in political life. Of course, we are! We have demonstrated that. So if you want that argument is down and out of the way, the issue is how do we now overcome these barriers? Report makes it clear that we do need to adopt measures that need to be put in place. Parityisnot gonna happen just by magic. And, I think, there is a historical lesson here, which we need to remember.

In most established western democracies women did not get the vote by accident. Men didn't suddenly wake up one morning in 1918 in the United Kingdom and say: “Goodness! We've forgotten to give women the vote”. Women got the vote in the United Kingdom at the turn of the century because of our long heartfelt campaign. And it's been that way in most democracies and there's a lesson to be learnt here. We are only going to get equal representation in political life if we campaign and work at it.

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