Dropping the gender quotas bill is a major blow to the Welsh Government’s programme of reform
Jess Blair, Director/Cyfarwyddwr, Electoral Reform Society Cymru
This week the Welsh Government made a surprise announcement confirming they were dropping a landmark piece of legislation which would have delivered gender equality in the Senedd.
The legislation proposed quotas for the Senedd elections which would have ensured an increase in the number of female candidates and likely an increase in the number of women elected from the 2030 Senedd elections.
The Senedd Cymru (Electoral Candidate Lists) Bill was already making its way through the legislative process of the Senedd and its next debate was scheduled for 1st October, but on Monday night the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Jane Hutt, published a statement announcing that the Welsh Government would be withdrawing the Bill.
The plans for gender quotas, which would have guaranteed the representation of women in future parliaments, were part of a package of wider reforms to the Senedd.
These wider reforms will be in place for the next Senedd elections in 2026 and will see the size of the Senedd increase to 96 from the current 60, bringing the Welsh Parliament much more in line with the Scottish Parliament with their 129 MSPs and Stormont’s 90 MLAs.
New voting system
A new voting system will be in place, moving from the Additional Member System (which used a combination of the Westminster First Past the Post system with top up seats elected through Closed Lists) to a fully Closed List system. 16 new constituencies will also be created allowing six Senedd Members to be elected in each.
The news that the gender quotas bill has been dropped comes as a major blow to this programme of reform.
In terms of equality, legislative quotas would have been a first for the UK, but certainly not a first internationally. Half of the counties in the world use some kind of electoral quota for their parliament.
Wales isn’t a stranger to leading the way when it comes to gender parity. The Senedd was the first legislature in the world to reach 50:50 gender balance, way back in 2003. But since then representation of women in the Welsh Parliament has slipped back and is currently at 43%.
While this is relatively high in terms of the representation of women, it has been reliant on political parties taking the first step in the fair selection of women candidates and the placement of these candidates in winnable constituencies or high on lists. There is no guarantee of this continuing in future elections.
Backstop
That lack of guarantee is exactly what quotas would have addressed. These quotas would have been a backstop ensuring a fair amount of representation on ballot papers and in the Siambr. Without that it is now down to political parties to ensure diversity of their candidates, something we know can be patchy at best.
There is a risk that the next Senedd could be the least gender balanced in history- and it’s not as small a risk as some may suggest.
There is another problem with the ditching of this legislation and that is the electoral system that will now be used from the 2026 elections, the Closed List system. One of the only justifications for the Closed List system was the ease in which gender quotas could work with the lists. Without quotas there is now no justification for this electoral system.
Throughout the course of the process to reform the Senedd, we at ERS Cymru have repeatedly warned that this system will mean voters, for the first time, cannot vote for an individual candidate.
Rather than voting for their preferred candidate, voters will now be confronted entirely with party lists. With politicians effectively decided by party HQ rather than the electorate we will be faced with a complete lack of accountability.
While Closed Lists should improve proportionality, i.e how seats match votes, this lack of accountability and voter choice will significantly undermine this electoral system.
Good electoral systems combine two key elements: proportionality, so legislatures accurately represent the way people voted, and also accountability, so voters can reward good representatives or eject bad ones.
Disproportional
First Past the Post, which is used in Westminster, is deeply disproportional, as we have just seen with the historical disproportional result in July where Welsh Labour won 84% of the seats on 37% of the vote.
ERS has always championed the Single Transferable Vote (STV), as it provides results that far more accurately reflect how the electorate voted while also maintaining strong accountability with a clear constituency link and voting for named candidates. STV, which is already used in Scotland as well as Northern and the Republic of Ireland, should always have been the system for the next Senedd elections.
With plans now firmly in place for the next election it is unlikely that anything will change.
There is a huge risk that we will get to May 2026 and heavily regret the absence of both gender quotas and a voting system that gives people a real choice on who represents them.
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It does seem to be a strange, backwards decision. It serves men more than women. Yet Wales says they are inclusive and progressive? I think not.
Back home we had this for a few years and it worked well.
This bill would still have served men more than women as it allowed self-ID of gender as a basis of balance not the actual sex of the individual. That is not true balance of the sexes.
And how many transgender women are trying to gain office in Wales?
None.
I am afraid this is a scare tactic based on no facts.
It has harmed women
So where were you when it came to opposing the Bill Jess and ERS? Bit late to shout about the unfairness now. That was left to groups like WRN Wales to stand up. You talk about increasing the number of female candidates via this Bill, while knowing full well the Bill didn’t once mention the word female. There was a reason for that of course – they couldn’t use female as it would have prevented men who fancy themselves to be women from standing as women. ERS were prepared to let that travesty happen. The Bill would have guaranteed up… Read more »
Well said.
Whilst this article is factually correct it does not tell the whole story.
This Gender Balance bill was an attempt to sneak Self-ID through the back door.
It would have allowed men to claim to be women without the legal fiction of the Gender Recognition Certificate.
This meant men would have two bites of the cherry.
Also this bill would have nothing to help women stay in politics. There was none of the necessary structural changes to the system needed to enable women to balance work with home.
This was just virtue signalling by a superficial fauxgressive govt.
It’s not quite factually correct though. It says the Bill would improve female representation. The Bill didn’t mention the word female once.
That must be deliberate as the notes accompanying the Bill make it clear that anyone could make a ‘gender statement’ and say they are a woman. And face no consequences for doing so.
Fauxgressive? I like it. What would that be in Welsh?
If it means less women like Jane Hutt, Eluned Morgan, the Watson woman or that thick one in charge of finance who have contributed or achieved SFA in Gvt I am all for scrapping it. Can we have a intelligence and accomplishment based electoral system instead ?
Only if we had a more intelligent electorate. 65% of voters in West Norfolk voted for Matt Hancock remember.
Sorry I mean Suffolk. 69% of South West Norfolk voters voted for Liz Truss though in 2019, although they managed to kick her out in 2024.
Agreed 100%
STV would have meant voting on an individual’s merits, quotas would not. It is significant that the writer approved of Closed Lists because they make the introduction of quotas easier and lost that approval with the demise of quotas.
Shocking ignorance from a director. As many have pointed out below it would NOT have led to fair representation of women but more unfair representation by men who say they are women. We have seen over and over how men say they are women to gain access to women’s safe spaces etc and as the caliber of politicians seems to low at the moment it was obvious that this would be open to abuse by MEN. Not once does Jess Blair mention that this would have gone against the Equality Act 2010 and this is why it was ditched. Equality… Read more »
The bill was a perfect example of Welsh Labour’s addiction to “making history” at the expense of making sense. First it tried to be ultra-feminist by loading the dice so that parties could name lists consisting entirely of women, but no list could be over 50% male. Then it pandered to a different group by allowing self-ID. The result was it ended up annoying everyone. All to fix a problem that was of dubious significance to begin with.
Still, its real purpose of was to provide “progressive” cover for introducing closed lists, and it served that well enough.
Perhaps a form of STV can still be included. A vote for an independent who doesn’t receive enough votes to be elected is wasted. This makes it harder for independents because many will still feel the need to vote tactically to ensure they don’t inadvertently support the party they don’t want. But if those “wasted” votes from an independent that wasn’t elected could be redistributed to the voter’s second preference it could improve voter engagement and support independent candidates.
Or someone could establish a new political party with its USP that candidate selections will be open rather than a stitch-up at Party HQ.
No mention here from Jess that the bill was deliberately worded to allow ‘gender self ID’ via the back door. So it was not guaranteeing increased female representation. Indeed, the word ‘female’ was carefully avoided throughout. Instead, it was ‘women’. And according to the bill, a woman was – well, anyone who said they were. Which is ‘gender self ID’. Wales does not have the power to make this law. Gender recognition, and much equality law, is not devolved (thank gawd). The Senedd received clear legal advice that they could face costly legal challenges if the Bill was passed. So… Read more »
Brilliant idea. I want the best people to be politicians, not token appointments. If that meant an all female or all male or all Martian Seneedd then that would be fine. Gender quotas are always wrong.
On the topic of aliens I suggest an amended version of the Drake equation. Estimate the fraction of the population of Wales who are trans women, what fraction of those would seek election to the Senedd, what fraction of those have some kind of beef vs. biological women / those who were assigned female at birth, and therefore deliberately try to subvert a gender quota to their own nefarious ends, and then the fraction of those who actually get elected.
Quotas are not progressive or fair, they are idiotic. I don’t care what a person’s gender is, all I want is the best person for the job. Quotas like this is how you increase the chances of having ill qualified people in positions of power as their chances of being chosen is simply on the basis of gender. Good thing it has been dropped.
I agree with Ash P. While we’d all – I hope – wish to see more women in politics quotas are a grossly manipulative and unfair way of achieving this. Notably, the possibility of imposing quotas was one of the justifications, or excuses, for imposing the undemocratic and alienating Closed List system.
It may be a blow to the Welsh Labour Government, but its not a blow to the electorate. Gender quotas are an affront to democracy. We should be able to select candidates by the ability to do the job,irrespective if they are male or female. Should there be a quota system to ensure adequate representation of black or ethnic minority candidates, or LGBTQ representatives? When I vote for someone I couldn’t care less what their race, gender, or sexuality is, as long as they represent my views and are able to do the job properly. I hope at some point… Read more »