The Life Peerages Act 1958 saw women enter the House as members. The Peerages Act 1963 enabled women who inherited their titles to sit. The number of women peers has grown over the decades. The Independent Appointments Commission has been especially active in ensuring that those it nominates for life peerages reflect the diversity of the United Kingdom. This week’s quiz focuses on women who serve or who have served in the House. As usual, the first two readers to supply the correct answers will be the winners.
1. Name at least five women members of the current House of Lords who have served at some point in the Cabinet.
2. Who was the first woman to serve as Leader of the House of Lords?
3. Who was the first woman to serve as Government Chief Whip?
4. Name at least three women peers who are in the Coalition Government.
1)Baroness Thatcher, Baroness Royall, Baroness Ashton Baroness Williams of Crosby, Baroness Jay of Paddington
2) Baroness Young
3) Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
4) Baroness Verma,Baroness Anelay, Baroness Hanham
1) Lady Williams of Crosby, Lady Jay of Paddington, Lady Amos, Lady Thatcher of Kesteven and Lady
2) The Lady Young, under Margaret Thatcher
3) Lady Llewellyn-Davies (not sure how it’s spelt) under Harold Wilson
4) Lady Warsi, Lady Anelay of St Johns, and Lady Rawlings.
1. Baroness Warsi, Baroness Ashton, Baroness Royall, Baroness Amos, Baroness Jay, Baroness Williams
2. Baroness Young
3. Baroness Llewelyn-Davies
4. Baroness Warsi, Baroness Anelay, Baroness Northover, Baroness Rawlings, Baroness Wilcox
You don’t make it clear for Q1 whether they were required to be in the Lords when serving in the Cabinet
Congratulations to Len and Dave H, who came up with a complete set of correct answers. tory boy was in first but missed out on the first women Government Chief Whip: it was indeeed Baroness Llewellyn-Davies, who served under Wilson and Callaghan.
For other women who have served in Cabinet one could add Baroness Taylor of Bolton (Anne Taylor), Baroness Bottomley and Baroness Shephard of Northwold.
On women peers in the coalition government, there is also Baroness Garden to be added to the seven named.
Too many women creates weak government.
maude elwes: Do you have any evidence?
@Lord Norton:
I did reply to your inquiry yesterday, but, it has not appeared
Could that be because you didn’t find it amusing? Or, perhaps you felt it a ridiculous response?
I wasn’t being facetious when I wrote it. I was quite serious.
Partly I agree with you Phillip. It’s codswallop. It’s not who people are it’s what they say.
Where I agree with Maude, we do have too many women in politics because we have too many politicians on the gravy train.
Lord Blagger: I’m all for placing the emphasis on quality rather than quantity. Both Houses could operate effectively with fewer members.
The commons can.
The Lords would be better off with no members.
There are examples of advanced democracies with no second chamber.
After all, you’ve had centuries to get the law right. That you keep having to change it shows the incompetence in drafting laws, rather than any changes in circumstances.
Lord Blagger: No large industrialised nation is unicameral.
Try New Zealand. Unicameral.
Do you have evidence that as a result New Zealand is suffering from dictatorship or some other affront to democracy?
Ah yes. That’s the UK model
Denmark? Suffering some abuse of the democratic process?
Ah yes Greece. They are suffering. Partly because of idiot lying politicians who blagged their way into the Euro. Now because of the unelected and their right to say no, we’re not paying.
Finland – not doing to bad either
Hungary – you might have a point there. Teaching the UK a lesson of why politicians aren’t to be trusted. They just stole all private pensions. All of them, and spent the proceeds.
South Korea. Large industrialised nation.
Latvia. Now they have their act in order, one of the better off Euro countries.
Portugal – basket case. Another lot of politicians spending money they don’t have.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicameralism
Check the list, there a lot more than you think. Standards of education dropping a bit … 🙂
Lord Blagger: As I said, no large industrialised nation is unicameral. None of those you have mentioned are large industrialised nations. Look at the exhaustive list published by Louis Massicotte. The divide is quite clear.
@Lord Norton:
Basic instinct in the main…. And please note I wrote, too many women, not no women at all. Women are an excellent balance to any Government, but, too many is not strength. Margaret Thatcher was well aware of that.
However ‘The Sultanate of Women’ brought down the Ottoman Empire because of their underhand in fighting and the triviality of their thinking in politics. In other words, they were more interested in personal gratification rather than the strength of their Empire.
This is a brief outline. And of course PC creates difficulties.
http://www.turizm.net/turkey/history/ottoman3.html
It is also suggested that the Russian Revolution was predominantly over influenced by ‘too many’ women.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Revolution_and_the_Emancipation_of_Women
However, if you show me where women have ruled, or do rule today, and the strength of their country grows, I will eat my hat.
@LN:
Ah! They found it.
maude elwes: As you say, you refer to women rather than a woman, so could you offer more recent examples of countries run primarily by women as opposed to a woman leader? I am not sure I want to restrict the number of women in politics because of the history of the Ottoman Empire.
@Lord Norton:
Well, as the matriarchal societies of today, of which there are only a couple, the Minangkabau of West Sumatra and the Masuo in South East China, have little or no strength as nations, I have little draw on.
However, the two separate peoples do show their males to be ineffective and unlikely to participate in the society in any productive way. This is the result of the issues dominating centre ground of their female leaders not creating active stimulation to the male population. Therefore, they become dormant.
If you look at the nearest modern day equivalent, Sweden, which has 51% female activity in government, it is already obvious the male gender is losing interest in participating in mathematical, scientific, and leadership matters.
Which is the result of being ignored, side tracked and in the position of a continual perception of emasculation. As it grows more acceptable in that society to concentrate on predominantly female centric issues and the worth of the male, other than as pseudo females, child minding, baby care, house cleaning, sexual ambivalence, etc.. the more they will disengage and the society will stagnate. Boys are already under achieving at an alarming rate. Of course Sweden is trying hard to hide the facts from their public and the world.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9604.00201/abstract
This next link should have been placed below the paragraph to come, but I messed up.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nymm57DQ8PE
However, what is more likely to happen in Sweden is, they will be taken over by a male dominated insurgence of an immigrant section of the population, which will impose the will of their culture on the already weakened society they have moved into. As the masculine gender has already lost the inclination or ability to assert their own will against the newly dominant culture, it is inevitable that this will take place and in the not too distant future. It is the natural instinct of the male population to lead, and therefore, it cannot do other.
In fact, it is already taking place by the aggressive removal of the basic necessity for Democracy, freedom of speech.
Which, of course, is rapidly spreading throughout the Scandinavian countries as we know from the recent Norwegian situation.
And this is why I suggest, too many women creates weak government.
maude elwes: Rather tenuous, especially in seeking to generalise (in Europe)from an N of 1.
@Lord Norton:
Do you have an alternative example that displays a thriving, content nation with a strong standing stable government, ruled by a majority of women? One where the men in that nation also perform to their full potential?
Governments who have a heavy female content centre on peripheral minutia, such as inane legislation, ie: white paper should no longer be used in schools or as a general practice, because it does not instill a sense of racial ‘equality’ in the minds of the population. There must be multi colour paper in usage, including dark colours such as black and brown….? Additinally, children costumed as witches must be dressed in white or pink and fairies in black. And Guy Fawkes day should be replaced by an alternative celebration as the implications of Brtish historical events denotes a leaning toward the raising of men as heros, even when their intention is sinister….. Here lies the dubious sensitivity of female priorities in power.
And there are thousands of examples of this feeble calibre of unstable thought filtering into a society that shuns serious issues it desperately has to surmount.
However, the decline of a nation has to be placed squarely on the shoulders of those blinkered men unable to function in their full capacity as leaders.
maude elwes: Until we get a government with a preponderance of women, we won’t know. However, if they were of the Margaret Thatcher variety, I suspect they would not focus on minor issues.
You appear to blame men for what happens and women for what could happen.
@The Hansard People:
Will you please be kind enough to let me know how I can add an avatar to my posts. I’ve searched endlessly for the download button, to no avail.
Thank you,
Maude
I may not be as ‘good’ a British citizen as those participating above with correct answers, and with such as Maude Elwes peripheral expertises or insights
but I still dearly need to know the “CV” run-down on each name’s lifeplaces-experiences, workplaces-expertises, and judicidial-wisdoms
along with detail of each’s imitable-life-leadership and personally individual and sustainworthy humasn development
to help in my better democratisation and sustain-worthy individual human development
or is any of this incompatible with LOTB rationale and if so where and why ?
please
milesjsd: I read into this that you agree that whether politicians are male or female is not relevant to achieving desirable policy goals.
Three thoughts –
1. How should Politics be integrated with the other main domains of
Earthlife Survival & Thrival, and
Human Civilisation (… e.g. “Lifeplaces” versus “Workplaces”; “Economics” versus “Geography&Ecology&Rationality*) ?
2. We need to re-frame your (reasonably-correct) reading-into, that “whether politicians are male or female is not relevant to achieving desirable policy goals”, for several reasons
(a) in few workplaces and lifeplaces is the task or situation-at-hand such as to require prioritisation into male or female participation, leadership, or command.
(i) therefore “relevant” is a weaker, less appropriate term than “prioritous” (if this is “neologistic” please correct)
(b) similarly
(ii)”achieving” needs to be preceded by “setting” (goals)
((which is one reason I continually press for friendly Method III Needs & Hows recognition and win-win-win cooperative problem solving as a first resort))
(iii) “desirable political goals” needs some similar editing –
(consider whether a Political-Goal should ever be set from a merely “desirable” base).
3. I would say that any “agreement” thereto would need to be similarly based upon open-questioning & inductive reasoning, and not (as your very brief ‘paraphrase’ suggests) solely upon categorically deductive conclusioning.
——-
Summarising, cetera paribus again of course,
my immediate response would be “Something like that, yes”.
@Lord Norton:
That last line of mine was aimed at men who, in power, refuse to ignore idiocy and pick up the reigns of leadership and steer the nation to the vision they profess to have at election time.