Intersectional Institutions: Representing Women and Ethnic Minorities in the UK Labour Party

The ‘Politics of Presence’ offered separate chapters, analyses and solutions to the descriptive representation of ethnic minorities and women. In line with the shift in recent years gender scholars towards a more intersectional approach, and using the case of the UK Labour Party’s All-Women Shortlist (AWS) policy, we ask how gender and race interact with each other during candidate selection. The paper uses interviews and two unique datasets: one consisting of all BME (Black and Ethnic Minority) MPs over the last two decades – considering their gender, party and ‘quota status’, and the other offering data on the race and gender of the candidates at each stage of Labour’s selection process for over one-hundred and fifty of the seats for the 2015 UK election. We look in particular at the ethnic make-up of the candidates throughout the selection of a candidate via an ‘AWS seat’ versus an ‘Open seat’, finding evidence to suggest two process take on different institutional forms. We draw too on the interview data to sketch the contours of the debates around policies to promote racial diversity, as compared to that of gender diversity, positing that though different arguments are used, similar solutions may in fact be appropriate.