Labour's All-Women Shortlists (AWS), an example of an equality guarantee, have proved they can deliver. Labour's 98 women constitute 77 percent of all the women MPs in the House of Commons and 27.5 percent of the Parliamentary Labour Party. Moreover, half of all Labour's women MPs currently sitting in the House of Commons were selected on AWS, either in 1997 or 2005. Yet, rather than the success of AWS being a key story of the 2005 general election, it was the defeat of the AWS candidate, Maggie Jones, in the ultra-safe Labour seat of Blaenau Gwent that dominated media coverage. `This is what happens when you don't listen' said the successful, ex-Labour candidate, the late Peter Law: AWS lose votes. This article shows, however, that, Blaenau Gwent aside, there was no significant anti-AWS effect at the 2005 general election. AWS candidates largely suffered from being new candidates. Also, even though we cannot differentiate between an AWS effect and a differential sex effect for new and incumbent candidates, we find that neither is significant.
Allison, P. (1990) `Change Scores as Dependent Variables in Regression Analysis', in C. Clogg (ed.) Sociological Methodology, vol. 20, pp. 93-114. Oxford: Blackwell.
2.
Angrist, J., I. Guido and R. Donald (1996) `Identification of Causal Effects Using Instrumental Variables', Journal of the American Statistical Association91: 444-55.
3.
Bound, J., D.A. Jaeger and R. Baker (1995) `Problems with Instrumental Variables Estimation When the Correlation between the Instruments and the Endogenous Explanatory Variable is Weak', Journal of the American Statistical Association90: 443-50.
4.
Bradbury, J. (2006) `Wales: the Second Post Devolution General Election' , in A. Geddes and J. Tonge (eds) Britain Decides: The UK General Election 2005 . Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan
5.
Campbell, R., S. Childs and J. Lovenduski (2006) `Women's Equality Guarantees and the Conservative Party', Political Quarterly77(1): 18-27.
6.
Campbell, R. and J. Lovenduski (2005) `Winning Women's Votes? The Incremental Track to Equality', in P. Norris and C. Wlezien (eds) Britain Votes 2005. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
7.
Childs, S. (2003) `The Sex Discrimination (Election Candidates) Act and its Implications', Representation39: 83-92.
8.
Childs, S. (2004) New Labour Women MPs. London : Routledge.
9.
Childs, S. (2006) `Feminising British Politics: Sex and Gender in the Election', in A. Geddes and J. Tonge (eds) Britain Decides: The UK General Election 2005. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
10.
Curtice, J., S. Fisher and M. Steed (2005) `The Results Analysed', in D. Kavanagh and D. Butler (eds) The British General Election of 2005. Basingtoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
11.
Cutts, D. (2006) `Continuous Campaigning and Electoral Outcomes: The Liberal Democrats in Bath', Political Geography25: 72-88.
12.
Denver, D. and G. Hands (1997) Modern Constituency Electioneering. London: Frank Cass.
13.
Fieldhouse, E. and D. Cutts (2006) `The Effectiveness of Party Campaigns in 2005: Combining Evidence from Campaign Spending and Agent Survey Data', Elections, Public Opinion & Parties Conference, University of Nottingham.
14.
Fieldhouse, E., D. Cutts and A. Russell (2006) `Neither North nor South: The Liberal Democrat Performance in the 2005 General Election', Journal of Elections, Public Opinion & Parties16(1): 77-92.
15.
Gerber, A. and D. Green (2000) `The Effects of Canvassing, Telephone Calls, and Direct Mail on Voter Turnout: A Field Experiment', American Political Science Review94(3): 653-63.
16.
Green, D. and A. Gerber (2003) `The Under-Provision of Experiments in Political Science', Annals of the American Academy, AAPS, 589, 94-111.
17.
Imai, K. (2005) `Do Get Out the Vote Calls Reduce Turnout? The Importance of Statistical Methods for Field Experiments', American Political Science Review99: 283-300.
18.
Imai, K. and van Dyk, D. (2004) `Causal Inference with General Treatment Regimes: Generalizing the Propensity Score', Journal of the American Statistical Association99(467): 854-66.
19.
Johnston, R.J. and C.J. Pattie (1995) `The Impact of Party Spending on Party Constituency Campaigns at Recent British General Elections', Party Politics1: 261-74.
20.
Johnston, R.J. and C.J. Pattie (1996) `The Strength of Party Identification Among the British Electorate: An Exploration', Electoral Studies15: 295-308.
21.
Kittilson, M. (2006) Challenging Parties, Changing Parliaments: Women and Elected office in Contemporary Western Europe. USAOhio State University Press.
22.
Lovenduski, J. (2001) `Women and Politics: Minority Representation or Critical Mass?' in P. Norris (ed.) Britain Votes 2001. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
23.
Lovenduski, J. (2005) Feminising Politics. Cambridge : Polity Press.
24.
Mitchell, J. and J. Bradbury (2002) `Scotland and Wales: the First Post Devolution General Election', in A. Geddes and J. Tonge (eds) Labour's Second Landslide: The British General Election 2001. Manchester : Manchester University Press.
25.
Norris, P., J. Lovenduski and R. Campbell (2004) Gender and Political Participation in Britain. Electoral Commission Report, April: 1-84.
26.
Pattie, C.J., R.J. Johnston and E.A. Fieldhouse (1995) `Winning the Local Vote: the Effectiveness of Constituency Campaign Spending in Great Britain, 1983-1992' , American Political Science Review89: 969-86.
27.
Pattie, C.J., P. Whiteley, R.J. Johnston and P. Seyd (1994) `Measuring Local Campaign Effects: Labour Constituency Campaigning at the 1987 General Election', Political Studies42: 469-79.
28.
Rosenbaum, P. and Rubin, D. (1983) `The Central Role of the Propensity Score in Observational Studies for Causal Effects', Biometrika70(1): 41-55.
29.
Rosenbaum, P. and Rubin, D. (1985) `Constructing a Control Group using Multi-variate Matched Sampling Methods that Incorporate the Propensity Score', The American Statistician39(1): 33-38.
30.
Whiteley, P. and P. Seyd (1994) `Local Party Campaigning and Voting Behaviour in Britain', Journal of Politics56: 242-51.
