After a year’s hard work, we were proud to announce the release last month of our second MK Fawcett Discussion Paper of 2020 entitled ‘Women’s participation in local politics’. The project began over a year ago with the observation of three meetings in the MK Council chamber - the last being in January 2020, just before the lockdown saw all Council meetings transferred online. We wanted to see whether women had an equal opportunity to participate in Council discussion and, if not, why not. This in turn prompted us to seek out all the information we could find on how women came to get elected as councillors in the first place, as well as the roles they were appointed to on Council committees.

We quickly realised that we couldn’t get a full picture of the decision-making processes that underly all these outcomes without consulting all the different kinds of people involved at different stages, whether Council officers, councillors or local party members. We made sure that all the key players within the Council had the opportunity over the summer to comment on our draft paper, and that their comments influenced the final version. This turned out to be the best step we could have taken, as it allowed us to develop a relationship of trust, based on a common goal of improving the workings of the Council.

We’re encouraged by the various ways in which both Council officers and the political party groups are already taking our report seriously, initially by a range of internal discussions, but also by gradually reviewing policies and practices in the light of our recommendations. We have become aware of how powerful voluntary action of this kind can be in serving as a catalyst for change, providing practitioners with the evidence to challenge aspects of current practice, as well as an independent benchmark to which they can refer in making a case for improvement.

We're planning a range of related dissemination and extension events early in 2021. Some of these will involve further collaborative action with the Council and local political parties. On or around International Women's Day on 8 March, we're also planning a public webinar in advance of the May 2021 local elections. Although we realise it's already too late to influence the selection of candidates, we're hoping that we may still encourage women in particular to reflect on the importance of using their vote and possibly even to consider standing at some level of the political system.

Watch this space for future updates!  Meanwhile, the report itself can be accessed on the national Fawcett Society website at:
https://www.fawcettsociety.org.uk/milton-keynes-group



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