During last summer’s Party leadership election, we wrote to all the candidates asking them to set out their vision for how they would reform our Party to ensure we have equal and meaningful representation of women at every level – from branch meetings to the Shadow Cabinet table. You can read our letter here.
We were delighted that all the candidates took the time to reply to our letter, and we strongly welcomed the reply we received from Ed Miliband, our new Party Leader. You can read his response here.
Since last summer, we have seen Ed and Labour’s leadership team start to put that vision into practice – we might not yet have 50:50 representation in the Shadow Cabinet, but 42% shows that we are on the right path.
Lead for Women will keep campaigning until we reach the goals we set out last summer.
That’s why we need your help today. We want to work with the Labour Party Leadership team to help them put the pledges Ed made to Lead for Women into practice. And we want to make sure that Peter Hain’s review of Party Structures addresses the need to change our Party to make sure we live up to the promise of being the ‘Party of Equality’.
You can help us by emailing us about your experiences as a woman in the Labour Party.
What positive experiences have you had as a woman in the Party? Can you tell us about any examples of how practice or procedures changed to make it easier to be involved in the Party as a woman?
Have you ever been put off getting involved in the Party, standing for election in your Branch, CLP or for Public Office because of the culture of the Party, Party structures, or the way we do our politics?
What would you like to see change about Party culture, structures or procedures?
We want to hear all your experiences – positive, negative, big or small. We need to learn from the Party’s mistakes, and spread the word about good new ways of working.
We’ll use them to help make the case for why and how our Party needs to change.
Please email us at lead4women@yahoo.co.uk. We want to base our submission to the Party on your experiences – but we won’t be using any names, so don’t worry – it will be kept completely anonymous.
We’re looking forward to hearing from you.
Happy International Women’s Day!
The Lead for Women Team
