Greens call for record number of women to stand for council seats

10 October 2017

*Only a third of councillors in England are women

*Conference to close with challenge to Green Party members

*Deputy leader Amelia Womack: “We will be fighting to get Green voices into positions where they can be heard the loudest, challenging the Conservatives and holding Labour to account”

The Green Party will announce new initiatives to ensure more women stand for council seats in the May 2018 local elections.

Deputy leader Amelia Womack will close the party’s autumn conference today [1] with a rallying cry for a record number of women to stand as Green Party candidates next year.

The call follows research published in August showing 12,000 more women councillors are needed to close the gender gap on councils in England [2]. Only 33 per cent of councillors and 17 per cent of council leaders are women.

Womack will pledge to visit and campaign with all-female fields of candidates and mentor young women standing for election for the first time.

Womack is expected to say:

“Politics has changed me and changed my life for the better, and I want it to help other women find their power in society too. In May next year we will be contesting hundreds and hundreds of seats on councils across England, from Knowsley to Norwich and Worcester to West Dorset. We will be fighting to get Green voices into positions where they can be heard the loudest, challenging the Conservatives and holding Labour to account.

“Today I want to issue a challenge. I don’t want us to just contest more seats than ever before, I want more women to contest those seats than ever before. England needs 12,000 more women to be elected onto councils to close this appalling gender gap.

“We’ve won the vote for women, but now we need to vote for women. We can do so much better than this.”

Notes:

  1. Amelia Womack will address Green Party Autumn Conference at 2.30pm on October 10 at the Harrogate International Centre, Entrance 3, King's Rd, Harrogate HG1 5LA.
  2. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/aug/20/councils-women-inequality-local-politics-quotas

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