Stopping snap elections could help to support more women into politics, according to one former MS.

Bethan Sayed, who stepped down at the last Senedd elections to spend time with her newborn son, said women could be better supported by their parties if general election dates were set in advance.

Rishi Sunak’s general election announcement last month caught many, including some in his own party, by surprise.

  • AutoTL;DRB
    link
    English
    25 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    "Ms Sayed said she felt political parties that relied only on candidates to put themselves forward, would find it harder to encourage women.

    Cathy Owens from political consultancy Deryn said its research suggested Wales would elect a “decent” number of women MPs in July – but parties still needed to do better.

    In the Senedd, the Welsh government is attempting to introduce gender quotas, where political parties would be required to have at least 50% women as candidates.

    The fund would be focused on the development and training of Black, Asian and minority ethnic members of Welsh Labour and trade unions, designed to empower candidates in selection, election, and progression within the party.

    To this end, we have backed statutory measures to increase diversity for the Senedd elections and will be developing mentoring programmes to support candidates from under-represented backgrounds ahead of 2026.

    "As a party that is proud to represent the whole of Wales, we want to ensure that our candidates fully reflect the demographics of our country in all of its variety.


    The original article contains 976 words, the summary contains 174 words. Saved 82%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!