Notes
For the evolution of the number of women MPs until 1997, see Martine Spensky (ed.), Les Femmes à la conquête du pouvoir politique : Royaume-Uni, Irlande, Inde, Paris : L’Harmattan, 2001, 36.
Judith Squires & Mark Wickham-Jones, “Mainstreaming in Westminster and Whitehall : From Labour’s Ministry for Women to the Women and Equality Unit”, Parliamentary Affairs, vol. 55, n°1, 2002, 59 : <www.pa.oxfordjournals.org/content/55/1/57.full.pdf>, accessed 3 May 2011.
Gabriele Griffin (ed.), Feminist Activism in the 1990s, London : Taylor and Francis, 1995, 182.
Fiona MacKay, “The State of Women’s Movements in Britain”, in Sandra Grey & Marian Sawer (eds.), Women’s Movements: Flourishing or in Abeyance ?, London : Routledge, 2008, 30.
<www.wrc.org.uk/about_us/faqs.aspx>, accessed 12 February 2011. Dorothy McBride Stetson & Amy Mazur (eds.), Comparative State Feminism, London : Sage Publications, 1995, 127. Three main databases list those groups according to their status : DANGO for NGOs (www.dango.bham.ac.uk), the Charity Commission (www.charity-commission.gov.uk) and the Directory of Pressure Groups and Representative Associations (published regularly by CBD Research).
For a precise classification of all women’s organisations, see Jane Grant, “The Use and Abuse of Power in the Autonomous Women’s Movement”, in Karen Atkinson, Sarah Oerton & Gill Plain (eds.), Feminisms on the Edge : Politics, Discourses and National Identities, Cardiff : Cardiff Academic Press, 2000 : <www.britishcouncil.org/china-society-publication-lawandgovernance-2002-en.pdf>, accessed 11 March 2011.
For definitions of those terms, see Geoffrey Alderman, Pressure Groups and Government in Britain, London : Longman, 1984, 5 ; Wyn Grant, Pressure Groups, Politics and Democracy in Britain, New York : Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1995, 3-4 ; Darren Halpin, “NGOs and Democratisation : Assessing Variation in the International Democratic Practices of NGOs”, in Nick Crowson, Matthew Hilton & James MacKay (eds.), NGOs in Contemporary Britain : Non-State Actors in Society and Politics since 1945, London : Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, 264.
For this opposition, see for example Jacqui True, “Gender Specialists and Global Governance”, in Sandra Grey & Marian Sawer (eds.), Women’s Movements : Flourishing or in Abeyance ?, op. cit., 92 ; Alex Warwick & Rosemary Auchmuty, “Women’s Studies as Feminist Activism” in Gabriele Griffin (ed.), Feminist Activism in the 1990s, op. cit., 183. Drude Dahlerup, The New Women’s Movement : Feminism and Political Power in Europe and the USA, London : Sage Publications, 1986, 7-8.
The Primrose League and later the Women’s Amalgamated Unionist and Tariff Reform Association, the predecessors of the Conservative Women’s Organisation, “wanted it clearly understood that they were not there to campaign for more women in parliament but simply to advise the party on women’s questions”, G. E. Maguire, Conservative Women : A History of Women and the Conservative Party, 1874-1997, London : Macmillan Press in association with St Anthony’s College, Oxford, 1998, 80.
<http://rnp.conservativeassociation.org/about/>, accessed 28 April 2011.
Miki Caul Kittilson, Challenging Parties, Changing Parliament: Women and Elected Office in Contemporary Western Europe, Columbus : Ohio State University Press, 2006, 73.
<gwww.labour.org.uk/the_role_of_a_women_s_forum>, accessed 14 March 2011.
Miki Caul Kittilson, Challenging Parties, Changing Parliament : Women and Elected Office in Contemporary Western Europe, op. cit., 78.
Joyce Gould, Women’s Organisations in the Labour Party, London : Labour Party Publications, 1982, 1.
Roxana Cimpeanu, Questionnaire, 11 April 2011.
<www.womenlibdems.org.uk/en/document>, accessed 28 April 2011.
<www.women2win.com/support.asp>, accessed 28 April 2011. The group has met with opposition from within the party itself and from some of the party’s most senior women MPs such as Ann Widdecombe.
Lisa Young, “Feminizing British Political Parties”, in Sarah Child, Women and British Party Politics : Descriptive, Substantive and Symbolic Representation, London : Routledge, 2008, 34.
<www.labourwomensnetwork.org.uk/LabourWomenMPsHistoric.html>, accessed 28 April 2011.
<http://lead4women.wordpress.com>, accessed 28 April 2011.
Roxana Cimpeanu, Questionnaire, 11 April 2011.
Hugh Butcher, Patricia Collis, Andrew Glen & Patrick Sills, Community Groups in Action : Case Studies and Analysis, London : Routledge, 1980, 154.
It was created in 1944 by an independent MP, Stephen King Hall, and has 1,650 members : Virginia Gibbons, Questionnaire, 19 January 2011.
It was created in 2007 from the merger of Charter 88 and the New Politics Network : <www.unlockdemocracy.org.uk/>, accessed 28 April 2011.
NGO founded in 1884 by Liberal MP Sir John Lubbock. “First-Past-the-Post lets down female candidates with the huge advantages it hands to incumbents, and by affording so few opportunities to break into national politics. It lets down women voters and constituents by limiting their choices and fostering a negative, aggressive political culture.” <http://electoral-reform.org.uk/article.php?id=35>, accessed 10 March 2011.
Created in 2003, it has a blog and is present on Facebook and Yahoo: <www.thinkingwomen.blogspot.com/2003_11_09_archive.html>, accessed 10 March 2011.
It was founded in 2002 as an academic research centre, based in the School of Politics, International Studies and Philosophy in Queen’s University Belfast : <www.qub.ac.uk/cawp/research.html>, accessed 12 March 2011.
It was created in 2005 as an independent think tank and research centre, School of Public Policy, University College, London : <www.ucl.ac.uk/constitution-unit/>, accessed 10 March 2011.
It was created in 1866 under the name of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies by Millicent Garrett Fawcett to win the vote for women. According to Sally Campbell, the Society has around 9,000 supporters, 3,200 of whom subscribe as members with a monthly donation, Questionnaire, 17 February 2011.
Lisa Young, “Feminizing British Political Parties”, in Sarah Child, Women and British Party Politics : Descriptive, Substantive and Symbolic Representation, op. cit., 44. Joni Lovenduski (ed.), State Feminism and Political Representation, Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2005, 234.
Set up by Nan Sloane in 2006 : <www.cfwd.org.uk/about>, accessed 12 March 2011.
Created in 2009, it is a small group without membership but with a database of contacts of 300 women and up to 1,000 hits a month on its website : Caroline Watson, co-founder of Progressive Women, Questionnaire, 24 January 2011.
Launched in 2005 : <www.fabianwomen.co.uk/about>, accessed 11 March 2011.
Created in 1993 by Barbara Follett, it is modeled after its American counterpart. The name is an acronym of Early Money Is Like Yeast : <www.emilyslist.org.uk/index.html>, accessed 9 March 2011.
Sandra Grey & Marian Sawer (eds.), Women’s Movements : Flourishing or in Abeyance ?, op. cit., xv.
For a complete description of all the tactics used by women’s movements, see Ann Phillipps, Feminism and Politics, Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1998, 176-178.
The others are the “campaign strategy” and the “coercive strategy”, Hugh Butcher, Patricia Collis, Andrew Glen & Patrick Sills, Community Groups in Action : Case Studies and Analysis, op. cit., 146-147. For a complete list of the different ways pressure groups can use Parliament, see Wyn Grant, Pressure Groups, Politics and Democracy in Britain, op. cit., 83.
Yvonne Gilligan, Questionnaire, 21 January 2011.
<www.qub.ac.uk/cawp>, accessed 12 March 2011. Yvonne Galligan, Questionnaire, 21 January 2011.
<www.cfwd.org.uk/about>, accessed 12 March 2011.
For example, Women at the Top 2005 : Changing Numbers, Changing Politics ?, Sarah Child, Joni Lovenduski & Rosie Campbell, 2005 : <www.hansardsociety.org.uk/blogs/publications/archive/2007/10/01/Women-at-the-Top-2005.aspx>, accessed 3 May 2011.
<www.hansardsociety.org.uk/blogs/Parliament_and_Government/>, accessed 10 March 2011. <www.unlockdemocracy.org.uk/?page_id=913>, accessed 9 March 2011.
<www.ucl.ac.uk/spp/publications/unit-publications/60.pdf>, <www.ucl.ac.uk/spp/publications/unit-publications/79.pdf>, accessed 11 March 2011.
<www.fawcettsociety.org.uk/index.asp?PageID=1207>, accessed 14 March 2011.
<www.number10.gov.uk/Page22337>, accessed 3 February 2010.
Only five Speakers’ Conferences have taken place since the beginning of the 20th century, all of them dealing with elections : <www.parliament.uk/about/mps-and-lords/principal/speaker/speakers-conference>, accessed 12 May 2011.
For Dorothy McBride, in several countries “the most striking consequence of twenty five years of women’s movement activism has been the array of institutional arrangements inside democratic states devoted to women’s policy questions. Such a widespread change in institutions has the potential of turning the state into an activist on behalf of feminist goals, embedding gender issues in national policy agendas and giving advocates for the advancement of women permanent access to arenas of power”, Dorothy McBride Stetson, Comparative State Feminism, op. cit., 1.
Judith Squires & Mark Wickham-Jones, “Mainstreaming in Westminster and Whitehall : From Labour’s Ministry for Women to the Women and Equality Unit”, op. cit., 82.
Ibid., 59.
<www.equalities.gov.uk/about_geo.aspx>, accessed 31 March 2011.
<www.fabianwomen.co.uk/about/>, accessed 11 March 2011.
<www.cfwd.org.uk/about>, accessed 12 March 2011.
Roxana Cimpeanu, Questionnaire, 11 April 2011.
50 % of the places are reserved for women, ibid.
Set up in 2004 : <www.qub.ac.uk/cawp>, accessed 12 March 2011.
Launched at the Labour Movement’s International Women’s Day Conference on 5 March 2011, it is being tested in 2011 : <www.fabianwomen.co.uk/fabian-women-mentoring-scheme>, accessed 11 March 2011.
Joni Lovenduski (ed.), State Feminism and Political Representation, op. cit., 234. For the different uses of the media by pressure groups, see Wyn Grant, Pressure Groups, Politics and Democracy in Britain, op. cit., 86.
Britain has never had a women’s party, the only example of a party focused on women’s interests is the Women’s Coalition in Northern Ireland. Founded in 1996, it gained two seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly in 1998 but lost them in 2003. It was officially dissolved in May 2006.
Sally Campbell, Questionnaire, 17 February 2011.
Yvonne Gilligan, Questionnaire, 21 January 2011.
<www.cfwd.org.uk/news/18/61/Speaker-s-Conference-accepts-CFWD-recommendations>, accessed 12 March 2011.
<www.women2win.com/support.asp>, accessed 12 May 2011.
Roxana Cimpeanu, Questionnaire, 11 April 2011.
To be registered as a charity, organisations should be independent from political parties and have public benefit as a priority. The Society “do[es] not take a line” even if it “judge[s] the methods used by the Scottish Parliament and the National Assembly for Wales to be successful examples” : Virginia Gibbons, Questionnaire, 19 January 2011.
Ibid.
<www.hansardsociety.org.uk/blogs/press_releases/archive/2008/06/30/2008-women-and-the-vote-30-june-2008.aspx>, accessed 10 March 2011.
Joni Lovenduski (ed.), State Feminism and Political Representation, op. cit., 4.
Fiona MacKay, “The State of Women’s movements in Britain”, in Sandra Grey & Marian Sawer (eds.), Women’s Movements : Flourishing or in Abeyance ?, op. cit., 22.
<www.fawcettsociety.org.uk/index.asp?PageID=1032>, accessed 14 March 2011.
<www.votefordemocracy.org.uk/themes.php?t=5>, accessed 9 March 2011.
Drude Dahlerup, The New Women’s Movement : Feminism and Political Power in Europe and the USA, op. cit., 16.
Referendum on the Alternative Vote (AV) held on 5th May 2011 ; Against : 67.9 %, For : 32.1 %.
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