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Constance Markievicz
Born
The first woman elected to the House of Commons, for Dublin St Patrick's in December 1918, Markievicz never took her seat: as a Sinn Féin member she refused to swear allegiance, and she was in Holloway prison when elected. She instead became Minister for Labour in the first Dáil, one of the first women cabinet ministers in Europe. Her election proved that the Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act of 1918 worked, and her refusal is a reminder that Westminster representation was itself contested.
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Nancy Astor, Viscountess Astor
Born
The first woman to sit in the Commons, from 1919, Astor spent years as the only woman in a chamber designed for men, with no women's lavatory nearby and members who openly hoped she would fail. She used the role deliberately, working across party with later women MPs on causes including the 1923 act raising the drinking age and the campaign for equal franchise at 21, achieved in 1928. Her later sympathies for appeasement and her antisemitic remarks are part of the record.
More about Nancy Astor, Viscountess Astor3
Margaret Haig Thomas, 2nd Viscountess Rhondda
Born
Inheriting her father's viscountcy in 1918, Lady Rhondda petitioned in 1922 to take her seat in the Lords under the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act. The Committee for Privileges first agreed and then, after Lord Birkenhead intervened, reversed itself. She campaigned for the rest of her life, through her magazine Time and Tide and the Six Point Group, for women to sit in the Lords. Hereditary peeresses were finally admitted in 1963, five years after her death, partly on the strength of her case.
More about Margaret Haig Thomas, 2nd Viscountess Rhondda4
Eleanor Rathbone
Born
An independent MP from 1929 to 1946, Rathbone showed what a member without party could achieve through persistence. She forced the coalition to pay family allowances directly to mothers in 1945, campaigned on child marriage in India and the rights of women in the empire, and in the 1930s and 1940s pressed governments relentlessly to admit refugees from Nazism, earning the nickname 'the MP for refugees'. She is a model of how a single backbencher could use questions and parliamentary pressure.
More about Eleanor Rathbone5
Ellen Wilkinson
Born
As MP for Jarrow, Wilkinson marched with the 1936 Jarrow Crusade and presented its petition to the Commons, bringing unemployment in the north-east into the chamber in a way MPs could not ignore. Earlier she had piloted the Hire Purchase Act of 1938 through as a private member's bill, protecting buyers from repossession. As Minister of Education from 1945, the second woman in a British cabinet, she implemented the raising of the school leaving age to 15 and free school milk.
More about Ellen Wilkinson6
Barbara Wootton, Baroness Wootton of Abinger
Born
A criminologist and economist, Wootton was among the first four women to enter the House of Lords as life peers under the Life Peerages Act of 1958, and in 1967 became the first woman to sit on the Woolsack as a deputy speaker. Her work in the chamber and on official committees, including the 1968 Wootton Report on cannabis and the community service order she proposed, which became law in 1972, showed the expert contribution the new life peerages were meant to bring.
More about Barbara Wootton, Baroness Wootton of Abinger7
Betty Harvie Anderson
A Conservative MP for East Renfrewshire, Harvie Anderson became the first woman to chair proceedings in the Commons when she was appointed a Deputy Speaker in 1970, serving until 1973. She showed a woman could keep order in the chamber two decades before Betty Boothroyd became Speaker, and broke a barrier in the Speaker's chair that many members at the time thought unlikely to fall. Her achievement is now little remembered, which is part of why it belongs here.
More about Betty Harvie Anderson8
Margaret Thatcher
Born
The first woman prime minister, from 1979 to 1990, is included for what changed under her rather than for being first. Her government created the departmental select committee system in 1979, proposed by her Leader of the House, Norman St John-Stevas, which transformed Commons scrutiny, and the Commons began to be televised in 1989. Her combative style at Prime Minister's Questions set the tone for its modern form. She appointed only one woman to her cabinet in eleven years and did little to make the Commons easier for other women.
More about Margaret Thatcher9
Diane Abbott
Born
Elected in 1987 as the first Black woman MP, alongside Bernie Grant, Paul Boateng and Keith Vaz, Abbott changed who Parliament represented. She has served Hackney North and Stoke Newington continuously since and became Mother of the House in 2024. She has also been the target of a scale of online abuse that Amnesty found exceeded that of any other woman MP before the 2017 election, which shaped later debates on MPs' security. She has twice had the Labour whip suspended over remarks about racism.
More about Diane Abbott10
Betty Boothroyd
Born
Elected the first woman Speaker in 1992, Boothroyd, a former dancer and Labour MP for West Bromwich, declined to wear the traditional wig and ran the chamber with blunt authority through the Maastricht rebellions, becoming familiar to television viewers for her cry of 'Time's up!' at question time. She insisted that ministers announce policy to MPs before the media and rebuked governments of both parties when they did not. She set the template for the modern, independent and publicly visible Speaker.
More about Betty Boothroyd11
Harriet Harman
Born
Harman's long career touches almost every change to women's place in Parliament since 1982. She championed all-women shortlists, which helped Labour elect 101 women in 1997, steered the Equality Act 2010 through as minister, and in 2019 led the cross-party push that introduced proxy voting for MPs on baby leave, after Tulip Siddiq delayed a caesarean to vote. As Mother of the House she chaired the Privileges Committee's Partygate inquiry. Few MPs have changed so much of the institution's practice.
More about Harriet Harman12
Valerie Amos, Baroness Amos
Born
Amos became the first Black woman in a British cabinet in 2003, as International Development Secretary, and then Leader of the House of Lords from 2003 to 2007, responsible for managing government business in the upper house during the passage of the Constitutional Reform Act 2005, which created the Supreme Court and the office of Lord Speaker. She later led UN humanitarian operations. Her years as Leader coincided with some of the largest changes to the Lords' role in a century.
More about Valerie Amos, Baroness Amos13
Helene Hayman, Baroness Hayman
Born
When the Lord Chancellor stopped presiding over the Lords after the 2005 reforms, peers elected their own Speaker for the first time, and Hayman won in 2006. As the first Lord Speaker she defined a new office: impartial, without the Lord Chancellor's political and judicial roles, and an ambassador for the House through outreach programmes such as Peers in Schools. Decades earlier, as a young Labour MP in the 1970s, she had challenged Commons culture by breastfeeding her baby in Parliament.
More about Helene Hayman, Baroness Hayman14
Maria Miller
Born
Miller became the first chair of the Women and Equalities Committee when the Commons created it in 2015, partly in response to the 'Good Parliament' agenda. Its inquiries into the gender pay gap, sexual harassment in schools and the treatment of transgender people produced detailed reports, and it pressed for compulsory gender pay gap reporting, introduced in 2017. As a former culture secretary she had also steered the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 through the Commons. The committee is now a permanent part of Commons scrutiny.
More about Maria Miller15
Andrea Leadsom
Born
After the 2017 wave of allegations of harassment at Westminster, Leadsom, as Leader of the House, chaired the cross-party working group that created the Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme in 2018, the first system allowing staff to complain about MPs' bullying and sexual harassment to an independent investigator. It was strengthened after Dame Laura Cox's 2018 report and an Independent Expert Panel now decides sanctions. Whatever one thinks of her wider politics, it was a substantial change to how Parliament polices itself.
More about Andrea Leadsom16
Tulip Siddiq
Born
In January 2019 Siddiq delayed a planned caesarean section and was pushed into the chamber in a wheelchair to vote on the Brexit deal, because the informal pairing arrangement for MPs on leave had broken down months earlier. The images made the case for reform overnight, and the Commons approved a trial of proxy voting for MPs on baby leave that month. Proxy voting has since been made permanent and extended. A single vote produced one of the fastest procedural changes in modern Commons history.
More about Tulip Siddiq17
Stella Creasy
Born
After her maternity leave in 2019, when she had to fight for funding for a locum to run her constituency work, Creasy campaigned for MPs to have proper cover during parental leave and pressed the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority to fund it. The authority agreed to fund cover for MPs' parental leave, and with proxy voting the change made it possible to be both an MP and a new parent without leaving constituents unrepresented. It is unglamorous procedural reform with a direct effect on who can stand for Parliament.
More about Stella Creasy18
Rachel Reeves
Born
Reeves became the first woman Chancellor of the Exchequer in July 2024, after more than 800 years of men in the post. Her first act was the Budget Responsibility Act 2024, which requires an independent Office for Budget Responsibility assessment of any major fiscal announcement, a direct response to the 2022 mini-budget that changes how every future chancellor must work. Her fiscal rules shaped every department's choices. She left the Treasury when Andy Burnham formed his cabinet in July 2026, declining another post.
More about Rachel Reeves
