Record number of women to stand in general election

A record number of women are set to stand in next month’s general election.

Provisional analysis by the PA news agency shows that 1,120 female candidates have registered – 34% of the total.

This is the highest proportion of women candidates in a general election in history, up from 29% in 2017 and 26% in 2015.

More than half of all Labour’s candidates are women – a first for a major political party in the UK.

By contrast, about three in 10 of those standing for the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats are women.

The overall number of candidates in December’s poll is currently 3,322.

This is a very small increase on the 3,304 candidates in the 2017 general election.

The total for 2019 could be revised slightly in the next few days, after the PA has completed its final verification of candidate data.

Labour is fielding 631 candidates in this election (not including the Speaker, Lindsay Hoyle), and 333 of these are women: 53%.

This is a big jump from the 2017 election, when the equivalent figure for Labour was 42%.

For the Conservatives, 190 of their 635 candidates at this election are women, making a total of 30%.

This is a very small increase on 29% in 2017.

Of the 611 Lib Dem candidates, 188 (31%) are women – up from 29% last time.

Two of the smaller parties have higher levels of female representation at this election than both the Tories and the Lib Dems.

The Greens have 498 candidates and 204 (41%) are women. For the SNP, 20 of its 59 candidates (34%) are women.

Meanwhile, exactly a quarter of Plaid Cymru’s candidates are women: nine out of 36.

Female candidates comprise 54 of the Brexit Party’s total of 275, or 20%.