A better balance

This week, Cllr Manjula Sood was inaugurated as Lord Mayor of Leicester – the first Asian woman lord mayor in the country. Support is needed to encourage more women from all communities to get involved in local politics, she tells Karen Thornton.

Manjula Sood used to help run her late husband Cllr Paul Sood’s campaign office during local elections, and accompany him on visits. It was no preparation for the culture shock she faced when she stood in her own right in his Leicester city council seat, after his sudden death in his ward in 1996. After three months struggling to cope, she wrote a resignation letter, but her party leader – also her ward co-councillor – tore it up.

“He said you are a damn good councillor and I’m not going to let you go,” recalls Cllr Sood (Lab). “The problem is, when you come in there is peer pressure that you should know everything: there is no support mechanism, and you don’t want the public to know your weaknesses,” says the former primary school teacher.

“Thank God I had a higher education. Many of those who hadn’t would find the language a barrier as well. Teaching is about caring and sharing, politics is completely different and so is the language. You need to be sign-posted but no-one gives you a lead to say, ‘this is how you do it’.”

Straight talking
She gives the example of acronyms such as CPA (comprehensive performance assessment) not being explained. She also – wrongly – assumed she was expected to attend every committee meeting because she was sent the papers for all of them. Cllr Sood (pictured, in her Lord Mayor’s attire) wants the language to be simplified, and for more induction and mentoring support to be made available to women and young people when they become councillors. But she believes the problems go further back, to drawing women into the political parties to start with, and to the parties’ selection procedures for choosing local candidates.

Community support
“We have to engage women to become party members – any party, not just Labour,” she says.

“We need more women from all walks of life in politics, and especially from ethnic minority backgrounds. Community leaders also have to come out and support women so they can take up community roles. Women find it difficult to come into politics. People think according to their faith, that their role is in the home – she’s a mother, she’s a wife, and she runs the household.

“We have to keep our culture and traditions and core values, but we have to open up our ideology. Many women feel they can’t empower themselves to face a male-dominated arena.”

“I empowered myself. I was a very shy woman, and now I have become very outspoken.

"Women’s representation is very important, so they can be aware of what’s around them and make a difference to local communities. They are already contributing to the social and economic system, but there is a lack of political representation – and women have their own issues.

“We have to support women, because only then will they be successful. Politics is a hard life but there are challenges and rewards as well.”

Twelve years on since her husband died, and with her two sons grown up (one of whom is also a councillor), Cllr Sood is glad she weathered the personal and political storms and stayed in local government. Now the city council’s cabinet member for health and wellbeing and an executive member of Leicester council of faiths, she hopes she will be an example for others to follow.

“To be Lord Mayor and to make history in the UK is a great honour and privilege. But I don’t want to be the first and last Asian woman lord mayor.”