Fairey's Theory of Awesomeness (Nominate 2016)

Part of the series Nominate 2016, hoping to open up local government a bit so y'all will at least think about running in 2016.  

Fairey's Theory of Awesomeness

Some elected people think they have been elected because they are awesome.  For those who think this, all they will likely do, once elected, is continue to radiate their awesomeness.  Avoid members of Team Awesome; please don't be one and please don't vote for one.

I've noticed there are really two main kinds of people who are politicians, by which I mean elected people like me.  There are those who think they are elected because they are awesome, and those who have a broader understanding of why they are elected and what the role is.  In my opinion you do not want to vote for the former, and if you run you do not want to be the former either.  

How can you pick who is on Team Awesome?

Those on Team Awesome will of course differ in their individual practice but can often be discerned by markers such as:

• Low attendance at meetings, briefings and the like that are part of the elected role, particularly if formal minutes are not being taken or the public are not present and/or it is a consultation process where listening and answering questions is key - why would they need to go, they already know how to be awesome!
• Often very quick responses to public scrutiny such as angry constituent emails, but then no actual follow through on the issue raised - the very fact that they have shared their awesomeness with you by replying is sufficient!
• A lack of detail in their reporting, or possibly even just no reporting at all - they don't need to prove their awesomeness to anyone, yo, it is self-evident.
• Confusion between governance and management/operational and also potentially quite a removed idea of governance - their role is to be awesome, that's it!
• Good blurb and soundbites - because of the awesomeness!
• Inability to have a detailed dialogue about an issue beyond soundbites - detail and knowledge is for people who aren't awesome!
• Few completed projects, few if any with much complexity - the awesomeness does not fit well with persistence and consistency, two qualities essential to getting projects done in a democratic environment, sadface.

If you think the above is acceptable once you are elected then please don't run.  This isn't what being a politican is.  For some posts I wrote much earlier (2013) on what being a politician is and can be see here and here.  I'll be revisiting that theme later in this series.

Why does it matter?

Sadly some do operate on the basis of their own awesomeness, and often times they get re-elected too, and they not only give all politicians a bad name, more importantly they fundamentally undermine what can be achieved through the democratic process.  They short change constituents by having a limited vision of the role, of what local government can achieve, and also by spending the time and resources they have access to on being awesome instead of Getting Stuff Done.  (More on what Getting Stuff Done can look like in another post!)  Often they get in the way of people who are trying to get on with the Getting Stuff Done, sometimes deliberately (especially if they are a small government advocate I have found, aka a small c conservative), sometimes accidentally by diverting attention and resources, and other times by the sheer amount of will to live they suck out of other people around them.

TLDR:  It is better to get awesome stuff done than to be seen to be awesome.  If you care about this and want to be involved in making it better then nominate, if you want to be awesome then find somewhere else to do that please. 

Save the Date! Women's Choice Debate 2014

When:  Tuesday August 19th, 7pm
Where:  LibB28, lecture theatre underneath the University of Auckland library, Alfred St
Who:  Female speakers from National, Labour, Greens and the Maori Party and possibly a couple more.  You and your friends and acquaintances.  Women's organisations with stalls in the foyer.  Dr Judy McGregor chairing.

Please save the date now :-)  You can even add it to your Facebook events!

A Woman's Place: Greens 2014

The Greens have a strongly stated commitment to gender balance both for internal party positions and candidates.  They currently have more women than men in their parliamentary caucus.

Historical representation of women:
The Greens first stood in their own right under MMP in 1999, and in that time they have had 23 MPs of whom 12 have been female (52%).  They have long had gender balance for shared leadership positions both of the caucus and the party.

2008 Green Party List:
Women represented across the whole list: 20 out of 48 (42%), with 50% in the top 10.

2011 Green Party List:
Women represented across the whole list: 16 out of 42 (38%), with 40% in the top 10.
 
Current representation of women:
The Greens currently have 14 MPs in total and 8 are women (Catherine Delahunty, Metiria Turei, Eugenie Sage, Jan Logie, Denise Roche, Holly Walker, Julie Anne Genter, Mojo Mathers), making 62% of the caucus. Turei is co-leader.  There have been some issues in the present term with Turei receiving some quite sexist treatment, in comparison with Russel Norman, the male co-leader.   


2014 Green Party List:
Women represented across the whole list: 19/53 (36%), with 60% in the top 10.

Top 5: Two (Turei at 1, Sage at 4) 2/5 = 40% (Same as 2011)

Top 10: Six (as for Top 5, plus Delahunty at 6, Genter at 8, Mathers at 9, Logie at 10) 6/10 = 60% (Increase on 2011)

Top 20: Ten (as for Top 10, plus Walker at 12, Roche at 14, and non-MPs Marama Davidson at 16, Jeanette Elley at 20) 10/20 = 50% (Same as 2011)

Top 30: Fourteen (as for Top 20, plus Sea Rotmann at 23, Susanne Ruthven at 26, Teresa Moore at 27, Dora Roimata Langsbury at 28) 14/30 = 47% (Increase on 2011)

Top 38:  Sixteen (as for Top 30, plus Rachel Goldsmith at 31, Anne-Elise Smithson at 35) 16/38 = 42%

After 38 the list candidates are unranked, and include only 3 women, out of 15 (20%), which skews their total figures considerably.  The Greens followed a similar practice of unranking after a certain number in 2008 and 2011, which is a practice I still personally support for smaller parties.  


Likely future representation of women:
The Greens did much better than I anticipated when I did this analysis for 2011.  This time they are aiming for 20 MPs, which would require about 17% of the vote. The Greens have had a good term, and are currently polling at about 11% (which would see them return 14 MPs again). They have a history of coming up during the campaign too.  

If they do reach their 20 MPs they will have a 50/50 caucus, including two new women (Davidson and Elley).  If they get 14 again it will be 8 women (57%), 15 MPs (53%), 16 MPs (56%), 17 MPs (53%), 18 MPs (50%), 19 MPs (47%).  I'd say there was a deliberate intention there to ensure their caucus is likely to be 50%+ female, in the likely range of seats they will win, except that they could have achieved that if Elley was at 19, rather than 20, and they didn't.  Many considerations do go in to the ranking of a list! 

The co-leadership arrangements will continue to ensure a gender balance in the top spot for the forseeable future.  

Other observations on candidate diversity:
As always with this section, I am interested in comment from those with more knowledge than I. Gender is often easy to determine, other aspects of diversity less so.  I would note that there appear to be no candidates who identify as any gender other than male or female, and as far as I know none of the parties which have made it into, or close to, Parliament have put up anyone who identifies outside the binary.

In regard to Maori candidates in the top 20, Turei, Clendon, Roche, and Davidson all identify as such.  The rest of the top 20 are Pakeha though* and there is little evidence of Asian or Pasifika candidates (one Tamil that I could find).  

There's a lot of diversity on age, and some great experience on disability in the candidate pool, not least Mojo Mathers MP (who is deaf), Catherine Delahunty MP (who has personal experience of disability), and long time disability advocate Chris Ford (37) who I remember from my long-ago days in the Alliance.  

The Greens also have a good record on selecting people who identify as LGBTI, returning Kevin Hague last time and adding Jan Logie.  

The final observation I will make on their list is that for a party that many dismiss as Sensitive New Agers there are a lot of people with serious qualifications and experience in actual real science.  I stumbled across this interesting blog post about Green stereotypes that I thought many of you might like :-)

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In 2011 when I did this analysis I was disappointed the Greens hadn't really lifted their gender balance from 2008, however that was because I vastly underestimated how many MPs they would get!  This time it looks pretty good to me in the higher portions of the list, but becomes troublesome as you get lower.  I wonder if this is a reflection that more men than women have put themselves forward?

Links:
Green Party candidates
Idiot/Savant's analysis, including ups and downs since 2011's list.
A Woman's Place Index for 2014
A Woman's Place Index for 2008 and 2011


*  Jan Logie gives "Tangata Tiriti" as her ethnicity which makes me want to give her a high five.  

A Woman's Place 2014: Internet Party

For 2008 and 2011 I did some analysis of the likely party caucuses after each election, based on list and electorate seat selections, in regard to women's political representation.  I'm hoping to do it again for 2014 but will depend a lot on time, as these can be very time-consuming for the bigger parties.  Here's my first for this time, cos it came up today and was easy to do.


The Internet Party is brand new this election, in fact this year, and released their 15 person list today.  It will be zipped in some fashion with the Mana list, and I'm not sure quite what that will look like yet (Mana have only announced their top 4 so far) so I'll have to do another post on this when that is all out.  

Historical representation of women:
New party so not relevant.

Current representation of women:
No current MPs, or caucus.  Leader (Laila Harre) is a woman.

2014 Internet Party selections:
Women represented across the whole list: 6 out of 15 (40%).  

The top ten are alternated female and male, 11 is a man, 12 a woman, and then 3 men for the lowest 3 spots.
 
Top 5 - Three (Harre at 1, Pierard at 3, Ballantine at5) 3/5 = 60%
Top 10 - Five (As for Top 5 plus Farvid at 7, Sami at 9) 5/10 = 50%
Top 15 - Six (As for Top 10 plus McClintock at 12) 6/15 = 40% 
Women selected for electoral seats: 6 out of 15 (40%)

All of the list candidates are running in electorates.  Realistically the list is far more important, as the Internet Party will be getting MPs from Hone Harawira winning Te Tai Tokerau rather than breaking the 5% threshold (although we shall see!).  They have clearly strategically picked seats where they think there will be wider spread media coverage than the immediate electorate - and it looks to me like the ones where the Alliance used to do well, but that could just be my own past filter* ;-).  Which makes me wonder if the seat Harre will run in may be Epsom?  Another theory is Upper Harbour, which is closer to Harre's roots in West Auckland and her past efforts in Waitakere, plus no worries in that seat of having to talk about coat-tailing more than usual.

Likely future representation of women: 
Depends very much on percentage of the vote for Internet/Mana combination, whether Harawira holds his seat, and how the combined list works after the sixth spot.  At this stage it seems that they might get down as far as the combined 5th spot, which would mean two Internet MPs, Harre and Yong, so 50/50 gender-wise.

Other comments on candidate diversity:
Youth is a big feature, deliberately and highlighted.  The youngest candidate is 23 (Ballantine at 5) and only two are over 40 (Harre at 1 and Keinzley at 11).  Salmon is a "digital Maori" at number 8, while there are a number of candidates who appear to have Asian heritage, and one (Farvid) who is Iranian.  No mention of disabilities or sexuality, that I can see.  


Links:
Internet Party List on their website
Index of A Women's Place posts for 2008 & 2011 - analysis of all the likely caucus outcomes for as many parties as I could a) get and b) give time to look at.  
Index of A Women's Place posts for 2014 


*  I was in the Alliance Party from 2000 to 2007, and ran for them in 2002 and 2005.  

A Woman's Place: Index for 2014

In both 2008 and 2011 I did some analysis of the party lists (and electorate selections to a point) to determine likely future women's representation for each party.  I'm intending to do it again in 2014, as time allows.

Here's what I wrote about doing this series, back in 2008, and it held true in 2011 too:

The idea of this analysis is not to say "you should vote for the party with the most women candidates." The point is to provide some information that may give you some insight to the role of women within the party in question, and to also highlight the women who are standing in this year's General Election.

[In 2008] When we our current and immediate past Prime Minister have both been female, a Queen is our Monarch, a woman sits in the Speaker's Chair, and [laydeez] fill a variety of high profile roles in our democratic institutions it is sometimes easy to forget that our current Parliament has only 40 women MPs, out of 122. That's around 33%, when women are a little over 50% of the general population. Better then most other countries in the world, but still a long way from parity.

And how do women get to be MPs? They need to rise up through party organisations to be nominated for electorates and for list spots, and in order to actually make it into the House they need to be candidates in winnable positions. So it's important to not only consider how many women a party puts up as its representatives, but also whether they are likely to get that opportunity in a practical sense.

Since the 2008 election we have only had a lady Queen and Chief Justice.  The purpose of this series of posts remains the same.

In 2011 this issue finally got some mainstream media coverage, particularly around the poor level of representation for women in the likely National caucus (only 25%), both through the list and safe seat selections.  It will be interesting to see if this happens again (both the media attention and National's low level of women).

The 2014 A Woman's Place series (alphabetical order, added to as I do them): 

• Greens 2014 - 36% over whole list (19/53) - 60% in top ten
• Internet Party 2014 - 40% over whole list (6 out of 15) - 50% in top ten

Grrrrrrr!

Anger, oh how often you have visited me lately, let me count some of the ways:

• The frequently women-hating reaction to Labour daring to suggest that they make take some deliberate, transparent and necessary structural steps towards lifting their number of women MPs.  
• Trevor Mallard baiting another MP in the House by calling him "cougar bait."
• People who don't lay out their arguments properly and then don't come to the meeting to discuss the issue so you never really know where they stand before you make the decision.
• Changing a law because some state agencies broke it and the solution to that problem is somehow to make it legal, with the consequence that a whole heap of people who should have privacy no longer will.
• Promulgation by supposed lefties of the antiquated idea that women are precious flowers who should not be sullied by the putrid compost of politics and the stale water of being politicians or something like that, this metaphor is tortured enough already without actually trying to get it to make sense.
• Reflecting on how unfair and wrong and conservative New Zealand's abortion laws and provision actually are, yet again.
• Cancer.  Always.  
• The increasingly dirty SkyCity pokies for convention centre deal.  
• Doctors who want to be GPs but don't want to prescribe contraception.  It's your JOB, yo.

Ok, enough ragey bullet points from me - what's angrifying you?

Why Do Women MPs Oppose Quotas for Women?

This a guest post by Dr Morgan Healey. Morgan completed her PhD through the University of Limerick, Ireland, in 2009 focussing on Irish women politicians and their experiences of gendered political spaces.

Reading the news (and in particular social media) yesterday I was incredibly disheartened to see statements from both men and women MPs discounting the potential Labour party policy calling for temporary special measures to ensure a 50:50 gender representation in the Caucus by 2017. It is a laudable goal for Labour and one that all political parties should strive for. But the misogynist discussion that followed the announcement of the policy showed exactly what women MPs have to face within the political party machinery when it comes to fighting for selection and running a successful campaign. The sophistry of equal opportunity for women and the idea that ‘good’ women candidates do not require any additional support because they will get elected on merit must be contested if this debate is to move forward.

The construction of politics as ‘jobs for the boys’ has created myriad barriers to women entering politics. Research by feminist political scientists and theorists has attempted to grapple with the gendering of political tenets, such as the abstract individual, the social contract and those dealing with the systemic limitations of not being selected to run, facing a political party system that prioritises ‘proven’ men politicians, rewarding them with safe, winnable seats (or a high number on the list), and so on. If women do manage to succeed, and make their way through the myriad gates that block their inclusion to win a seat and enter Parliament, the discrimination continues. Women with children face non-family friendly working hours, for example, being away from home for three nights a week, needing a relatively high and stable income to afford child care and perhaps assistance in the home (with the assumption still that if they are married their husbands will also be in paid work).

What is insidious about all of this is the tightrope women politicians are forced to walk between trying to belong (i.e. be the ‘same’ as the men politicians) and at the same time using their gender to promote a ‘different’ way of doing politics – one that simultaneously or strategically sets them apart for the sea of men. It is within this context that I want to unpick some of the unhelpful comments made by women MPs themselves, and argue that acts of belonging to the political gendered norm (read men) are being played out in these comments. Specifically, arguments against the proposal seem to be focus on notions of merit vs special treatment, with the latter providing a dangerous precedent whereby a woman’s gender can be used and named to detract from an already tenuous attempt at belonging.

I have a bit of experience when it comes to women in politics.. My PhD thesis, “The Naturalised Politician: How Irish Women Politicians Construct their Political Subjectivities”, examined the lived experiences of then-serving women politicians in both the lower and upper house of Parliament (known as the Oireachtas in Irish). I used a poststructural feminist framework to investigate how the women I interviewed understood and articulated their own gendered political subject positions as politicians, so please excuse some modest use of this frame and some of the associated language below. While I won’t attempt to provide a wholesale summary of my thesis, I do want to return to one of the overarching themes that came across when I interviewed the women – that is, a muted sense of belonging – and how I think this is playing out in relation to the current political storm over temporary special measures.

So what does ‘belonging’ mean and require of women in politics? And how does it play out?  Academic theorists like Breda Gray (2002), Ruth McElroy (2002), Anne-Marie Fortier (1999), and Elspeth Probyn (1996) have used notions of belonging to deconstruct how identities or processes of identification are produced. They argue that individuals, groups, or nations are constructed along dichotomous relations of insider/outsider, and that these are often produced along racial, ethnic and gender lines. As Anne-Marie Fortier (2002) argues, the social and historical practices which mark out terrains of belonging or commonalities amongst groups delineates the dynamics by which people/groups fit into the norm. My argument is that an important element of women politicians’ ability to belong to the ‘gendered spaces’ of politics is conditional upon their ability to show they too can ‘fit in’. If we assume that being a politician is an example of Fortier’s ‘group identity’ and argue that through the gendering of this category as ‘man’ certain terrains of belonging are marked out, then women’s ability to belong and be considered legitimate politicians will be based on their ability to approximate the male norms of politics.