Gender in the House of Commons
Gender balance in the House of Commons following the 2024 UK General Election
Gender composition in the House of Commons overall
Following the 2024 General Election, there are now more women in the House of Commons than ever before.
There are now 264 women MPs — or 40.6% — in the House of Commons. Men represent the remaining 59.4% of seats — or 386 MPs. While the Commons remains majority-male, the percentage of women has improved upon the 34.8% of seats (226) they held before the July election.
Just as this election has been recorded breaking in many ways, it has been record-breaking for the descriptive representation of women in the UK House of Commons. In this post, I provide data on the gender balance overall and by each of the main political parties.
1. Gender balance by party
When looking at how gender balance overall is distributed by party, it is clear that the increase in the number of women in Parliament is in large part due to the increase in Labour MPs and the decrease in Conservative MPs.
The vast majority of women in the Commons are Labour MPs. Indeed, of the 264 women MPs overall, 72.3% (191) sit on the Government benches. Of the remaining women MPs, 11.7% (31) are Liberal Democrats and 11.4% (30) are Conservatives, with the remaining 12 women MPs representing smaller parties.
Overall, of the 650 MPs sitting in the House of Commons following the July election, the gender composition by party is as follows:
Labour: 221 men (34%), 191 women (29.4%)
Conservative: 91 men (14%), 30 women (4.6%)
Liberal Democrat: 41 men (6.3%), 31 women (4.8%)
SNP: 9 men (1.2%), 1 woman (0.2%)
Reform: 5 men (0.8%), 0 women (0%)
Green: 1 man (0.2%), 3 women (0.5%)
Plaid: 1 man (0.2%), 3 women (0.5%)
Other: 18 men (2.8%), 5 women (0.8%)
2. Gender balance within parties
What does the situation look like within parties? Four parties outperform the 40:60 gender balance overall: Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the Greens, and Plaid Cymru each have better gender balance within their party MPs. In contrast, the Conservatives, the SNP, and Reform each underperform on gender balance relative to the overall composition of the House.
Disclaimer: For the 2024 UK General Election, I was a member of the Psephology Team for the BBC. All data used for the analysis in this post was collected for the use of the BBC Psephology Team. Percentages are my calculations, so any errors are my own and not the BBC’s. MP gender was identified by using publicly available sources.