‘Now is the time for women to get involved’
Sixty years after the first female peer entered the Lords, Cara McGoogan finds the chamber ready for more change
Six months after the Life Peerages Bill granted women the right to sit in the House of Lords, Baroness Swanborough became the first female peer to enter Parliament’s upper chamber on October 21 1958. Six decades later, the House may be led by Baroness Evans of Bowes Park, but the number of female peers still languishes at 207 out of 791.
“On paper, yes, we have more men in the House of Lords,” says Baroness Gabrielle Bertin, the youngest peer in the chamber at 40. “But in terms of active and impressive women who are properly taking part and shaping legislation on the front bench, I think we’re pretty even stevens. I don’t feel like we’re in a minority or not making an impact.”
The comparative experience of Lady Bertin with the Lords’ eldest female peer, Baroness Gardner, 91, reveals how far the political landscape has changed in the past 60 years – yet given Dame Laura Cox’s report on Commons bullying and harassment last week, which found female staff had been mocked, touched inappropriately and sexually propositioned, it is clear there is still much work to be done.
For Lady Gardner, nominated as the 54th woman for the role by Margaret Thatcher in 1981, there were plenty of uphill struggles – not least when it came to securing additional ladies’ lavatories. “We had only one loo and I thought that was a very important thing to fix,” she recalls. “The first effect I had was to get an increase of two next to the printed paper office.”
It would be several more years before women would get a full set, finally actioned in response to female speakers being routinely delayed to debates due to queues, but Lady Gardner had already gained a reputation. When she was put forward for a promotion, the Chief Whip said, “No, not that woman, she’s the one about the loos.”
A dentist by trade, Lady Gardner had “never encountered female prejudice” in her professional life. “My mother was an early graduate in Sydney and took a huge interest in the Australian Federation of Graduate Women,” she says. “I was brought up to think you could do anything you wanted to. I was a bit stunned when I came across male chauvinism.”
Lady Gardner was one of four women given a life peerage in 1981 – the most to be nominated in one go – along with Lady Ewart-Biggs, whose husband was assassinated by the IRA.
“She always had these magnificent Hermes scarves,” recalls Lady Gardner. “Some of the older Lords would say how nice it was to have someone around with a good figure. She found it quite funny in a way.”
In 2018, by comparison, Lady Bertin says, “Campaigns like #MeToo have put
‘Older Lords would say how nice it was to have someone around with a good figure’
a shot across the bows. It may well still be thought, but it isn’t vocalised.” Still, as the Cox report showed, progress hasn’t been as rapid as hoped.
“We cannot, as legislators, expect companies and other organisations to do what we tell them and not have our own house in order,” says Lady Bertin. “We’ve got to be a professional outfit where people feel like they can speak up and are going to be taken seriously.”
Lady Bertin says the balance in the chamber shifted slightly after Tony Blair and David Cameron – who nominated her in his outgoing honours list, following years of service as a key aide – “stuffed the place with women”. Yet issues remain, particularly around childcare for women in politics – she has often relied on the Lords’ doormen for emergency childcare assistance on a voting day. “It’s not family friendly,” she says. “The House sits at 2.30pm and can go on incredibly late. Sometimes I bring the children in and the doormen are fantastic,” she says. “But I couldn’t do it every night. It wouldn’t be appropriate – nor very good parenting.”
Indeed looking after Freya, five, George, four, and stepdaughter Orla, 10, has been a trickier balancing act for Lady Bertin since entering the Lords than it was during her time in No10; for the centenary of women’s suffrage, she gave a speech in the chamber at 10.45pm.
“Baroness Wyld couldn’t even make it because her childcare had fallen apart. There was a great irony there.”
Parliament should lead by example, she says, but it has struggled to do so – as has the Bertin household. “There have been a few times when I think it’s too much,” she says. “When illness strikes and your children are off sick, particularly. I would love to do a straw poll on how many men get that call from school.”
Lady Bertin is far from a shrinking violet, yet she knows that she is held to certain standards that men are not. “Boris Johnson has made a brand out of having his hair all scruffy and the wrong buttons done up,” she says. “Can you imagine if a woman had done that?”
Her work for major parliamentary players like Cameron and Liam Fox made her “very powerful by association; people would have thought twice to mess with me,” she says. But that, Lady Bertin adds, is a “big issue. I have huge sympathy for women who don’t have that protection.”
Her age has sometimes caused problems, though. “I used to struggle to actually get into the chamber, because I kept being led to the researchers’ box,” she says. “That doesn’t happen anymore; I’ve obviously aged in the past two years.”
Despite only accepting women 40 years after Nancy Astor was elected to the Commons in 1918, the Lords has a more inclusive atmosphere than its partner, Lady Bertin says.
“When it comes to making politics more attractive, respectful and generating debate that is robust and forthright but not rude, shouty and braying, the Commons could learn quite a lot from us,” she says.
Doing so could fix what Lady Bertin describes as one of the most pressing problems for the country: getting more women into politics.
“We’re at a crossroads in our country and we need the best possible people, across gender, ethnicity and those with disabilities,” she says. “If you’re somebody who shouts at the telly and thinks, ‘I could do a better job than this’, put yourself forward.
“The divisiveness and aggression is going to be a big turn-off for lots of women,” she concedes, “but this is the most important time to get involved.”