Why don't more women go into British politics?

HoC creche
can you imagine the way the toddlers will talk to each other when they're fighting over a toy? And the nursery staff will have to keep shouting 'Order! Order!'

I stood at the last election as a PPC and I knew before I stood it is very male orientated. If you stand as PPC you need to be thick skinned and have 'balls of steel' hustings can be very daunting and the audience can ask you any question. One of the other PPCs who was a young woman, shy, and nervous was mauled to pieces by the audience, she was shaking, her leg was shaking! As said is not for the faint hearted.

Anyone who wants to enter politics has to know current politics quite well, and in my opinion be quite Machivellian. I found the other PPCs were either councillors or had been councillors. They all towed party lines and were ready when asked questions on certain subjects, in fact they said the same things at different hustings!

Also as said you need the time to do it, I did it, and I have children.

Elephantsandmiasma. You are quite right about the prying into ones private life. As a PPC I was put on display on a website and the public were asked "Do you know so and so, did you go to school with her, have you a story to tell about her?" and this is only for a prospective parlimentary candidate and not an MP. So yes, there are plenty of reasons women and some men will not enter politics.

It is a shame, because we need a wider spectrum of people entering politics.

Also don't get me wrong I love tradition but I suspect a lot of women are put off by the sheer volume of acting-like-a-silly-twat that parliament involves. If they opened the HoP as a museum and built a new parliament building somewhere with a clean design, no robes, proper childcare facilities on site, more circular design etc it might be different.

oh, the creche has been open for a little while now and there are regular articles in the Daily Mail or similar about what a waste of taxpayers' money it is because at the moment it doesn't have many children in it and is running at a loss.

Did you hear about the uproar this year over plans to turn one out of four? six? bars in the HoP into a creche? Huge fuss.

So the creche is either open now or to open soon.

I like the idea of quotas, it's how almost all of the countries with equal representation have achieved it and at the current rate of women entering parliament in the UK it'll take 200 years to have equality in the house.

Didn't say it was a bad thing. I was pointing out that a huge number of those currently running the country went to a boys-only school. So I would say that a) more boys than girls are getting the education/networking that is still a boost up in politics and b) to many boys school education men women are a foreign species. These places can be IMO very sexist.

Also don't forget that until 1980ish there were only a couple of colleges at Oxford/Cambridge that admitted women. So of the generation born 1962 or earlier there was a far higher chance of getting an Oxbridge education if you had a penis.

Not saying that education is all - just that the traditional routes in/background expected of MPs has not been open to women very long.

I would quite like to be an MP, and the things that put me off are:

• constant prying into private life

• constant commentary on appearance

• tediousness of old boys network

• fear of not being able to do the job properly, it's not like you can practise.

Because we grow up and it gets boring?

Being an MP is the most puerile, tedious and tribal aspect of politics.

Well given that half the cabinet went to Eton, I think that goes some way towards answering. Privileged boys are reared in very traditional settings that prioritise the "classics" including classical traditions like debate etc, so they are naturally suited to adversarial politics.

There are quite a lot of reasons I think.

Yes, I think it matters. The women who are there often don't want to advocate for women's rights as they get put into a 'pesky feminist' box.

Working in parliament is not very family friendly, terrible hours, often living between two places to have constituency presence. Treated appallingly by the press on the whole with constant commentary on looks, clothes, hair colour etc.

I wouldn't wanna do it (and I love politics).