Frequently Asked Questions
“Why do we need to tackle women’s underrepresentation?”
Women’s underrepresentation is an example of structural discrimination. Structural discrimination is when society or communities have (conscious or unconscious) discriminatory views about certain people and therefore create barriers that restrain the equal participation of women, further contributing to their marginalisation.
Choosing to ignore the systematic inequality which women face in being elected to roles of leadership is problematic in itself, it effectively confirms incorrectly held assumptions that it is simply women who need to be developed in order to become ‘equal’ to men who predominantly already or ‘naturally’ have the skills commonly associated with being a leader in order for them to be on a ‘level playing field’.
This activity leads to the mistaken conclusion that the reason for women’s underrepresentation is rooted in women being less competent in the field of politics and less talented than men. Although women have, and will continue to benefit from leadership training, relying solely on this to ‘solve’ women’s underrepresentation is not only naïve, but is in fact doing a disservice to women throughout our movement. The idea that women’s lack of traditional leadership skills are the ‘problem’ to be ‘solved’, and relying on this to address the structural barriers which they face rather than reflecting honestly on flaws in our current systems is sexist in itself and has no place in our student movement and NUS.
We have a responsibility to tackle the barriers which women face and make sure NUS is as representative as possible. Even when there have been singular occurrences where women outnumber men on a committee or on conference floor, we find that due to the structural barriers that women face, the situation does not remain and that by the next year, women will once again be outnumbered by men. For example: in the 90 years since NUS was founded, 2012/13 was the first year women were in the majority on the NUS full time officer team (inclusive of the four reserved women’s places) and that majority was only by one, so for 89 years men have outnumbered women, something which is likely to continue next year.
Current NUS President Toni Pearce is only the 8th woman president in 92 years, but on the rare occasion where NUS has had a woman president,having a woman president doesn’t mean that structural inequality disappears, it simply means that we may have a president who has experienced the barriers women face and can work to challenge them. A singular person cannot be representative of the political position of everyone of that gender; for example- Margaret Thatcher as the first woman prime minister still did not address the issue of women remaining as 80% of the lowest paid workers. It is not just the responsibility of the NUS President to tackle women’s underrepresentation, it is the responsibility of all of us who have a stake in the student movement, and believe in a fairer society for women and everyone.
Reserved Places for women is “un-democratic” and “we would struggle to find delegates”
Part of reserving places for women is that women are more likely to run for election when there are places reserved for them, and so will increase the diversity of candidates running. It is also the responsibility of unions to ensure that the people running for delegate to NUS conference are diverse, and having reserved places for women ensures that everyone has the responsibility to do more work to improve the diverse representation of candidates and delegates.
It is fair to say that where a union has a low number of women candidates there will have to be improvements to increase the quality and diversity of candidates, but ultimately this will significantly help to improve the democratic legitimacy of both that student union/association and the student movement nationally.
The reserved places system places the burden of recruitment not on the individual, but on those who control and influence the recruitment process. The core idea driving this system is the aim of recruiting more women into political positions, and ensuring that women are not a token few, but an equal partner in political life.
If you are concerned about the challenges your union may face in finding women to run for NUS delegate, please do not hesitate to get in touch with NUS. We can provide advice and support on how to challenge cultures around underrepresentation and initiatives to make meaningful, positive change to your representational structures. Women in Leadership has been a national priority for NUS this year and the research and work that we has been done has shown us that we will only be able to solve the problem of women’s underrepresentation long term if we tackle the structural barriers and guarantee women’s representation in addition to tackling lad culture and supporting individual capacity development (public speaking/running in elections workshops etc.
“Why Women and not Black, LGBT, Disabled students”
Unlike the other liberation groups individually, Women students actually make up the majority of our members in both HE and FE (56.4%). Yet women are a political minority in terms of power and access to leadership positions. NUS has policy for the women’s campaign (submitted by students’ unions) to call for reserved places in NUS, in keeping with the example NUS Wales set by reserving places at their conference, which the Women’s campaign believe works very efficiently and makes NUS Wales Conference one of the most representative conference Nus has.
Alongside students’ unions across the country, women’s committee submitted suggestions on reserved places for women to National Conference which is now being proposed to you at National Conference 2014. If there is a desire for other forms of specific representation for other liberation groups, unions should work with the relevant campaigns to bring this forward at a future NUS Governance Review. All the other NUS Liberation Officers are in full support of reserved places for women as an increase in diverse women’s representation will benefit other liberation campaign in terms of putting other liberation issues the agenda and tackling the fact that women in the disabled, black and lgbt movements still face marginalisation.
“NUS should not interfere with students’ union elections.”
NUS is a membership led organisation which means that it is the members of NUS (i.e. the students’ unions) who determine what the structures of NUS look like, which is why these proposals for reserved places for women come from our member unions and will be decided on by our membership.
One of the most excellent aspects of our movement is our collectivism, as this means that together we are able to shape the future of education and society at large. Part of collectivism is that we have the ability to tackle inequalities both within and outside our movement. In this case, this is students’ unions determining collectively that we are going to address the inequalities in our movement by ensuring that our women members and the students that you represent are fairly represented in NUS.
This is not ‘NUS telling student unions what to do’ but a result of students’ unions collectively deciding to ensure our democratic structures have as much representational legitimacy as possible.
“Quotas are patronising, there should be more grass roots work to empower women students”
Yes, there can always be more work being done to get more women running for election. In fact NUS has made Women in Leadership an organisational priority for the first time this year. the NUS Women’s Campaign run women’s leadership training days, train the trainer days (for union staff) to ensure a long term, strategic approach to actively tackling the barriers which prevent women from running in elections, women’s leadership training for Muslim women students and other work around increasing women’s representation.
However, reserved places for women are a response to the very real fact that currently women still face visible and invisible discrimination which leads to women being greatly underrepresented. Even where individual women don’t feel discriminated against, it is important to understand that our research shows that there are many more women who do, and much of covert sexism is by definition hard to identify.
Individual women running in elections can choose to opt out of identifying themselves as a self defining woman for the purpose of the election if they don’t want to be counted in the self defining women category. Women who do make it into leadership positions do so despite being women, not because they are women.
Reserved places for women are about addressing fundamental inequalities which cannot be changed by developing women’s skills alone. We currently do not live in a society where women reach anywhere near parity with men as decision makers. However, research has shown us that only reserving places for women has repeatedly proven successful means by which to achieve parity in representational structures across the world, including in new and developing governments.
Reserved Places for women in our NUS representative structures is a vital component of us being successful in making our movement more representative and more reflective of the needs of students. Reserving places for women will be part of the solution alongside the fantastic work being done across the country to increase women’s representation. We will not reach a representational balance of women without undertaking every possible task to challenge the current status quo, and tackling structural discrimination. We must have a comprehensive approach which understands that the best way to solve the problem; we know from academic research that this means capacity support (running workshops to support women to run for election), organisational culture change (tackling lad culture), and structural changes (reserved places for women). Only doing two of these three is not enough and will not see the long term change where women’s representation reaches a critical mass and we won’t need to target women specifically. Only by doing all three will we be able to get to the point where women’s representation is naturalised and democratic legitimacy is strong.
Women will not be getting elected ‘because they are women’. Women will be getting elected because students’ unions are required to send representationally fair delegations to National Conference. NUS structures will benefit from addressing the barriers which women face by ensuring more women are running for election and getting elected. If we continue to ignore these issues, we are failing the student movement and preventing it from becoming the best it possibly can be.
“Shouldn’t it just be the best person for the role?”
Yes, but unfortunately we don’t operate within a system where we consistently elect the ‘best people for the job’ as we have a structural problem which leads to women’s underrepresentation, and barriers which prevent women from putting themselves forward. Therefore, without reserved places for women and therefore a more equal playing field, we are not guaranteed to be electing the best people for the job. Only with measures that forcibly increase the diversity of candidates, and increased participation can we truly be confident in the representational quality, fairness and efficiency of our movement.
“Reserved places for women limits choice”
Actually, introducing quotas for women candidates increases choice for voters, as it ensures that there are more candidates running, greater diversity of candidates to choose from and especially that voters will actually get a choice between women candidates to elect, which does not happen in all elections in NUS. This theory is proven repeatedly in academic research on gender equality in representation.
Why women’s places and not mens’ places?
The recommendations reflect the fact that while women are the majority of our membership not everyone who doesn’t define as a woman defines as a man. This is why it is crucial that the non reserved places are not reserved for men (as men don’t face systematic underrepresentation), but are open for all students, including trans students, some of who don’t identify into the gender binary and anyone who does not self define as a woman.
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