I'll just add a few points to Sarah's, particularly around the approach to the recruitment of women candidates, which suggests a passive role for women or that women are not interested in politics and that's why they're not putting themselves forward.
There's increasing and very convincing evidence of a role model effect that women in politics can play to make young women more interested in politics, more engaged, and perhaps later on more likely to participate. There was a very famous study and experiment in India in which women were randomly allocated to be leaders in villages, and the effect that had on young women in those villages and on their parents' aspirations for their children was quite dramatic and fascinating.
The research would suggest that if parties are actively demanding women, be that through the use of a quota or because they are really actively seeking them, women realize it's a demand and actually become more engaged. Equally, when women see more women involved in politics, a new generation of women is more likely to come through, so you can create a virtuous circle, whereas when politics looks like a men's game, you have quite the opposite, a vicious circle.
I also think there's a real argument for the reputation-enhancing case for the introduction of a quota. Sarah and I were just on an expert panel for electoral reform for the Welsh Assembly. The Welsh Assembly has been at the forefront of the representation of women since it was first constituted, when it had one of the highest proportions of women members in the world. It was 50% at the time, but it's fallen back to the mid-forties. Our recommendation that they adopt quotas has been relatively positively received, we think, because of the fact that Wales has this reputation for being forward-thinking about gender.
I can see that Canada equally has a global reputation for being progressive and forward-looking. I think there's a real case to be made to Canada, having fallen from a higher position to 60th out of 190 countries, for actually making an intervention and making a statement that Canada's committed to gender equality.
Finally, there is Sarah's point about job-sharing for members. We did some research in 2013 and then followed it up last year, investigating the parental status of MPs in the British House of Commons, and we found a substantial gap between men and women, with more women MPs not having children.
One of the reasons we strongly advocate a quota-plus policy is that quotas are important to send the signal that women are welcome in politics and that they're wanted, and to create this virtuous circle. Equally we want a diverse group of politicians. For those who have caring roles and perhaps also for people with disabilities who find it hard to work full time, we think that in the modern world many employers offer the ability to people to work flexibly, and there should be a way for that to be possible for representatives as a group where we need a diverse group of people. That's why we're advocating job-sharing wherever we can.