According to the polls, the UK is on its way to having its third female Prime Minister. This is good news, and it’s made even better by the fact that Liz Truss (as Theresa May before her) can hardly be described as having all the qualities you’d ideally want in a Prime Minister. At long last, the top jobs seem to be up for grabs by women with all levels of ability, a luxury that men have long enjoyed. Though we are still very far from real equality in politics: a dishevelled-looking woman who behaves so chaotically — in her private live as much as in politics — as Boris Johnson did, would never become Prime Minister. Standards of decorum are still higher for women than men.
Women make up only about 35 per cent of the House of Commons and 28 per cent of the Lords, which is well below the proportion of women in the UK population (about 50-51 per cent). Many blame those low figures on the hostility women face in some parts of the British media: there are indeed very few other countries where a newspaper would be tolerated running a story about a female MP uncrossing her legs to ‘distract’ her opposite number; or where a front page about a meeting between two female political leaders focused on their ‘shanks’ could go ahead.
