Women of Westminster – MP Rachel Reeves talks about her new book

The starting point of Rachel Reeves’s Women of Westminster is the election in 1919 of Lady Astor, the first female to take a seat in the Commons.  The book then describes the careers of female MPs and the barriers they overcame over the subsequent century.  

During her talk at the University of Huddersfield, the author told the audience how women placed many issues on the political agenda that would otherwise not have surfaced.  They included equal pay, improved childcare and equal rights of guardianship of children after divorce. 

The MP for Leeds West claimed that women had changed the culture of politics and the culture of Parliament.

After the talk, she answered questions from the audience about women in politics today and said if there is ever to be a female leader of the Labour Party it will only happen when she has equal support of her peers, both male and female.