Positive action

Fewer minority ethnic, disabled, LGBTI people and women are selected to stand as candidates for political parties which results in fewer of them being elected to local councils or national parliaments. The reasons why fewer people from minority groups are selected are complex. They are discussed in more detail in the ‘Attitudes and Assumptions’ section of the Equal Representation in Politics tool.

To address the barriers which underrepresented groups face in being selected as candidates, parties need to take positive action. Positive action is used to describe steps which help or encourage groups of people who face discrimination or barriers to being involved in work, volunteering activities, and public life. Positive action is lawful under the Equality Act and is a helpful way of increasing the diversity of your candidates. You should be considering positive action to increase the number of women, minority ethnic, disabled and LGBTI people selected as candidates for your party. Scotland has several different voting systems and various forms of positive action might be appropriate for different selections.

Positive actions to increase the number of women selected include gender-balancing methods such as:

• Gender quotas where you stipulate a certain percentage of your candidates have to be women
• Zipping lists where you alternate women and men on a council or regional list
• All women shortlists where only women are able to stand in certain seats

Other positive actions you should consider are:

• Targets for the number of disabled, ethnic minority and LGBTI candidates. For example, 1 in 5 people in Scotland are disabled. You could have a target that 20% of your candidates would be disabled
• Where a sitting member steps down, the national party might stipulate that post should be reserved for someone from an underrepresented group
• Acknowledging that some of your membership might not identify as a man or a women and making sure your target or quota system recognises that. For example: stating that the number of your candidates who identify as male and female won’t differ by more than 1. This would enable non-binary people to be selected as candidates without preventing you from reaching a target that 50% of your candidates would be women.
• Using the above positive actions in selection processes for your internal committees

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