...Long post...
You cannot elect a woman leader just for the sake of electing a woman leader.
The fact that Jess Phillips is considered a viable choice as leader shows the illiteracy of the political debate in this country. She is completely unsuited to lead anything - in the private sector she would be a supervisor at a pound store or similar at best. People who constantly root for her never even know what her policy stances are, other than "I will never shut up about feminism". What does this even mean? What does she believe is the way forward on railways, utilities, the media?
Labour has only ever had one person elected prime minister in the last 45 yrs - Blair. This means that the issue isn't Labour, but the country. Until that is honestly looked at, and questions critically asked about why voters repeatedly prefer to vote Tory, then even with the next leader the party is likely to lose again.
The problem with the last election wasn't Corbyn per se, but with how politics just is in this country. How it is covered in the media for instance. Before him, the print and broadcast media went ballistic about Ed Miliband. Red Ed, they quickly christened him. They called him not just a socialist but a marxist. Remember the attacks on his father - "The man who hated Britain". Imagine Ed being called a marxist. The press ran endless unofficial polls asking people whether Ed was "weird". The TV channels did endless voxpops asking people on the street whether Ed was weird. They painted him as a weak, weird, marxist. Even The Guardian had endless opinion pieces of how we got the wrong brother. This sort of thing becomes embedded in people's minds. And the sandwich. Don't forget the bacon sandwich. Why? Because he had said he was going to fight vested interests and reform the press. They didn't like it.
The only way Blair, again the only leader to win in the last 45 yrs, won, was to jump into bed with the media barons, eventually becoming godfather to Murdoch's child. Imagine that. You can't tax the rich by cosying up to them, and you can't fund public services without taxing the rich. That is the catch. Labour can't win on taxing the rich, so it can't win on funding public services, so it has to move to the "centre", that part of the political spectrum, the wilderness of ambiguity that stands for, actually, not much. It might have worked during the Blair years, but now, after the torching of public services started by Cameron and Osborne, a lot more funding is needed.
Also the cultural war we have been in for the last couple of decades. The campaign to monster migrants. "Uncontrolled immigation/they're coming to take your jobs/your homes/your country/they're raping your women/they breed like rats so they will quickly outnumber you/other similar headlines" that the papers run weekly. The minute you go down this route people will vote against their own interests each time.
Electing a woman leader isn't going to solve any of this.
One thing would-be labour voters need to understand is that the right have always been proficient in making the left embarassed of its leaders. This has been one of their tools for decades. Other than all I have mentioned above, remember Brown was painted as incompetent, Kinnock at the time as a joke - remember the scene at the beach when the waves came in and partially knocked him and his wife over? How many times was that played on the telly? Remember Michael Foot's donkey jacket? Until Labour find a way to counter all this, and honest journalists have some introspection about how politics is covered this will carry on for good.
It is far more complicated than, we need a woman/Corbyn was toxic/working class voters/whatever is the theory this week.