A lack of mothers in the cabinet is bad for everyone – not just lefty feminists

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/11/lack-of-mothers-cabinet-bad-for-everyone

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In the tumultuous few days after Maria Miller had delivered her grudging apology to the House of Commons and before she realised she had no option but to resign as culture secretary, a number of people opined that Cameron was hanging on to her "because she was a woman". Nonsense. He may have been hanging on to her because he was a man who was painfully aware that he did not have many women in his cabinet. But that's quite a different point, in an important way.

"Because she is a woman" implies that it's easy for women to get on in politics, simply by virtue of their gender. Such an idea is backed up neither by the entire history of parliamentary politics in Britain, which has been shaped by men, for men, nor by the current gender balance in the Commons, which stands at nearly four to one (in favour of men, in case you were wondering). Under these historical and contemporary circumstances, women can only succeed in parliamentary politics if men agree that it is important for them to be allowed to. Saying that Cameron supported Miller "because she was a woman" is a destructive way of acknowledging that Cameron realises that this is the case.

Certainly, a lot of people are wary of "positive discrimination" or think they are. What they don't seem to understand is that positive discrimination is absolutely rampant in Westminster. Positive discrimination in favour of men is so much part of the fabric of the place that those bristling so self-righteously at the smallest whiff of discrimination in favour of women have completely internalised a long-standing default-male status quo. The typical MP is male, and always has been. That's a powerful subliminal expectation. A female MP is still an MP who contradicts the archetype, whose physical being announces: "I'm not what you expect." That's certainly improved in recent years. But parliamentary-member gender-blindness is still some way off, more so in the Conservative party than Labour.

It may well have been that Cameron was conscious of the small number of female ministers in his cabinet, as part of the complex web of not very good reasons why he was so keen to hang onto Miller. Indeed, her resignation has left him with fewer female cabinet members than there have been for 15 years. Actually, though, with three female cabinet members and 14 males, Cameron is doing far better than the Lib Dems, who have five men in cabinet and no women (making their miserable one female in every eight Lib Dem MPs seem a comparatively impressive ratio).

Only now, after Miller's resignation, does the gender divide in Cameron's cabinet reflect that in his parliamentary party as a whole. Roughly a sixth of Conservative MPs are female, and roughly a sixth of them are now cabinet members. With Miller in the cabinet, it was roughly a quarter, meaning that women had, before Wednesday, been proportionally over-represented among Conservatives in cabinet. So, good for him. (A third of Labour members are female, so it's no surprise that there are more women in the shadow cabinet.)

And yet, after she departed, a number of commentators pointed out that not only were there fewer women now in Cameron's cabinet, but there were also no mothers. As night follows day, but far more quickly, other commentators piled in to ridicule the idea that this was terribly important. The funniest was Dan Hodges in the Telegraph, who opined that Labour's entire chain of reaction to Miller's resignation had been "an incoherent shambles". On the "Woe! No mothers!" line, he was particularly scathing. "Genuinely. That was the line. No mothers. This is where Left-wing feminism has got to in 2014."

But the joke – the unfunny, pathetic joke – is on Hodges. That historic discrimination against women in public life? The one that still casts such a shadow? It's all pretty much down to the fact that women weren't seen as worth educating, because they were destined to be mothers – mothers who didn't have the education even to vote for MPs, let alone stand for parliament themselves. Why did this absurdity hold such sway for so long? Why does it still hold sway in so many places? It's because – and actually, even many of those "left-wing feminists" don't like this to be said – combining motherhood with a demanding career is hard. A large part of the reason women are still much less likely to be MPs than men, even in Labour, with all-female shortlists, is that a large number of women are mothers, and that considerably diminishes the pool of women who are likely to enter politics. Don't take my word for it – I'm just a woman who couldn't maintain a full-time job in journalism after I had children, which is less demanding than politics. Take a look at the statistics instead.

A 2012 survey of MPs by political researchers Dr Rosie Campbell and Professor Sarah Childs looked into the parental status of MPs. They found that 45% of female MPs had no children, compared to 28% of males; that of all MPs with children, males have, on average, 1.9 children, while females have 1.2; and that the average age of women MPs' eldest child, when they first entered parliament, was 16, compared to 12 for men. "In sum", as the authors put it, "women MPs are (1) less likely to have children than male MPs; (2) more likely to have fewer children than male MPs; and (3) enter parliament when their children are older than the children of male MPs."

Does it matter that no one in the cabinet is a mother? Yes. It matters because it is a honking great signpost confirming that while women are under-represented in parliament, mothers are considerably more under-represented. How can a legislature possibly make a society fit for the next generation, at the macro level, when the individuals most involved in preparing those who will comprise the next generation, at the micro level, are the people least likely to have a say in what that bigger picture should look like? It's as mad and dysfunctional as the idea that education is wasted on mothers, because they will squander it on overseeing the education of their children.

As for the stereotypical "left-wing feminism" of Hodges's imagination, it's actually rather reticent about differentiating between "women" and "mothers". Some middle-class feminists are a bit hostile to intersectional feminism (in which sexism is seen as just one of a range of factors that can combine to heighten the likelihood of prejudicial exclusion). Sometimes, feminists can be similarly wary of viewing motherhood as a discrete part of that matrix of discrimination. Feminism sometimes clings too hard to a sense of identity that always equates "female" with "underdog". But the fact is that women without caring commitments, in the workplace anyway, have a very distinct advantage over women who do.

Female solidarity, in which womanhood alone is the high ace in victimhood poker, is often seen as the most important thing. The idea that any woman can represent all women is clung to, even though it's reductive and absurd. But it's entirely understandable as well. It stems from fear, and from the fact that in the recent past in Britain, all women were discriminated against, very strongly, because all women were seen as potential mothers and treated as if this therefore made them unworthy of investment in their preparation for a future beyond the domestic sphere. Women have good reason to be suspicious of any argument that comes within a million miles of "reducing me to a womb". But the paradox is that institutional discrimination against women can never be defeated unless institutional discrimination against mothers is defeated, too. Because, until it is, there won't be the necessary critical mass of women in a position to answer that fundamentally important call to arms.