Vote for Women?
14 May 2009
Comment: We don't think we should make too much of this but out of the twelve parties standing for the EU elections in the North East, only two have women as their lead candidates.
Ten out of the total of 35 candidates are women, with just two parties having two women candidates. Only the Green Party has women - Shirley Ford and Iris Ryder - as both first and second candidates.
And nationally, the Green Party has women as lead candidates in five out of the ten regions. And that is without a quota or closed list system - the Greens obviously find that a woman is often ... errrmm ... the ‘best man for the job'.
Note too, that the Green Party is the only political party with a woman leader - though given the track record of woman leaders in other parties in the past, maybe we shouldn't make a big thing of that either.
Another point we should not make too much of is the difficulty some parties have apparently had in finding candidates who actually live in the North East. Something like eleven out of 35 candidates do not live in the region. Coincidentally, that's the same or slightly more than the number of women candidates.
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