ARE YOU THE LADIES OF THE HOUSE?
Marion McMullen looks at female MPs and those who blazed the trail for them as we mark the 100th anniversary of the first woman taking her seat in Parliament
1 AMERICAN-BORN Nancy Astor, became the first woman to take her seat in the House of Commons 100 years ago on December 1, 1919, after being voted MP for Plymouth. She famously clashed with Winston Churchill on several occasions and once told him: “If you were my husband, I’d poison your tea.” To which he replied: “Madam, if you were my wife, I’d drink it.”
2 THE first female MP actually elected but who refused to take her seat in the Commons, was Irish Nationalist Countess Constance Markiewicz, below. She was elected in 1918 as a member of Sinn Fein. She stood for election from a cell in Holloway Prison, but refused to take her seat in protest at the British presence in Ireland.
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WOMEN were able to stand for Parliament for the first time in the 1918 general election and there were 17 female candidates. Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence penned a “special letter to women voters” saying “let the world see what women can do now, when they have the chance”.
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SUFFRAGETTE Christabel Pankhurst, pictured below, also stood in the 1918 election for the Women’s Party in Smethwick. She said: “I shall, if elected give special attention to the housing question because, as every woman knows, a good home is the foundation of all well being.” She lost by 775 votes.
5 HEADMISTRESS and magistrate Margaret Wintringham, who was elected MP for Louth in 1921, became the second woman in the House of Commons. She was backed by the National Federation of Women’s Institutes, who called her “Our Institute MP”. She campaigned for the voting age for women to be lowered from 30 to 21.
6 MARGARET BONDFIELD was elected MP for Northampton in 1923, and became the first woman cabinet minister in 1929 when she was appointed Minister of Labour. She had started her working life as an assistant in a draper’s shop when she was 14 years old.
7 SCOTTISHBORN miner’s daughter Jennie Lee was just 24 when she was elected the MP for Lanarkshire in 1929. She accused Winston Churchill of “cant, corruption and incompetence” during her fiery maiden speech in the House of Commons. She went on to help found the Open University in 1969.
8 FORMER journalist Barbara Castle, below, was 35 and the youngest female MP among those elected in 1945. She introduced the Equal Pay Act in 1970 after intervening in the strike by Ford sewing machinists in Dagenham over pay. She also made sure child benefit was paid to mothers, not fathers. She became Baroness Castle Of Blackburn in 1990, and died in 2002, aged 91.
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TRAINED teacher Harriet Slater, the MP for Stoke-on-Trent, became the first female parliamentary whip in the House of Commons in 1964 and held the official title of Lord Commissioner To The Treasury.
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MARGARET THATCHER became the UK’s first female prime minister in 1979 and stayed in power until 1990. She was given the nickname The Iron Lady and once said “I don’t mind how much my ministers talk, so long as they do what I say”. Barbara Castle wrote in her diaries: “She is clearly the best man among them.”