Conservatives can be more open about how they propose to empower women

London: They want mothers to stay at home, and break the glass ceiling. Is this confusion or some much-needed clarity? So now voters have one party in this election wanting to pay married mothers to stay at home (via the transferable tax allowance) and another party offering to make companies ensure half the candidates for any boardroom jobs are female.

One party standing for back-to-the-kitchen-sink and one party standing for breaking through the glass ceiling. At last, some clear blue water? Except they're both the same party: the Conservatives.

Theresa May deserves credit for pushing the boardroom jobs policy, one bolder than anything Harriet Harman has been allowed to get away with. Her leader deserves credit for rolling it out so close to the election, braving the likely harrumphing in right-wing circles. And the Tories also deserve credit for being ahead of Labour in adopting other ideas benefiting working parents for example, extending the right to request flexible working to all public sector employees, not just parents of young children.

But it does raise the question: what is the coherent thinking about women's place in the world that links these two very different strands in Conservative thought? The unkind will say there isn't one: just a ragbag of focus-grouped policies, selected to appeal to different sectors of the electorate.

Belief in choice?

Others may argue what unites them is a belief in choice for women, a willingness to support them in full-time motherhood or full-on world domination, and break out of the tired old ‘mummy wars'. In which case, perhaps they could say so loudly and publicly. Perhaps if there were more prominent women politicians and fewer leaders' wives on the campaign trail, this is the kind of argument we might have had.