A feminist upbringing is fine – if you want to become an engineer or chairman of the Tory party

Female models, responsible for draping themselves over new cars and appearing in their underwear in advertisements to promote this year’s British International Motor Show in Birmingham, would describe as ‘out-of-date’ and ‘pathetic’ the government’s stereotyping of women into becoming politicians. It follows the case of Miss Estelle Morris who was browbeaten into becoming secretary of state for education when she would obviously have been happier reclining across the bonnet of the new Mini.

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Nonetheless, ‘out-of-date’ and ‘pathetic’ was how Mrs Patricia Hewitt, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, in an interview, described those girls. She called for more women engineers in the car industry. But the models would take the view that Mrs Hewitt’s attitudes go back to Miss Germaine Greer, and early 1970s feminism. Women have moved on since then.