Parliamentary women

‘Women’, Lord Hugh Cecil wrote in 1919, the year in which Lady Astor became a Member of Parliament, ‘will not transform the House of Commons.’ ¹ As Harrison has shown in his analysis of the period between 1919 and 1945, the absorption of women members into a 700-year-old men’s house proved to be a slow process. Over a quarter of a century, so-called welfare topics—incorporating education, public health, housing, unemployment and labour relations—accounted for 49 per cent of women’s debating contribution and were judged to be appropriate for them to comment upon. ² On others, including foreign affairs, defence and economic issues (with which welfare was unavoidably linked), their contribution was less welcome. When, surprisingly quickly, ministerial appointments for women began to be considered, this attitude determined the portfolios that were available. Between 1924, when Margaret Bondfield became parliamentary secretary to the ministry of Labour and 1974, when Margaret Thatcher ended nearly four years as a Cabinet minister, most female appointments were made to health and education, areas in which women had already made their mark in the years before they acquired the parliamentary vote. ³ This chapter is concerned first with the experience of three education ministers, the Duchess of Atholl (1924–9), Ellen Wilkinson (1945–7) and Florence Horsbrugh (1951–4); and second, with that of Margaret Thatcher who, five years after she ceased to be Secretary of State for Education and Science, became Prime Minister.