The Government Response to the Women’s Equalities Select Committee Report is disappointing! It rejected all six proposals made by the committee, but did say “more needs to be done”. Our campaign for gender equality at Westminster continues. Please support 50:50 Parliament by signing & sharing this petition change.org/5050Parliament and if you know a good woman ask her to stand, see details at http://www.5050parliament.co.uk/askhertostand/ Committee Chair Maria Miller is right when she says: "The UK is failing to be a world leader on women’s representation. There are still more than twice as many men as women in the House of Commons: after the 2017 election women still only make up 32% of MPs. This demands a vigorous response across the board but the Government has shown it is content to sit on its hands with an approach which has yielded depressingly slow progress so far. While political parties bear a great deal of responsibility for increasing women’s representation, the Government can make a real difference." (http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/women-and-equalities-committee/news-parliament-2017/govt-response-women-hoc-2017-19/) 50:50 is making a difference, the committee report quoted us: “Campaign group 50:50 Parliament stated in its evidence that gender balance in the Commons is a means of utilising the widest pool of talent to build a better informed Parliament” and drew extensively upon our submission, highlighting that this is a historic democratic deficit and an institutional problem that needs addressing. (http://data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedocument/women-and-equalities-committee/women-in-the-house-of-commons-after-the-2020-election/written/39361.pdf) After all gender equality is a human right (see http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/frances-scott/gender-equality_b_7540358.html ) Our #AskHerToStand campaign has succeeded in inspiring, encouraging and supporting women to Westminster, with Rosie Duffield MP being our first elected #AskHerToStand champion. Para 114 of the committee's report states: “A key element of parties taking responsibility for increasing the number of women in the House is ensuring that women are put in positions to win. Within their overall strategies for candidate selection, all political parties should explicitly identify winnable seats and adopt ambitious targets for women candidates in those seats; 50 per cent should be the minimum. Transparency on these points would enable the public to see exactly how seriously parties take the task of increasing women’s parliamentary representation.” Although rejecting all the recommendations the Government does say that “The Government shares the Committee’s view that political parties have primary responsibility for ensuring that women come forward to represent them and are put in positions from which they can win seats. The main political parties have had some success in increasing women’s representation in the House of Commons but more needs to be done." So if it is down to the parties how are the parties doing? After the 2017 General Election this was the number of women MPs in each party: Conservatives - women accounted for 67 (21%) of 317 MPs Labour - women accounted for 119 (45%) of 262 MPs SNP - women accounted for 12 (34%) of 35 MPs Lib Dems - women accounted for 4 (33%) of 12 MPs The Labour party has 52 more women at Westminster than the Conservatives. Jeremy Corbyn told the committee that it is the Labour party’s ambition is to have 50 per cent representation of women both amongst its MPs in the 2020 Parliament and in local government. Men outnumber women by 4:1 on the Government benches, so it seems that the Government needs to listen to the Government “more needs to be done”!