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British politics are lamentably sexist

Feminists were quick to announce a clear loser in the last election: women, they said, were astonishingly invisible on the campaign trail and in the media in the run up to the election, and are now seriously underrepresented in the House of Commons and in the Cabinet. Some blamed the old boy’s network and some blamed the combative atmosphere in Westminster. Some called for quotas and all-women shortlists, and some called Cameron and Clegg sexist.

But is it their fault? When women are underrepresented across public life, could it be because they don’t want to be there or simply aren’t up to the jobs? And would any of us – male or female - really want to put more women at the Cabinet table if the result was worse government and the stigma of positive discrimination?