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The Electoral Costs of Being a Woman in the 1979 British General Election

1983; City University of New York; Volume: 15; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/421853

2151-6227

Jørgen Rasmussen,

Gender Politics and Representation

In responses made in opinion polls conducted in the 1950s and the 1960s, the overwhelming majority of the British electorate claimed that they did not object to voting for women candidates for the House of Commons, that they would vote for the parties they usually supported regardless of the candidates' gender.' A poll conducted during the 1979 general election, however, found that four times as many respondents (44 to 11 percent) admitted preferring a man to a woman as a member of Parliament (MP), although two-fifths said gender made no difference to them.2 It is apparent that public attitudes in Britain have shifted against an equal political role for women or that respondents have become more honest than they used to be. Although the Conservative party's 1979 victory made Britain the first Western nation to have its government headed by a woman, women have hardly made significant political gains in Britain. In 1979 the number of women elected to the House of Commons dropped to its lowest level in twentyeight years: the number of women MPs was only four greater than it had been in 1931. Furthermore, slightly more than a year before the 1979 election, only 59 percent of the women polled said that they would like to see a woman as prime minister, whereas 31 percent said that they would not.3 Perhaps the electorate's views of the political role of women are inconsistent; perhaps their replies to questions dealing with basic values raise some emotions and are therefore not absolutely truthful.4 Research is needed to ascertain how British voters actually behave at polling stations when women appear on the ballot. The role of female candidates in British national elections has received only limited attention. The coverage in the 1979 Nuffield study is not atypical.5 The index to that book includes only a one-page citation of women candidates; the forty-one-page appendix by John Curtice and Michael Steed, which contains a detailed analysis of the results of the 1979 election, encompasses no reference to women candidates. A few studies that have attempted to assess the electoral impact of women candidates have, for the most part, been onevariable analyses.6 The results achieved by women candidates tend to be attrib-