It’ll take 155 years for women to make up half of the MPs in the Commons, Labour find

It will take 155 years for women to make up half of the MPs in the Commons, according to new research from the Labour Party.

The party have reacher this figures by examining the number of female candidates standing in May and the changing number of women in Parliament over a number of decades.

There have only ever been 370 females MP in the UK, at the moment there are 148 (86 Labour, 48 Tory and 7 Lib Deb) in comparison to 502 men. This means there are more men in the House of Commons now than the total number of female MPs ever. The first woman to be elected was Constance Markievicz in 1918, although she didn’t take her seat; the first female MP was Nancy Astor in 1919.

Gloria De Piero, Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities, has explained that working towards equal representation needs to be a cross-party effort:

“A Labour victory in May will see a historic 155 Labour women elected to Parliament, and put us within touching distance of being a gender-balanced party.

“But we can’t change our politics alone.

David Cameron and Nick Clegg have turned the clock back for women over the past five years and, with less than a quarter of their candidates being women, they are failing on women’s representation too.

“A Labour government will see women’s voices front and centre, and drive forward progress for women by taking action on equal pay, boosting the minimum wage, increasing support for childcare and making tackling the scourge of domestic and sexual violence a priority.”