Roughly a quarter (26.1 per cent) of the total number of candidates are women, up from 21.1 percent in the 2010 elections. Equally significant is the emergence of women in political leadership who have been representing the views of their parties with great competence and conviction. The seven-way debate of party leaders on ITV, in which women made up 40 per cent of the panel, was a first in British elections.
The new political players have thrown up a strong women’s leadership. Nicola Sturgeon of the Scottish National Party (SNP); Natalie Bennett and Caroline Lucas from the Green Party; and Leanne Wood from the Welsh Plaid Cymru are some of the charismatic women leaders who have come to prominence during the elections.
“I think it is no accident that this has happened at a time when all the smaller parties have been rising,” Natalie Bennett told The Hindu . “Traditional parties have not just been male-dominated, but [have been] male, white, middle-class, and remarkably often, educated in Eton. And so the fragmentation of politics has given rise for the small parties that do politics differently, people whose concerns are a bit different,” she said. Her party has the highest percentage of female candidates at 37.7 per cent, followed by the SNP at 35.6 per cent.
