Some months ago we broke into mainstream media coverage following a Buzzfeed News piece which attracted over 160,000 ‘hits’ in its first day. Yesterday I was interviewed by Buzzfeed’s Emily Ashton – here. I’ve written to Emily with a number of corrections and clarifications, and I hope the article is modified accordingly. They are:
1. We haven’t finally decided to stand against the Conservatives in 2020 – we’ll probably decide the target party much nearer the election – but David Cameron’s appointment of a disproportionate number of women to his cabinet (compared with how many Tory MPs are women) and his re-appointment of Nicky Morgan as Minister for Women & Equalities inclines us to challenge the Conservatives.
2. Women are over-represented as MPs when compared with the proportion of prospective parliamentary candidates (PPCs) who are women. Caroline Spelman was the chairman of the Conservatives in 2008 and recently revealed that at that time, men outnumbered women as PPCs in the ratio 10:1.
3. Four times as many British men as woman are work-centred, Dr Catherine Hakim’s Preference Theory (2000) – here.
4. Artificially increasing the proportion of women on corporate boards leads to corporate financial decline – here.
5. The end of the paragraph ‘He said…’ should end with ‘advantage women and girls’, not ‘advantage girls’.
