House of Lords Reform and women's representation

Résumé En

This is about the only place left in the kingdom where men can meet without women. For heaven's sake let us keep it like that! 16 omen currently represent 23% of the 782 members of the House of Lords. Even though this percentage may seem very low as compared to women's share of the population, it is much higher than what it was twenty years ago (4% in 1992, 8% in 1999). Interestingly, it is also roughly the same proportion as that of women MPs (22.3%), even though women's access to the Upper House is much more recent (peeresses were not allowed to sit there until 1958-exactly 40 years after women were granted the right to stand as MPs). While the 1999 House of Lords Act, which is largely responsible for this increase, entailed an instant doubling of women's presence in the Upper House (from 8.8% to 15.8%), the ensuing progress has, however, been much slower. W This paper proposes to examine the issue of the feminization of the Upper House from Margaret Haig Thomas (Viscountess Rhondda)'s campaign for women's admission in the early 1920s to the present day, paying particular attention to the impact of the reform that was launched in 1999 and including recent discussions on the 2012 House of Lords Bill. It will identify historical and systemic facilitators and constraints to women's descriptive representation and look at the importance that has been given, since the early 20 th century, to the issue of gender balance in the context of the various Reform Acts. It will thus show how the issue of women's representation in the Upper House often intermingled with the issue of reform and was often hampered by it.