ABSTRACT

Women’s descriptive representation has become a significant issue within Westminster-type democracies as well as elsewhere in the world. While this issue has reached the political agenda within the past two decades, the outcomes have been variable, both over time and across jurisdictions. The mother of all parliaments, the central legislature in the United Kingdom at Westminster, has been a laggard rather than a leader in descriptive representation. This chapter offers a theoretically and comparatively informed assessment of the development, current status, and immediate future of descriptive representation in the House of Commons, the only popularly elected chamber at Westminster. In doing so, it assesses the relative impact of various factors that have been presumed to have some influence on levels of descriptive representation, including the electoral system, opinions in the electorate, political parties, and the women’s movement. Recent gains for women at Westminster have largely been limited to the Labour Party. Comparatively, the United Kingdom still rates low among Western democracies. Unless the electoral system is changed into a more proportional one, this situation is likely to continue, despite efforts by parties and interest groups.