Add your name: Elect the Lords so it has to equally represent women

Women make up just over a third of MPs in the Commons and the state of gender quality is even more dire in the Lords, where women account for around just 28 per cent of peers.

Proposals to reform the Lords are an unprecedented opportunity to make up for a century of grindingly slow progress on women's representation. An elected Lords would allow for mechanisms such as gender quotas to ensure that at least one of our houses of parliament would have equal representation of women.

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Background

Women make up just 28% of the lords

Prime ministers have consistently failed to use their powers of patronage to appoint women to the House of Lords. The first female peer was not able to sit in the Lords until 1958 and on the current pace of change we may not see a gender-balance upper chamber until well after 2050.

Bringing in an elected second chamber with a proportional electoral system could allow for gender balance to be baked in as a legal requirement. The current approach has failed, it's time for a fairly elected second chamber where voters decide who joins and leaves.