The new 2024 Parliament could be 39% female
Between 1918 and 2023, 564 women were elected to the House of Commons. 55% were first elected as Labour MPs and 31% as Conservative (h/t HoC Library)
Labour / Tory divide
If the polls are correct and Labour are on course to form a Government, the number of female Labour MPs will likely stand between 46 and 51% of the party, dependent on the swing. Should Labour win a 10% swing, more than 50% of their MPs will be women. Perversely, this predicted proportion dips slightly should Labour win a higher proportion of votes across the board; however should recent dramatic polls come to fruition and Labour win over 400 seats, the party is likely to have a 48-52% female-male ratio in the Commons – a flip on the same ratio of MPs where women number 52%.
Interestingly should the Conservative Party lose as badly as some of the polls are suggesting –winning as few as 155 seats – whilst they’ll have fewer MPs overall they would end up having a higher proportion of female MPs (30%) than they do now (25%).
Lib Dem gains, SNP losses
Of the Lib Dem candidates selected so far, 30% are women – equal to the proportion of female candidates the party fielded in 2019; however, unlike in 2019, However, the Lib Dems have selected a higher proportion of female candidates in winnable seats, and so, in the event of a 400 seat Labour majority, 44% of Lib Dem MPs are set to be women.
The SNP meanwhile are facing the opposite issue. Whilst 34% of their candidates fielded in 2019 were women, this figure has increased ahead of the 2024 election, with 38% of their candidates selected so far being women. However, should the SNP face defeat in Scotland, losing up to 30 of their current seats, the proportion of SNP female MPs could total just 5… 26% of their total MPs, a third of their current 15 female MPs, and almost half the proportion –which currently stands at a record 54%.
The future Cabinet
31% of those currently in or attending Cabinet are women (10/32), and the highest proportion of women in the Cabinet – according to HoC Library research - was 36% between 2006 and 2007.
Tony Blair dramatically increased the number of women in Cabinet from 1997, the first Prime Minister to include more than two female ministers at one time, and Keir Starmer is likely to follow his trend-setting example…
Labour currently have 31 members of the Shadow Cabinet – 15 of whom are women. Should the current Shadow Cabinet form the new Cabinet, or Keir Starmer retain the same number of women in his first Cabinet, he would smash the record for the number of women in a Cabinet – at 48%.
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