This year marks the centenary of the first woman to be elected as a Member of Parliament. Rachel Reeves, author and MP for Leeds West, celebrates this occasion by charting the history of women in Parliament.

Women of Westminster begins with the 1919 election of Nancy Astor as the first woman MP in the House of Commons, a remarkable feat considering women (and even then, only some women) had been entitled to vote for just over a year.

To shed light on forgotten MPs and the many battles fought by Westminster women, Reeves will be joined by MP for Batley and Spen, Tracy Brabin, and Sky’s political correspondent, Kate McCann.

About The Speakers

Tracy Brabin

Tracy Brabin MP, awarded an MA in screenwriting has been included in a long list of acting credits on ITV and BBC as well as writing for numerous other TV channels and programmes. Tracy was voted in as the Labour and Co-Operative MP for Batley and Spen by-election following the murder of Jo Cox and re-elected in 2017.

Kate McCann

Kate is a political correspondent at Sky News. She was highly commended at the Press Awards in 2017 for her Labour manifesto scoop, the first time a political manifesto had been leaked in its entirety. She is deputy chairman of the Press Gallery and was chair in 2018, only the second woman to hold the title in over 200 years. She grew up in Yorkshire and regularly heads back to the Dales, where her parents live.

Rachel Reeves

Rachel Reeves is Labour MP for Leeds West and former Shadow Minister for Work and Pensions. Prior to her parliamentary career, she worked as an economist. She is the author of Alice in Westminster: The Political Life of Alice Bacon (published by I.B. Tauris in 2017).