Sayeeda Warsi, on the right, is one of the most prominent symbols of Cameron’s Tory revolution. Her picture on the steps of No 10, dressed in a salwar kameez, graced the pages of several papers after the government’s first cabinet meeting. As Britain’s first female Muslim cabinet minister she is evidence of the inclusiveness of big society Conservatism. However, you won’t find her in the House of Commons. Having failed to become an MP in the 2005 election, she was appointed two years later as the youngest life peer in the Lords. The move was taken as a tacit admission that her party was unlikely to find her a safe seat.
Warsi’s story encapsulates the dilemmas of those seeking more equal representation in politics. Many were frustrated both by the election results and David Cameron’s first cabinet. Female MPs have risen from 126 to 142, but that is still less than a quarter of the total. Only four cabinet ministers are women and Warsi is the only non-white. Black and ethnic minority MPs have almost doubled to 27, but at 4 per cent that’s still under half the proportion in the population. And an analysis by the Sutton Trust revealed that 35 per cent of MPs were privately educated, compared to 7 per cent of the nation. In short, parliament is still far from representative.
This matters, but not for the reasons often given. It is not, as Katharine Viner wrote in the Guardian days after the election, because “the millionaire who slashes away at public services can have no true understanding of the affect of the loss of those services on the single mother with nowhere else to go.” Such objections are common, but are also premised on a pernicious idea that weakens the case of many of those calling for greater representation: that in order to speak for a group, someone must be a member of that group. Muslims need Muslims in parliament to speak for them, women need women, and so on.
This is fundamentally incoherent. Why? For starters, identity doesn’t work that way. For example, a liberal, Anglican, black, privately-educated, female Labour MP is almost certainly going to represent my views better than a white, atheist, middle-class male Tory—even though the latter bears a much greater cultural resemblance to me. What matters to us politically cannot just be read off from our cultural identities. Worse, if someone did need to have my identity to speak for me, I’d likely be voiceless: there are almost certainly no sceptical-atheist-Anglo-Italian-non-partisan-liberal-ex-Catholic-university-educated-grammar-school-boy MPs.
As the political theorist Amartya Sen points out in his book Identity and Violence, our identities are multiple and overlapping. No one has exactly the same patchwork as anyone else. But perhaps the biggest danger of the kind of pluralism that seeks to tie representation closely to identity is that it emphasises the extent to which identity divides, rather than how citizenship should unite. If we think that we need people “like us” to represent us, we inevitably get a stronger sense of being different from those who are not like us.
Think of how this could have played out in Warsi’s attempts to be elected as an MP. If her constituents thought that it was important for people to be represented by people like them, then it would have been entirely rational to reject her. Indeed, there is not a constituency in the country where a female Muslim candidate is the most representative reflection of local Conservative party members. The dilemma is clear. If men and women, whites and ethnic minorities, Christians, humanists and Muslims, all need those with similar identities to speak for them, only those from the largest groups will get enough support to be elected. Good news for women, bad news for minorities.
For Warsi to have been selected, members would have to be convinced that she could represent their views, even though she had a different cultural identity from them. But if a Muslim woman can represent white men, what’s the problem with white, privately-educated men being over-represented? The answer is simple. The problem of representation is not one of individuals “speaking for” groups who share their same religious and cultural identities. Diversity should be aimed for not at the level of the individual, but at that of the whole. A parliament that draws on only a narrow range of its population deprives itself of the variety of viewpoints and interests contained within it.
This is not because certain individuals can only ever have insight into the lives of others with similar backgrounds, but because uniformity of experience in a group tends towards less breadth and depth of collective wisdom. We need more women, people from ethnic minorities, the state educated and the working class in parliament and government—not so they can speak for women, ethnic minorities and the working classes, but so that parliament can better speak for us all.
Lee Chalmers
I agree that the ‘representation argument’ in relation to the numbers of female MP’s is not particularly compelling. Neither is the ‘justice argument’ – that it’s not fair that there are not a similar balance of women in our parliament as there are in the general population. That may be true but is not terribly compelling for those who need to give up power to allow women to take it. Neither of these arguments are the ones that will make the difference to the ratio of female to male MP’s in the future.
What will make a difference is what you nod your head it in the very last paragraph, that we miss out on the best possible problem solving capacity if we do not include multiple perspectives. Add to this the fact that 60% of graduates in the US and Europe last year were female, that businesses that include women in their senior leadership teams perform significantly better than those that do not, and you end up with a compelling case for UK PLC having women in its senior leadership team. We simply cannot truthful claim that we are a meritocracy if 60% of our graduates are female but only 22% of our MP’s are women. We are missing out. We need women’s talents round the table if we are to be best equipped to face that challenges that the next few years will bring us.
Daniel Idowu
Very good, article.
I think people actually do not want equality and diversity, people generally want to use it as a stick to beat people with. Using the race/ gender card to achieve their narrow minded aims. That card is most definitely card is played out and makes people suspicious of the diversity ‘movement’.
Rob Slack
50% of the electorate are of below average intelligence. Do we want them represented in proportion?
I do not want to see a parliament that represents national demographics (for the sake of doing so). When in Rome, behave in a manner acceptable to the Romans and accept their ways must prevail.
Malcolm Whitmore
The article identifies a fundamental problem in how we make decisions concerning which team we support.
The election process in our so called democracy gives us very little idea about what our prospective candidates believe in. They cower under the cloak of their party manifesto and remain silent about matters in the manifesto they do not support.
To complement this deception we are blitzed by a media, driven by commercial pressure to make a profit above all,to concentrate on the celebrity and appearance details of the party leaders.The manifestos are not read,understood or debated to any relevant extent in the public arena.
The current coalition situation gives us a window of opportunity to open up the range of diverse views and expertise available in our Psrliament to enable the existing diversity to be used rather than suppressed by the old whipping system.It is not enough to increase diversity of members ,the diversity of views must be liberated.
annabelle lever
You do not have to believe that only poor single mothers can represent poor single mothers in order to accept Viner’s point. You merely need to suppose that someone who has no idea of what poverty is like – either from personal experience, or the experience of close friends, family and acquaintences – is likely have a rather different approach to economic cuts (and how to distribute them fairly across the country) than someone who has such experience directly or indirectly.
That seems like a perfectly sensible view, and consistent with Baggini’s own idea that there is merit to diversity of representation in Parliament. We would not lack anything in collective wisdom from our unrepresentative parliaments unless there was something to be said for the idea that people’s experience is, invariably, limited and those limits – despite our best efforts – can lead us to be ignorant, prejudiced and foolish.
Baggini’s interpretation of Viner’s views, then, seems uncharitable, because she no more has to hold a reductive and ridiculous theory of personal identity and its significance for political representation to make her arguments work than he does to support his own (seemingly similar) conclusion.
Siobhan McKenna
(% of the electorate are of below average intelligence. Do we want them represented in proportion?
by whose measure of intelligence, not the culturally, nationally and racial biased and outdated IQ method? terribly ignorant thing to say …. there are many different types of intelligence and no easy way of measuring it.
I don’t want 51% of women in parliament JUST because they are 51% of the population but I would like all women to have the opportunity to represent in parliament.
and nor do I agree with the author because his assumption is that women and minorities are starting from the same level playing field as the white Oxbridge boys who are running the show… I happen to think that group rights, group identities etc still play a role in our individual and collective identities… I am mixed-race-black Irish, a la carte catholic, (the equivalent of) public school educated, female – I would struggle find representation back in Ireland – I certainly don’t expect to find it here. however I do feel resonated when I see women and minorities in power.
we have more in common than separates us I believe but there are differences and they shouldn’t be glossed over because some people (the top 10% earners in this country and the Tory party) are happy with the status quo and see themselves represented in their parliament.
karamat iqbal
Equality and representation
It’s an excellent article which, especially in its final sentence, sums up the whole essence of the identity and representation debate. Through my many years of involvement in equality and diversity, I have seen clear parallels between politics and employment. In the latter, I have seen situations where the debate has come to an end once the numbers of previously under-represented employees has reached a significant level causing everyone around them to stop seeing them as ethnic minority, women etc and start to see them just like any other employee. I am rather hopeful that the same will happen in parliament, if not now then soon, as the numbers grow.
This issue has also been made interesting with the election of some of the ethnic minority MPs in areas where they will no doubt wish to minimise their race and ethnic identity and instead draw on the wider dimensions of who they are (ref Amartya Sen).
Jacqueline
I largely agree: incidentally, I deplore the reference on Warsi’s appointment to her being the ‘first Muslim woman’. Why this reference to religion? How many Methodist MPs are there?
However, I agree there is widespread confusion between representation and being representative. Presumably people who are no good at maths do not wish to choose an accountant on the basis that he is like them. I think there should be more females in parliament because it would indicate that people of ability are finding equal opportunities in life to use their talents. The wider benefit is that mixed sex groups are more productive that single sex ones: I have observed this running brainstorming groups, and it is well attested by research. But how I loathe condescending phrases like ‘woman’s angle/perspective’. Like Baggini, I often find my views or experience more closely accord with people very unlike me: I may look like a WASP on the outside…
Jacqueline
A response to Siobhan’s objection to the observation that ’50% of people are below average intelligence’. How it is measured is not the point: 50% of people are below average height.
Dan
This article was rather confused.
When people suggest that millionaires in government have no understanding of the affects their cuts will have, their focus is on material wealth, and not, as you suggest, on ‘identity’ (although the former undoubtedly shapes the latter).
The Conservative manifesto was plastered with the message that ‘we’re all in this together’, but it seems entirely relevant to reply: ‘yes, but some are more in this than others’.
The sight of David Cameron with his sleeves rolled up & talking of tough times ahead makes your stomach turn when you consider that he, and I dare say, every member of the House of Commons will remain essentially untouched by the cuts that are to be made.
This, I think, is the crux of the matter. And in addressing it, I think a plurality of voices will necessarily follow.
Honey
This ‘uniformity of experience’ that Baggini mentions is surely, as with all the other labels, an unnecessary reduction of the variabilities of society. There is no ‘uniform experience’ and it is unfair to tar any party with the brush of sweeping generalisations: just because the leaders of the dominant party in our country are primarily Oxbridge educated or public school boys, does not mean they have a uniform experience. I have been to state school, and bearing that rather lacklustre experience in mind: I would rather those making the decisions for our country had such a superior education.
My family were from a poor background, yet my father is now worth £500 per day to leading companies around the world – in these times he is treated as if this success is due to some intrinsic value in his upbringing; that he is a person to be envied, not admired.
The simple fact is, that people are often ruled by jealousy. They see the top people in government have had a privileged education, and earn money that they merely dream of: this makes them jealous, and the first thing they seize upon is the obvious difference between their two situations. This along with the ‘myth’ that people that are like oneself must represent one has become the driving force behind the media hype on ‘representation’.
The difficulty with ‘equality’ today is not that people are treated differently, but that people are unsatisfied with their own situations. It is a national trait in this country to put down those who are successful, in favour of those who are disadvantaged. It is seen as ‘non-pc’ to praise excellence over pure dogged determination. Why should this be? Nobody expects to work for their successes: the legacy of a welfare state is that everybody expects someone else to look after their own interests – a trait which only ever works if someone is willing to take on that massive responsibility.
I left school at sixteen, lived alone and disadvantaged in hostels until I earned my own flat. Now I’m at University studying English Literature: a Labour government would call me ‘privileged’ – I say: ‘how?’.
KIMBLE_PERRY
In essence I agree with the article’s premise but I am not sure it is soundly represented. Mr Baggini sounds like he should logically hold up the lantern of Enlightenment again, and allow that the House of Enlightened (well educated) Lords is able to represent the poor muted elements within UK constituency.
The logic behind trying to appeal through identity to a group with a limited voice as a restriction of voter base makes sense. This also is a reason behind the growing desire for proportional voting system. I also now have an idea of why ‘Feminism’ is the catch-all category name for a line of thought and action which, when supporting women, is also able to support many fractionalized minority groups at the same time, precisely through the overlapping identities inherent to people.
“But if a Muslim woman can represent white men, what’s the problem with white, privately-educated men being over-represented? The answer is simple. The problem of representation is not one of individuals “speaking for” groups who share their same religious and cultural identities. Diversity should be aimed for not at the level of the individual, but at that of the whole. A parliament that draws on only a narrow range of its population deprives itself of the variety of viewpoints and interests contained within it.”
So, the government as “a whole” aquires (somehow) the ‘diverse’ (identity again) to represent the complexity of the citizen base. How does the government do that without proportional voting?
I agree that we need to empathize more and that pluralism NEEDS bifocal lenses: diversity and its needs together with a focus on what creates cohesion and weave of our societal fabric. Balancing the reality of the individual and the group. Let’s make worth everybody’s while to attempt cohesion. Policies created through dialogue with all elements though time consuming have proven to last longer.
Peter Silverton
i found the arguments compelling and thoughtful – still, as a sceptical-atheist-Anglo-Irish-non-partisan-liberal-ex-Catholic-university-educated-grammar-school-boy (and broadly typical of the sort), i suppose i would, wouldn’t i
http://petersilverton.blogspot.com/
Lisa
I would just like to say that this article prompted a really fascinating discussion with my French students, preparing to get into fancy Oxbridge-equivalent universities. Thank you for being thought-provoking.