Election 2010

21% of candidates standing in the general election are women - find out which parties have done well and which not so well in our new report, which you can download using the link below.

Where the Women Candidates Are (pdf)

You can also download our  analysis of how many women will get elected to Parliament in 2010.

Throughout the run-up to and the period of the forthcoming general election, CFWD will be monitoring how women are doing. We will be looking at how many women are standing as candidates - for all the parties and none -, how many are standing in seats they can have a reasonable hope of winning, what the parties are doing to encourage and support women, and much more. We will also be looking at the culture of the election, how the media report women in it, and at the outcomes.

To follow issues around candidates, go to the Candidate Watch section of the website.

On 10 March 2010, we published the first of a series of papers predicting what parliament will look like in terms of gender breakdown after the election. We think that there will be no more than a 5% increase in women, and that that will mostly be made up of a small increase in Labour women and a rather larger increase in Conservative women MPs. This means that the next House of Commons will be about 24% female - still behind almost all of our European neighbours (Italy at 21% will fall behind us and Ireland on 14% will remain at the bottom of the table) and well short of the 'critical mass' level of 30%.

What's more, it seems as though it will take more than 50 years to get to 50% if the present rate of change is maintained.

This original report has now (20 April 2010) been updated to take account of new polls and the Liberal Democrat 'surge', although the outcomes predicted are very little different.

Projections for Women MPs Update (April 2010) PDF