Natasha Walter writes in the Guardian today about how women appear to be vanishing from public life.

A few years ago, when [Naomi] Wolf published Fire with Fire and I wrote The New Feminism, there was a sense of optimism about how women could become more equal and make freer choices in their lives. Those books chimed in with the early years of the Clinton administration and the start of New Labour, when the centre-left seemed to have a mandate for real social reform.

Although some advances were made and no ground has been lost, that optimism has now dissipated. This is not just about what has happened at Westminster, though part of the new cynicism is about that, since the promise that the beginning of the 21st century would see a more women-friendly politics has foundered in the macho, centralised culture of New Labour. It is symptomatic of these depressing times that people have stopped even drawing attention to the absence of women at Westminster. Now we can move from one leadership struggle to another in which women do not even come within touching distance of the robes of power and nobody seems to get angry about their absence.

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