At 6pm on Wednesday 17 May 2023, Dr Catrona Mackie gave a #UCMTalks paper on behalf of the project team introducing some of the preliminary findings of the project.
The Women in Manx Politics project combines historical, legal, and interview data to understand the experience of women in Manx politics, principally in the House of Keys, from 1919 to the present. Our preliminary findings suggest that this experience can only be understood in the context of the Isle of Man as a small democracy, and in particular as one in which party institutionalisation has never taken place. The understanding of women in public life has changed considerably since 1919, as we demonstrate through public domain discussion of the ongoing battle to allow women to serve in Manx juries (only finally resolved in 1980), and interviews with Manx women MHKs from the late twentieth century on. This has contributed to, and been driven by, increased numbers of women in the House of Keys. There remain distinctive features of the Manx political scene which are crucial to understanding the experiences of women MHKs, four of which we cover in this paper: the nature of campaigning in the Isle of Man; the architecture of Tynwald, the “always on” culture of Manx politics; and the collective dimension of substantial numbers of women in the Keys.
Women in Manx Politics 