Record number of women to stand in General Election

16 November 2019, 12:08

A record number of women are set to stand in next month's General Election, making up a third of candidates.

Analysis found that 1,120 female candidates have registered – 34 per cent of the total.

This is the highest proportion of women candidates in a general election in history, up from 29 per cent in 2017 and 26 per cent in 2015.

More than half of all Labour's candidates are women - a first for a major political party in the UK.

By contrast, about three in ten of those standing for the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats are women.

The overall number of candidates in December's poll is currently 3,322 – up on the 3,304 who stood in 2017.

Labour is fielding 631 candidates in this election (not including the Speaker, Lindsay Hoyle), and 333 of these are women: 53 per cent.

This is a big jump from the 2017 election, when the equivalent figure for Labour was 42 per cent.

For the Conservatives, 190 of their 635 candidates at this election are women, making a total of 30 per cent – up from 29 per cent in. 2017.

Of the 611 Lib Dem candidates, 188 (31 per cent) are women - up from 29 per cent last time.

Two of the smaller parties have higher levels of female representation at this election than both the Tories and the Lib Dems.

The Greens have 498 candidates and 204 (41 per cent) are women. For the SNP, 20 of its 59 candidates (34 per cent) are women.

Meanwhile, exactly a quarter of Plaid Cymru's candidates are women: nine out of 36.

Female candidates comprise 54 of the Brexit Party's total of 275, or 20 per cent.