Where are the women?

“Where are the women?”

“Where are the women?” was a Vera refrain.  She was a founder of the CLPD Women’s Action Committee (which later declared independence and became the Labour Women’s Action Committee, LWAC).  CLPD, along with LWAC, campaigned year after year for an array of measures to boost gender equality within the Labour Party.  At one stage we campaigned for “one woman on every shortlist”. Later on we progressed to campaigning for “mandatory women-only shortlists in Labour-held seats which fall vacant” until such time as at least 50% of the Parliamentary Labour Party were women.   Whilst gender equality has not yet been achieved in the Labour Party, the progress which has been made owes much to the dogged persistence of campaigners of earlier decades like Vera who pressed year in, year out to make the PLP representative of those it sought to represent.