UK elects record number of female MPs

A record 220 female MPs will take their seats in parliament after this election, but the House of Commons will still fall far short of being gender balanced.

The proportion of female MPs will reach 34%, the highest portion of either chamber in parliament to date. However, there are stark differences across the party divide: just a quarter of Conservative party MPs are female, whereas the Labour party will now be represented by more women than men – with a record 104 female MPs.

Of the main parties the Liberal Democrats will have the highest proportion of female MPs at 64% – though there are only seven – while just a third of newly declared SNP parliamentarians are women.

Tory-dominated south-west England has by far the highest proportion of male MPs at 80%, followed by Northern Ireland at 78%, while London – where Labour took 49 seats – almost achieved absolute parity with 49% female representation. The north-east has the second highest proportion of women MP’s, 41% of its 29 MPs.

With 649 seats now confirmed, only St Ives – a Conservative-Lib Dem marginal where the two main contenders are male – is still to declare. Therefore the above figures are almost certain not to change.

Female Conservative candidates stood in a record number of seats for the party – almost a third of their prospective MPs. The Tories were criticised for allowing men to fight most of the plum seats, but Siobhan Baillie became Stroud’s first female MP in a Conservative gain from Labour. She is one of 87 Tory MPs who will return to parliament.

There is already speculation over who will be the next leader of the Labour party, after Jeremy Corbyn confirmed he would stand down following a “process of reflection”. Angela Rayner, Jess Phillips and Rebecca Long-Bailey are among those considered the frontrunners.

A then record 208 female MPs were elected at the 2017 general election, 32% of all MPs, a vast improvement on 1979 when 19 women MP’s were returned to parliament. In the House of Lords, there are 207 female peers – 27% of members.

The UK is now set to rise from 39th position in the global rankings for the proportion of women in the lower – or sole – house of parliament.

However, there had been fears over the number of female MPs who chose not to contest their seats at this election and many lamented the abuse they faced in office.