Women entering parliament for the first time following the election should be prepared for “misogyny and abuse” as they join the country’s “biggest boys’ club”, female MPs have warned.
A record number of women were elected on 4 July, with 264 female members of parliament set to take up their seats under a Labour government. This represents 40.6 per cent of all MPs and is a significant improvement on the 34.2 per cent in 2019.
But experienced female MPs say they still face “sexism, patriarchal and archaic power structures”. The Pestminster scandal in 2017 saw a series of claims of sexual harassment in Westminster and the dying days of the last Tory government were dogged by further allegations.
Labour’s Dawn Butler, who has been re-elected having been an MP in west London since 2015, said new female MPs should be prepared to “endure a lot of misogyny and abuse”, adding: “You get critiqued on how you sound, how you look and what you wear.”
While entering parliament is an exciting time, new female MPs “should expect to be bamboozled with a whole load of rules – some of which are archaic or make no practical sense whatsoever”.
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