SU elections 2015: Half voters female, All officers male

An almost equal number of female and male students voted for Warwick SU’s all white male sabbatical team last year, revealed a Freedom of Information request made by the Boar.

Of 5,184 total voters, 50% were male, 49.4% female, and 0.6% defining as of other genders unspecified in the data.

For the first time in recent history, Warwick’s student body elected a sabbatical officer team made up of only white male students.

The sabbs are elected as working representatives of Warwick’s student body in the University’s Students’ Union (SU).

Last Spring, the outcome received criticism from students in a number of media sources, including the Telegraph and the Tab Warwick.

The criticisms focused mainly on whether an all-white male sabbatical team would be able to accurately represent and act to secure the interests of an ethnically diverse student population of all genders.

In comparison, the two elections prior, in which a notably higher proportion of male students voted, female-majority sabbatical teams were elected both times.

The sabbatical teams for the two previous years were made up of four female and three male officers.

Development and democracy officer Oliver Rice noted that the figures do not account for students who identify as being of a gender outside of the University-held data:

“The gender data is that provided by the University has previously only held ‘Male’ and ‘Female’ values. A small number of students are marked ‘Other’, but we do not believe the option to set this option is currently available to students.”

A significantly higher proportion of candidates who ran in the 2014 sabbatical officer elections were female. In 2014 , 64% of the candidates identified as female, compared with only 27% of candidates in 2015.

This could go some way towards explaining a lack of females elected last year, however the proportion was not significantly higher in 2013, at 36% candidates female. In that year, 4 female candidates were elected as full-time sabbatical officer.

The trend suggests a steadily decreasing number of voters overall, with around 1,500 fewer students voting in 2015 than in 2013. Voter turnout fell from 28% in 2013 to 22% last year, according to student population data from Warwick’s Academic Statistics and Planning Office.

Within that number, a falling proportion of male students have been voting each year.

Co-president of Warwick Anti-Sexism Society, Lily Pickard, commented: “More needs to be done to encourage women to stand for Sabb roles, and I think it reflects on society as a whole that, in this case, the assumption was made by the majority of voters that the white male candidates were more qualified for the roles.”

Since the SU does not currently hold data on Ethnicity, it is unknown to the Boar how many of the total voters were students of an ethnic minority (BAME) background respectively.