National Democracy Week

National Democracy Week logo

National Democracy Week is a new initiative, designed to celebrate progress and champion democratic participation. This, its first year, also falls in the anniversary year of (some) women being given the vote. Here’s a brief timeline showing other important milestones for women in Parliament — it’s interesting to read it in tandem with our page on votes that changed women’s lives and the first mentions of feminist and woman-related terms in Parliament.

Where possible, we have linked to our Parliamentary website TheyWorkForYou. TheyWorkForYou makes it simple to find out who your member of Parliament is, to see how they’ve voted, and to read everything they’ve said in debates. We also publish each day’s activity.

Until recently, due to various technical reasons, our version of Hansard (the record of debates) stretched back only as far as the 1930s. In order to properly celebrate the first women in Parliament, we’ve managed to extend further back in time, meaning that you can now browse, for example, the maiden speech of Nancy Astor, the first woman to speak in Parliament. Hooray!

  1. 1215

    1. Parliament is generally agreed to have started in its current form when the Magna Carta stated the right of Barons to advise the king, though the word ‘Parliament’ wasn’t used until 1236.

      Image: Public Domain

  2. 1919

    1. A woman in the Commons

      A mere 705 years later, Nancy Astor becomes the first woman to speak in Parliament (Note also that Countess de Markievicz was elected prior to Astor, but did not take her seat as she was a member of Sinn Féin).

      Drawing of Nancy Astor
      Nancy Astor by John Singer Sargent; Countess de Markievicz via History Today: both public domain.

  3. 1920

    1. The next year, Nancy Astor makes her official maiden speech:

      “I know that it was very difficult for some hon. Members to receive the first lady M.P. into the House. It was almost as difficult for some of them as it was for the lady MP herself to come in.”

  4. 1929

    1. Margaret Bondfield becomes the first female cabinet minister. Since then, a total of 42 women have held Cabinet positions.

      Wikimedia (no known copyright restrictions)

  5. 1958

    1. Women in the Lords

      Women enter the Upper House as life peers (who do not pass their title on through the generations) as part of the House of Lords reform. Out of the first fourteen life peers, four were women, as announced on 24 July 1958.

      Images via the Parliament website

  6. 1963

    1. The Peerage Act allowed female hereditary peers (whose title is passed on through the family) to join the House of Lords
  7. 1965

    1. Harriet Slater became the first female Whip, for Labour.
  8. 1968

    1. Barbara Castle becomes First Secretary of State, the only woman so far to have held this position.

      Barbara Castle
      Wikimedia (CC 4.0)

  9. 1975

    1. Maureen Colquhoun was outed by the Daily Mail, and thus became the first MP known by the public to be gay. In 1976 she was the first MP to request to be known as ‘Ms’. In 1977 she was deselected by her party, in part because of her “obsession with trivialities such as women’s rights”.Embed from Getty Images
  10. 1979

    1. First female Prime Minister

      In 1975 she became the Leader of the Opposition. After the election of 4 May 1979 which made her PM, Margaret Thatcher’s first speech was the appointment of the Speaker:
      I did, however, note that my right hon. and learned Friend referred exclusively to “new boys”[…] But, of course, being a lawyer, my right hon. and learned Friend would doubtless […] point out that “boy” embraced “girl”.”

      Margaret Thatcher
      Image: Marion S. Trikosko (public domain)

  11. 1987

    1. Diane Abbott is the first black woman to be elected to the UK Parliament, and she has served as MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington ever since.

      Image: Policy Exchange, CC BY 2.0

  12. 1992

    1. Betty Boothroyd becomes the first — and only to date — female Speaker of the House of Commons.

      Image: UK Parliament; CC BY 3.0

  13. 1997

    1. The 101 women MPs in Blair’s 1997 Parliament were given the rather distasteful sobriquet of ‘Blair’s Babes’ — but progress had been made. With 120 women in Parliament overall, the figure had exactly doubled in comparison to the 1992 election.
  14. 2006-7

    1. Under Tony Blair, these twelve months saw eight female Cabinet Ministers in position — the record up until that date. Theresa May matched this in 2015 (including herself), though numbers have dropped to five in the current line-up.
  15. 2015

    1. The number of women in Parliament rose by a third after the General Election: 191 of the 650 MPs (about 29%) were female.

      Image: UK Parliament, CC BY 3.0


  16. 2016

    1. When David Cameron stepped down as PM, he triggered a leadership contest. In being appointed party leader, Theresa May also became the UK’s second female Prime Minister.

      Image: Controller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office/ Andrew Parson OGL.

  17. 2017

    1. Another General Election and the number of women in Parliament rose again, to 208 — that’s 32%. Labour’s 43% did less towards this total than the Conservatives’ 21% (with 232 and 330 MPs respectively). The Greens, of course, achieved 100%, but then again they only have one MP in seat.

      Image: The Health Hotel CC BY-SA 2.0


See also