Introducing Democracy Loves Diversity: 7pm, Tuesday 24th May!
Proportional Representation isn’t just about counting votes. Evidence suggests that PR actively improves societies, with healthier democracies, more stable policymaking, and better action on existential issues like climate justice and inequality.
Democracy Loves Diversity is the latest event in Make Votes Matter’s Democracy Loves series, designed to showcase how we can use PR to build a better society. In this event, we will highlight how parliaments elected by PR look more like the people they represent. Legislatures elected under proportional systems have a better gender balance, are more ethnically diverse, and are younger, than their equivalents under First Past the Post.
MPs in the UK are still whiter, older, more middle class, and more likely to be a man, than our population as a whole. As we work to eliminate inequalities in all dimensions, having a Parliament that looks more like our population is a crucial step.
The event will be at 7pm on Tuesday 24th May. You can sign up to the event on this link.
The facts:
The evidence is overwhelming that legislatures elected under Proportional Representation look more like the countries they represent than those elected under First Past the Post.
Age: According to a report by the Inter-Parliamentary Union, parliaments elected under Proportional Representation had twice the number of members under-30 as those elected under First Past the Post, and were on average 2.1 years younger. The reason which they attributed this to were safe seats:
“In first-past-the-post systems, younger candidates are sometimes selected for ‘unwinnable’ constituency seats, where the party stands little to no chance of victory. Some young MPs characterize this variously as a ‘training exercise’, a ‘test of mettle’ or a ‘try-out’. They therefore stand less chance of being elected than their older, more established fellow party members.”
Gender: Every country where more than 40% of their elected representatives are women uses a form of Proportional Representation. A report by the Inter-Parliamentary Union also found that, in 2021, 29.4% of candidates elected in proportional systems were women, in comparison to 26.8% of candidates in majoritarian systems.
Ethnic minorities: There is little compelling research yet on the impact on electoral systems and the representation of ethnic minorities. However, two-party systems have an inherent bias towards less diverse candidate fields, and First Past the Post has typically favoured these two-party systems (Milazzo, Moser, and Scheiner, 2018).
The evidence also shows that PR systems in the UK encourage greater diversity of candidates. In 2019, the Labour Party only selected 6 BAME candidates in its top 99 target seats, while 26 percent of its candidates for the European Parliamentary elections of the same year came from a BAME background.
The panel:
Speaking about this further will be our cross-party panel, representing a broad intersection of British politics:
Shaista Aziz, Labour Party councillor for Oxford City Council, journalist and comedian.
Dr Hannah Barham-Brown, Deputy Leader of the Women's Equality Party.
Hina Bokhari, Liberal Democrat Member of the London Assembly.
Dr Maria Iacovou (chair), Professor in Quantitative Sociology at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge
Femi Oluwole, Political commentator
Amelia Womack, Deputy Leader of the Green Party of England and Wales
The event:
The event will start at 7pm on Tuesday 24th May. There will be time for an audience Q&A at the end.