Millions of women still feel poorly represented – and only their votes can save us from this toxic political climate

100 years ago next month, the first woman MP took her seat in the House of Commons. It’s a sign of how far we’ve come that, since 1919, we’ve had two women prime ministers and dozens more female MPs.

But the fact that so many women are choosing to leave parliament rather than contest this election is a worrying sign of how quickly and easily progress can be reversed. The reasons cited for leaving are easy to understand: personal abuse, the devastating impact on their families and the sheer unpleasantness of contemporary politics.

There’s an argument that it doesn’t matter, of course. Or at least that it matters less what gender someone is than what they say, do and believe. Certainly, as a liberal woman on the left, that hundred year anniversary is a mixed bag. Nancy Astor was a pioneer. She was also a pretty dreadful person. Astor was obsessed with trying to ban alcohol, despised Catholics and there were questions about how far she supported appeasing the Nazis. Her political views were less than appetising and she is perhaps not the best advert for women in parliament. But she mattered.

Women’s presence matters. In our parliament, yes, and in our politics at large. Our experiences matter, and if women are left out of the conversation then that warps the national discourse and creates bad policy. Nancy Astor may have been a bit of a crank but she fundamentally changed our politics, taking issues like nursery education – that had been considered irrelevant to the important, statesmanlike questions worthy of parliament – and forcing them into the national debate. The very presence of a woman in parliament changed what it thought of as its job – anyone making use of government childcare vouchers today – can trace their gratitude back for one hundred years to the arrival of Astor in the House of Commons.

Why am I banging on about Astor, midway through the most important election campaign of my lifetime (where, thankfully, the prohibition of booze and the oppression of Catholics aren’t on the ballot paper)? Well today marks a more contemporary red letter day – you have just a week left to register to vote in that election. And it has never been more vital that women’s voices are heard loud and clear at the ballot box.

Our politics has reverted away from the needs of women – distracted by game playing over Brexit and infused with a toxic strain of machismo. Whilst the Prime Minister was telling women MPs that their fears about abuse and threats of violence were ‘humbug’ his government was quietly preparing to drop the Domestic Violence Bill, which had cross-party support to create life saving new protections for vulnerable women. As women like Amber Rudd and Nicky Morgan leave Parliament well ahead of retirement age, the protesters of the Women Against State Pension Inequality (WASPI) are still left in limbo robbed of their pensions and ignored by our government.

As MPs like Diane Abbott receive sickening levels of racist and misogynist abuse on a daily basis, European nationals who have lived here for decades but have patchy work histories as they took time out to look after their young children are denied the certainty of a right to remain. Our politics is more broken than ever, more and more women are leaving the stage and that helps drag the issues that affect us down the list of political priorities.

There’s only one way to change that. Vote and tell the world that you are voting. The campaign group RegistHERtoVote – which I co-founded – has been registering women to vote since 2015. We particularly focus on encouraging young women. In 2010 9.1 million women didn’t vote – those are voices lost in our politics; priorities ignored, passions missed. Turnout has declined across both genders, but according to statistics compiled for the British Election Study, the number of “missing” female voters has risen by 79 per cent since 1992.

This year our group are working hard to reduce that – with the help of celebrities like actress Joanna Lumley OBE, parenting vlogger Louise Pentland and broadcaster Gemma Cairney. We also have cross party support with champions like Business Secretary Andrea Leadsom and Labour whip Thangham Debonnaire. Together, we are determined to cut the number of women whose views and voices are drowned out at this election. And you can help too.

Research shows that the most powerful tool in persuading people to register and then to actually vote is seeing that people like them are doing it. When we think that voting is the norm we are more likely to vote ourselves. So, please get registered. And once you’re registered tell your online community that you’ve done so by tweeting a link to – https://www.gov.uk/register-to-vote – with the hashtag #LoveYourVote.

Nancy Astor was a pioneer. She changed how our politics looked and she changed what counted as a political issue. But one hundred years later we shouldn’t need pioneers to make women’s voices count. Being political shouldn’t be the exception for women today but the norm. And the first step to making that a reality – and winning back our politics from its current blokeish phase – is getting women registered and getting them voting. There’s just a week left to make sure you are part of making that happen. Don’t miss your chance.

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