Women relegated to the margins of poll campaign

London: The increasingly presidential style of the UK general election campaign has edged senior women politicians out of the forefront of the political debate, shifting focus instead on to the wives of the three party leaders, a number of prominent female Labour MPs conceded yesterday.

Women in all three main parties have been at the margins of the political campaign, with greater attention paid to the activities and outfits of the leaders' spouses than to the roles played by senior women politicians, in a shift described as a significant regression by campaigners for improved representation of women in parliament.

The shift in focus has been exacerbated by the increasing prominence that the leaders' debates are playing in the campaign, concentrating attention on the three male party leaders rather than a wider spectrum of politicians, and triggering an intensified interest in the supporting role played by their partners. "As we watch this election, it is clear that women politicians are markedly absent. We have a lot of wives, but not many women MPs," said Kat Banyard, co-founder of UK Feminista and author of The Equality Illusion, a recent study of modern feminism. "All the main players are white men. The lack of female role models is stark."

Ceri Goddard, chief executive of the Fawcett Society, which campaigns for equality for women, said: "There is still a woeful lack of senior representation of women in politics and that is reflected in the election campaign."

At the forefront

At an event yesterday yesterday morning to celebrate the record number of women standing as Labour candidates, Tessa Jowell, Cabinet Office minister, acknowledged that traditional aspects of the campaign, such as press conferences, had been supplanted by the leaders' debates, shifting more attention to the male leaders. But she stressed that she and other women politicians still "feel at the forefront" of the campaign.

"This is the most activist-led, grassroots-led campaign that I have worked on, largely driven by the internet. Women MPs are all over the country getting votes."

Harriet Harman, deputy leader of the Labour party, said: "Politics has always been male-dominated , that's why we have much more work to do." "There is a growing celebrity culture in this country," said Joan Ruddock, an undersecretary in the Department of Energy and Climate Change. "It is inevitable that the leaders' families are more prominent now. The Obama election has played into that as well."

Defending the party's record, Harman said Labour had attracted many more women into parliament than the other two main parties, with three times more female MPs in the last parliament than all other parties put together 94 women MPs, compared with 18 for the Conservatives and nine for the Lib Dems. In seats where Labour MPs are retiring, 53 per cent of Labour candidates are women.

Diane Abbott, Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, said that, when she first stood as a candidate in 1987, "many people didn't believe that I could win because the notion of an MP was of a middle-aged white guy in a suit.

"Things really have moved on. If you raised subjects like work-life balance or childcare 20 years ago, people would say, ‘But that's not really politics.' Now the party leaders are all talking about it."