John Bercow: We need positive discrimination for Tory women

There are examples of overt sexism - 'If you become our MP, what will your husband do for sex?'

Speaking on the Today programme yesterday, the Conservative Party chairman, Theresa May, agreed with the suggestion that reforming the hours of the House of Commons could help to attract more women to stand for Parliament. I agree that fewer late-night sittings could make a difference, and this was clearly one of the Government's motives in pursuing the modernisation programme. Nevertheless, the problem remains that although the revised hours might encourage more women to try to become MPs, they will not cause more women to be selected as candidates in good seats.

Look at my side of the House. Of 165 Conservative MPs, only 14 are women. This represented an increase of just one over 1997 and left my party with fewer female parliamentarians than in 1970. Does this huge gender imbalance matter? If so, what causes it, and how can it be tackled ?

To Lord Tebbit, for example, it is obviously not a problem. After all, he has been reported as saying that women are unsuited to parliamentary life because "lots of things which have to be done in politics are offensive" to their "inner feelings". How he squares this with his justified admiration for Margaret Thatcher the mind boggles to imagine. Suffice it to say that increasing numbers of Conservatives believe that the dearth of women MPs on the Conservative benches makes us look narrow, prejudiced and unrepresentative of the country we seek to govern. The fact that only one of the 38 new Tory MPs elected in June 2001 is a woman – and that no Conservative-held seat selected a female candidate – is a travesty.

There is no shortage of hoary myths purporting to explain the under-representation of women in politics. All have been exploded by the study of parliamentary candidates carried out for the Equal Opportunities Commission by the Mori Social Research Institute 12 months ago.

It is often said that "Women don't have the right experience to be selected as candidates." In fact, the research reveals that male and female potential candidates have very similar levels of political experience, and yet in every party fewer women than men are selected for winnable seats. The research also reveals that women who put themselves forward are more likely to have stood in unwinnable seats (66 per cent, compared to 54 per cent of men) and less likely to have stood in "safe" seats (6 per cent, compared with 16 per cent of men).

Of course, there is a need for more women to put themselves forward. Yet enlarging the pool of female would-be candidates is unlikely to lead to an increase in the number and percentage of them selected for winnable seats until local Conservative Associations change their attitudes.

Most colleagues have come across terrible examples of overt sexism (eg, "Mrs Miller, does your husband know you are here?" "If you become our MP, what will your husband do for sex?"). These and similar questions are now off limits. Nevertheless, changing what people say is one thing; changing what they think is another.

Too many Conservative selection committees still want young male MPs to fraternise with at drinks parties, and will not seriously consider choosing a woman. Too often, we hear people say, "I am all in favour of having more women MPs, but it wouldn't be right to choose a woman in this constituency." Or, as one woman put it to me at a conference fringe meeting last October, "We can select the best woman in the world, but it is no use if people won't vote for her." This antediluvian outlook persists, even though there is not an iota of proof that women candidates receive fewer votes, and some evidence to the contrary.

What is to be done? Theresa May is personally pledged to increase the number of women candidates. Trish Morris and Gillian Shephard, who have been charged with making progress, are just as committed. Yet, of 60 selections in target seats, so far only seven women have been chosen. There is no sign whatever of a big improvement on the way. For at least 10 years, every Conservative responsible for candidates has talked enthusiastically about the need for more women MPs and his or her resolve to recruit them.

Despite this, it simply has not happened. Equal opportunities training for selection committees. Women's networks. Exhortation from the centre. All might help at the margins but none is likely to make a decisive difference.

However unpalatable it might be, Conservatives would be wise to heed Sherlock Holmes, who declared in 1890 in "The Sign of Four", "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." The truth, as international experience has shown, is that the only really effective means by which to increase the number of women selected is the use of positive discrimination.

We have two credible options. One is to impose all-women short lists for, say, 50 per cent of marginal seats we need to win and Conservative seats with a vacancy to fill. The other is to produce for winnable seats a new, shorter list of candidates, half of whom would be women. I am sure that the latter, excellent idea will appeal to Theresa May. After all, in July 2001, she proposed it.

The writer is the Conservative MP for Buckingham