Winning Women's Votes? The Incremental Track to Equality

IN the incremental track to equality for women, small and gradual improvements to their position in politics, at work, and in their pay and benefits may lead, eventually, to parity between women and men. In this conceptualisation women are content to wait for equality through decades of gradual change until a new equilibrium between the sexes is achieved. The alternative fast track strategy uses affirmative action to jump-start the equality process by placing women in positions of power and authority, altering recruitment mechanisms accordingly. Throughout the world, the use of fast track strategies has increased in politics since the 1980s, and measures such as quotas have now been used in more than 90 countries.1 Britain is a puzzling case as it has the mechanisms for the fast track strategy, but its progress suggests it is firmly on an incremental track. Slow progress results partly from the limited opportunities provided by the Westminster election system and, as a consequence, partly from the failure of all but one of the major political parties to select women for winnable seats.