Gender and ethnicity all the same to Scottish Labour?

A  row has broken out in the Scottish Labour Party about plans to scrap its commitment to ensuring equal numbers of men and women in the Scottish parliament.

Proposed changes to party rules would leave women competing with ethnic minority candidates for positions on the ‘top-up’ lists from which some Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs) MSPs are chosen.

Scottish Labour currently have 46 MSPs of whom 23 are women. The governing Scottish National Party have 14 women out of a contingent of 47 members.

A number of high profile female Labour MSPs are standing down at the next election and if the process of  ’zipping’ (matching each male candidate with a female candidate) is abandoned it is feared that the gains made by women in the parliament will be lost.

A Scottish Labour party spokesman told The Sunday Times, “A decision will be taken in the next few weeks”.

The full story was published in The Sunday Times 20 September 2010.