After the revelation that every candidate running as president this year is white, and only one out of nine is a woman, Vision decided to look at the stats over the last five years of who went for President.
It has been revealed that there have been more joke candidates running for YUSU President than women or BME students, and that therefore the vast majority of candidates have been white males. The data was taken from the 2010-2014 elections.
Saskia Papadakis, YUSU Women’s Officer commented; “It is disappointing that women continue to be under-represented in YUSU presidential candidates, especially since 55% of students at the university are women.
The lack of female candidates says a lot about the enduring culture of misogyny at York, and I would suggest the university and the students’ union think about what they can do to encourage women to take on positions of leadership.”
Read the YUSU Women’s Officer comment HERE
THE YELLOW. IT BURNS MY EYES!!!
It would be great to see more female and BME presidential candidates. On a more positive note in the gender stakes at least, in the running for the other four officer candidacies are seven women and four men. No position is uncontested by a woman, and Welfare is an all-female lineup. I like to interpret that as women going for the well-defined, less glory-and-posturing but more hard work roles than the slightly vague job of “President”.
The fact that all the women running are serious about it and it’s consistently men who treat these £17k a year political roles as jokes is rather a statement in itself.
Why does this piece not criticise the current Woman’s officer? Yes culture to be blamed, but is there any evidence of elected positions making progress?
I’m pretty sure this infographic merely displays the lack of female candidates and speaks nothing of sexism or misogyny…
It’s good that BME represenation is generally proportional.
Can you release the raw data you’ve assembled? Who do you consider a joke?
Same story every year, less women nominate themselves than men so everyone complains about sexism. Here’s an idea, how about more women nominate themselves instead of just complaining about the fact that less of them are.
Because YUSU is a joke.
Enduring culture of misogyny at York? Really? Really??
Women are underrepresented in yusu?!?!? Crap! We should really have an officer (or two) to represent women in yusu that could deal with this sort of thing!
The job of YUSU president is not to represent me as woman, it is to represent me as a student. Isn’t the former why we have a women’s officer and doesn’t encouraging more women to run fall in her court? I couldn’t care less about the gender of my YUSU pres, only their policies, just as I hope no one cares about mine.
I wouldn’t mind the information that Oliver’s requested.
Under representation of women? We should really have some sort of officer (Maybe two?) in yusu specifically in place to represent women and deal with this sort of thing….
The article gives the impression that it is York to blame for these candidate ratios. Does that not rely on some assumption that there is 100% gender equality in society before entering York. Maybe York should encourage equality, maybe they do, this article doesn’t offer evidence to suggest York is responsible.
have a look at the demographics of the UK and you realise that on a percentage basis BME are over represented.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_Kingdom#Vital_statistics_1960_-_2012
The main thing I take from this research is that non-humans are under represented relative to their proportion of the wider Yorkshire population. I also expect that closer inspection of the data would reveal a lack of cheddar involved. Worrying.