10 Things You Should Know About Sex & Power

Well, we're not talking about sex and power in that sense. It's time to talk about who really has power; Counting Women In have just published ‘Sex & Power: Who Runs Britain?’ Here are ten things we've learned from the report that you should know

1. Just 5.3% of editors of national daily and Sunday newspapers are women

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Which is awesome if you want your news written from just a male perspective. But when how news is reported is influencing social attitudes, it’s worrying that only 1 of 19 editors in the UK is a woman.

2. Only 1 in 10 current affairs and political magazine editors is a woman

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The Westminster lobby is filled with journalists reporting on what happens in Parliament. It is these journalists who play a huge role in leading and framing political debate. Yet current affairs and political media are still dominated by men: several British daily newspapers don’t have a single female lobby journalist.

3. Only 7 in 40 think tanks are run by women

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Like the media, think tanks are highly influential since they frame political debate and inspire government policy. Again women are severely under-represented: only 17.5% of leadership positions in think tanks are occupied by women.

4. And the new Police and Crime Commissioners are almost all male too...

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Only 6 of the 41 PCCs elected in 2012 were female, and in the West Midlands PCC by-election in August none of the candidates was a woman. These posts were meant to hold the police to account - but are they really able to do that when they are so unrepresentative?

5. Only 25% of the most senior civil servants are women

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Yes Minister, the real people running the country are the senior civil servants. When 75% of them are men, its easy to see why women are not getting a seat at the table.

6. Yet over half of all civil servants are women

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As reported by the Civil Service, women make up 53% of all civil servants.

With so many women working in the civil service, are we really saying none of them are qualified to take on leadership roles?

7. Internationally the UK Parliament has fallen from 20th to 65th

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According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, there are 64 countries with more women in their national parliaments than the UK has in Westminster. That’s right, the Mother of Parliaments is being schooled.

Rwanda is at the top of the IPU’s league table, with 51 of 80 seats in the Chamber of Deputies being occupied by women.

8. And only 8 out of the 33 people eligible to attend Cabinet meetings are female

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The Cabinet is the government's decision-making body yet only five of its full members are female and, of the ten ministers who also attend, just three are women.

The Prime Minister promised a third of cabinet ministers would be female by April 2015 so he still has a long way to go.

9. But the UK is at its best when we look at who is representing us in European Parliament

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Where the parties have taken action, progress has been made! Women now make up 41.1% of UK MEPs in European Parliament in 2014. This is up from 24.4% in 2004, making this the most improved area for UK women in politics.

This is due to more parties taking positive action to improve female representation along with a proportional electoral system for European elections.

10. It’s been more than 80 years since women gained the same right to vote as men

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Yet they are often missing from politically powerful positions in the UK.

Women have waited for centuries for fair and equal access to political power but they are still waiting. At the current rate of progress, a child born today will be drawing her pension before she has any chance of being equally represented in Parliament. That is too long to wait.

The Counting Women In campaign is working to change this and aims to achieve 50/50 gender representation across all levels of local, national and devolved government in the UK. You can find out more about the 'Sex & Power: Who Runs Britain?' report and get involved with the campaign at www.countingwomenin.org