Judging by the fallout from the Covid inquiry, politicians must do more than simply have women at the table ahead of the general election, says Gaby Hinsliff
POLITICIANS JUST LOVE listening to women. Or so they’re always telling us, especially in the run-up to a general election. As we go into 2024, and the (still mostly male) strategists running the year’s campaigns start finalising plans and putting finishing touches on manifestos, they’ll doubtless be careful to include plenty of photo opportunities with female voters and talk about childcare or violence against women and girls. Male leaders will once again deploy their wives on the campaign trail and talk (as Rishi Sunak has) about how their daughters inspire them. But behind the scenes, has the lesson about listening to women really sunk in?
You certainly wouldn’t think it to hear Boris Johnson giving evidence this month at the Covid inquiry. Asked what mistakes he made during the pandemic, Johnson said he wished he’d had more women in his Cabinet. Given it’s three years since the former Cabinet minister Amber Rudd warned he was going ‘ backwards’ on gender balance, 13 years since the then Prime Minister David Cameron promised to make a third of his ministers female, and a whole 18 years since Theresa May helped co-found a campaign to get more women elected, you might have hoped that by now we wouldn’t still be having this same conversation.
‘Sometimes, during the pandemic too many meetings were too male-dominated, if I’m absolutely honest with you,’ Johnson mused to the inquiry’s judge, Baroness Heather Hallett, who had already heard from senior civil servant Helen McNamara that the women working in Whitehall during the pandemic felt ignored and talked over on issues such as access to abortion during lockdown, or the plight of women trapped at home wit
