User request: new voting section on gender equality

[MyfanwyNixon]

including gender equality and feminist objectives in your analysis of MP voting patterns, alongside other categories of key issues. In honour of Nancy Astor and transparency towards closing the gender power gap in my lifetime!

The obvious one that springs to mind is the equality bill requiring companies over a certain size to publish an audit to show any gender pay gap.

[RichardTaylor]

How members of Parliament have voted on "Equality and Human Rights" (including gender equality) is tracked at eg. https://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/10115/kenneth_clarke/rushcliffe/divisions?policy=6703

The more specific subset of "Gay rights" is shown separately, eg. https://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/10115/kenneth_clarke/rushcliffe/divisions?policy=826

if there were sufficient votes to justify it "Gender equality" could similarly be shown separately.

requiring companies over a certain size to publish an audit to show any gender pay gap.

When that proposal came before MPs in 2017 it was agreed without a division https://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2017-01-30b.782.7

The Equality Bill was considered in 2009 - before all votes were comprehensively described on PublicWhip. In light of this prompt I've added three Equality Bill votes to the Human Rights and Equality policy at https://www.publicwhip.org.uk/policy.php?id=6703

[RichardTaylor]

Mothers' Names on Marriage and Civil Partnership Registration Certificates

It's been suggested that we should take into account the Marriage and Civil Partnership Registration (Mothers' Names) Bill 2015-16.

There were no votes on that Bill, it was introduced but went no further https://services.parliament.uk/Bills/2015-16/marriageandcivilpartnershipregistrationmothersnames/stages.html https://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2015-11-04a.995.1

A Parliamentary briefing note on the subject points to other Bills but no vote on the issue https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-library/Mothers-details-on-marriage-certificates-CBP-7516.pdf

Not all Bills have votes on them; sometimes there are votes on a particular amendment(s) to a Bill but not on the Bill as a whole.

MPs' voting records shown on TheyWorkForYou are only based on formal recorded votes in Parliament - we don't currently take into account when motions are accepted or rejected without such a recorded vote. We have a thread on noting decisions taken without a vote at https://github.com/mysociety/theyworkforyou/issues/629

Budgets and Gender Equality

It has been suggested we could analyse budgets to determine their impact on gender equality When deciding if to take a vote into account when making a statement on an MP's record voting on particular matter the question we ask is if, and how, would an MP only concerned about that matter have voted in each vote. You could try to take that approach with votes on a budget, or on tax and benefit matters.

To-date we've covered stances where the position is more clear cut than it would be if we were asking eg. if a particular budget resulted in greater gender equality or not.

The House of Commons library has published a report dated December 2017 titled: "Estimating the gender impact of tax and benefits changes" which discusses the challenges determining gender inequalities in the impact of tax and benefit changes https://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/SN06758 Full Fact is both referenced in the report and has commented on it: https://fullfact.org/economy/austerity-women/

We already show how MPs have voted on benefit cuts - we can be confident about the accuracy of those statements. It might be best to stick to what we can confidently say accurately, and allow others to add commentary. Someone reporting on an MP's voting record on benefit cuts could discuss the impact of benefit cuts on gender equality for example.

Rate of Increase of the Pension Age for Women

Votes on this subject are collected at:

https://www.publicwhip.org.uk/policy.php?id=6788

(it was already present on PublicWhip as a draft policy)

That's probably best treated separately to the equalities policy, or a gender equality policy, as the votes are not about if there should be an equal pension age for all, but on the rate at which changes were to be made. Imposing a fast a change on women adversely affects women even if the overall aim is gender equality. It's certainly an example of a set of votes which specifically impacts women.

[MyfanwyNixon]

A user has written:

This morning, I heard the news that eight Tory leadership candidates declared themselves to be feminists (including Boris Johnson!). After I had finished laughing, I raced to TheyWorkForYou to find a voting record on "women’s issues". Of course, all issues are women’s issues - so I was a bit stumped.

What voting record could be used as a marker on issues that predominantly affects women, or women and families? It's not that easy: almost everyone voted to look at reducing VAT on tampons, or against upskirting. (I do note that Ann Widdecombe and seven others voted against the Equality Act in 2010).

I’m sure other people/researchers have asked you the same question - so please just add my name to the request!

In my reply I referred to https://www.mysociety.org/votes-that-changed-womens-lives/, which in addition to the votes Richard mentions above also considers the FGM Act.