It’s quite easy to grow quite used to the way things are, and only realise that they’re a bit odd when there’s a momentary shift. Today Parliament is packed with women, which is a bit of a shock to the system. They’re in New Palace Yard to film scenes from ‘Suffragette’, rather than as part of a new influx of female MPs or journalists. I have to admit that I often don’t notice how masculine this place is: you just get used to it and by and large Parliament is a very pleasant place to work indeed. It was only when a visiting female journalist remarked after the post-PMQs huddle this week that the discussion had been dominated by blokes asking about the gender balance of the new Cabinet that I realised how few women journalists had been present – and how many men. Only 22 per cent of MPs are women, and some research suggests that only 23 per cent of lobby journalists are women.
Ministers spend a great deal of time worrying about this (and in the lobby, we mostly assumed that this would lead to Maria Miller’s replacement as Culture Secretary being a woman and possibly a mother).
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