Spot the women

The election has been called, Parliament will rise at the end of this week – and MPs will return to their constituencies to fight for their seats, or in the case of at least 147 of them step down to do something else entirely.

With so many MPs standing down there are certain to be a lot of new faces on May 7th but how many of them will be women? The Centre for Women and Democracy suggests that there could be up to 40 more women MPs than now, but that still means only 165 MPs out of 646 MPs will be women.

And what will these new MPs do for women? Don’t forget you can see what the parties are saying on key issues by checking out the Fawcett Society’s What About Women campaign

As you watch the election campaign unfold, look out for the poster launches – how many of them are by women? For the key note speeches carried live by the 24 hour news – how many of them are by women? Listen to the morning interviews on Today and the evening ones on Newsnight – how many of them are women? How many of the Guardian’s most influential people in the election are women ?

If you think that more women in politics is a good thing, if you think you could do a better job, and let me assure you, you can, pay attention, pick a party, get involved and stand for election. You can do it and we want you to.

We’ve been lucky enough to have a number of current MPs and candidates speak at events over the last year and we wish them all the best of luck. In alphabetical order you can follow their campaigns below:

Natalie Bennett ; Green Party candidate for Holborn and St Pancras
Roberta Blackman-Woods; Labour Party candidate for City of Durham
Mary Macleod; Conservative candidate for Brentford and Isleworth
Caroline Pidgeon ; Liberal Democrat candidate for Vauxhall
Jo Swinson ; Liberal Democrat candidate for East Dunbarthonshire

Progressive Women is not linked to any political party.