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David Cutts, Sarah Childs
and Edward Fieldhouse, "'This Is What Happens When You Don't
Listen': All-Women Shortlists at the 2005 General Election,"
Party Politics, 14 (September, 2008),
575-595.
First paragraph:
A record 128 women were elected to the House of Commons at
the 2005 general election; a rise of 10 from 2001. Women now
constitute an unprecedented 20 percent of all MPs. This
headline figure hides the distribution of women between the
parties, however: 98 are Labour, 17 are Conservative and 10
are Liberal Democrats, while two main Unionist parties and
Sinn Fein have one each. Fully 27.5 percent of the
Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) are women, but women
constitute only 16.1 percent of Liberal Democrat MPs and a
mere 8.6 percent of Conservative MPs.
- Figures and
Tables:
- Table 1. All-Women Shortlist seats 2005 (England and
Wales)
- Table 2. All-Women Shortlist seats lost in 2005
(England and Wales)
- Table 3. Labour performance in incumbent seats in
2005 (England and Wales only)
- Table 4. Socio-economic variables: principal
components analysis varimax-rotated component
loadings
- Table 5. Impact of candidate sex on Labour support in
2005 (Labour incumbent seats only)
- Table 6. Impact of new candidates on Labour support
in 2005 (Labour incumbent seats only)
- Table 7. An alternative model: the impact of sex, AWS
and incumbent candidates on Labour support in 2005
- Table 8. Comparing new candidate effect and new
candidate sex effect models on Labour support in
2005
First paragraph of
Conclusion:
Labour's high profile debacle in Blaenau Gwent exposed its
policy of AWS to intense media scrutiny. The loss of a
further six seats where the party put up AWS candidates gave
the impression that Labour had suffered a widespread AWS
backlash. Here we show, however, that Blaenau Gwent was an
exceptional case. In reality, there was no significant AWS
effect in 2005. The perceived AWS effect had nothing to do
with candidate sex or being an AWS candidate and everything
to do with being a new candidate. We also cannot
differentiate between an AWS effect and a new candidate sex
effect, although this did not matter given that neither had
a significant impact on Labour performance in
2005.
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