AMBITIOUS and capable women are failing to make the leap from local politics to national because of a lack of confidence, says a rural county councillor.
Cllr Eveleigh Moore-Dutton made her views known on the Conservative Party website in a blog entitled Why don’t more women become Mps?
The blog has sparked national interest with many asking her to expand her views.
She says in the blog that women have all the qualities and abilities to make a good MP.
She said: “Councillors have to be able to read and understand copious papers, to persuade and argue, to make difficult and contentious decisions, to stay awake, deal with their own correspondence and juggle family with career. At first sight these are almost all feminine qualities and should make a good member of the Commons.”
She said she has never been in a council where fewer than a third of elected members were women, whereas the proportion of women MPs is far lower.
Cllr Moore-Dutton herself had been elected to stand in the general election for Crewe and Nantwich twice.
Comments made in response to the blog say that family life gets in the way of politics.
Cllr Moore-Dutton disagrees with this, she said: “If you look throughout history women have never done normal working hours. They work at all hours, for example nurses had to do the night shift, and since the hours in parliament have become marginally more family friendly this strain is eased.”
“I think that when men and women go into a job they have a different level of confidence, men go in knowing they can do and will do the job and don’t doubt they will do it well, whereas women go in believing they can do it, and hoping they can do well. Maybe it is the testosterone but men just seem to have this greater level of confidence.
“But in my view we need to get women into parliament to balance out this testosterone.”
“I think women don’t go into local and national politics because maybe they think it will be too much and they can’t do it, when they in fact can.”
Cllr Moore-Dutton she hopes her views on the blog will open up the debate and get more women involved in politics.
