Why do Conservatives elect female leaders?

Woman's Hour

BBC

Society & Culture, Health & Fitness, Personal Journals

4.2 • 2.9K Ratings

🗓️ 5 September 2022

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

As the Conservative Party looks set to elect its third female leader and prime minister, it has left observers and women in other political parties wondering about the secret of their success. The Labour Party have yet to elect a female leader despite having introduced all women shortlists for the 1997 election which returned a record 101 female Labour MPs to the House of Commons, one of whom was Fiona Mactaggart the MP for Slough. She joins Emma Barnett alongside former cabinet minister and MP for Chipping Barnet Theresa Villiers. This year, there have been increasing reports of refugees attempting to travel into Europe by sea, with some travelling by dinghy across the Mediterranean and across the channel into the UK. Last week, the Ocean Viking search & rescue ship rescued 466 women, children and men in 10 rescue operations within 60 hours in the Mediterranean, including two heavily pregnant women and a 3-week-old baby. Emma is joined by Rebecca, a British midwife and medical lead on board the Ocean Viking. Leonardo DiCaprio has been called out for only publicly dating women under the age of 25. It comes as the 47-year-old actor broke things off with his girlfriend Camila Morrone who was 22 years his junior. We discuss why women are responding to the news online with so much humour and mockery with the digital culture commentator Hannah Van-de-peer. Emma also speaks to the relationship psychologist Emma Kenny. Helen Fields is a criminal barrister turned bestselling author. Her latest novel The Last Girl to Die follows private investigator Sadie Levesque as she investigates murder on the Isle of Mull, far off the coast of Scotland. Presenter: Emma Barnett Producer: Lucinda Montefiore

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.
0:05.4	Hello, I'm Emma Barnett and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4.
0:10.8	Good morning and welcome to the programme.
0:12.5	Hope your feelings supported as we start the week together.
0:15.8	Shopping habits published by John Lewis today seem to show that.
0:18.8	Demand for non-wide bras have slumped this year compared to lockdown periods with sales
0:23.5	of wild bra, a wide bra as I should say and so called shapewear back in.
0:27.9	Now that you know that, let me ask you how politically supported you will feel come
0:31.3	1230 today as the new leader of the Conservative Party is announced.
0:35.9	It is likely to be Liz Truss, we are told again and again, who takes over tomorrow if she
0:40.7	is the winner as the UK's Prime Minister.
0:43.6	And yes, while that would make her the third woman to lead this country, the fact still
0:47.7	remains that only one woman has won the top job through a general election, as opposed
0:52.6	to a coronation by a few after a man has effectively been forced out of office.
0:57.8	The country was given Theresa May by the Conservative Party after David Cameron resigned after losing
1:02.8	his side of the EU referendum.
1:05.2	And now it may be Liz Truss's turn after Boris Johnson was forced out by his own colleagues,
1:09.8	still with a parliamentary investigation hanging over his head about whether he misled
1:13.6	parliament over lockdown parties at number 10, an episode which saw the Prime Minister
1:18.2	receive a fine from police.
1:20.7	Have you heard of the term, Glass Cliff?
1:23.7	It was coined by two academics from the University of Exeter in 2003, when women are appointed
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.