anet Street-Porter explains exactly why women (herself included) don't want to be MPs

Now, if you were a smart girl, would you be tempted to consider a career in politics?
A chance to shape the way our country is run? After all, we can hardly complain women’s views aren’t heard if we don’t get stuck in at the coal face.
I’m regularly asked why I’m not interested — but, frankly, the prospect of suspending rational thought, behaving like a lemming, and having to take seriously those prats who continually spout  party-line twaddle (Ed Miliband, Danny Alexander, Ed Balls, Vince Cable and George Osborne to name but a handful) seems less appealing than having my toenails pulled out or sharing a bedsit with Jeremy Clarkson.

The prospect of having to take seriously those prats who continually spout party-line twaddle seems less appealing than having my toenails pulled out

The situation is dire. Currently, the number of female MPs — just one in five — lags way below comparable European countries.
Our supposedly new and ‘transparent’ Government is as full of macho spin-doctors and advisers as Gordon Brown’s, and David Cameron seems unable to attract female voters, because he has dithered over quotas on boards, made cuts to child benefit and legal aid, and has very few women in the Cabinet.
Although Cameron said during his trip to India that Samantha nags him about this lack of girl power, he seems unable to deliver anything more than good intentions.
Now, the Lib Dems are engulfed in a scandal that demonstrates how they may not be exactly  pro-women either.

Women like Jo Swinson and Harriet Harman have to 'shut up and fit in'

A group of female party activists (how aspiring MPs try to get a foot on the ladder) have come forward alleging they were the subject of unwelcome sexual advances by the party’s former boss, Lord Rennard, dating back to 2004. Lord Rennard denies the allegations. 

Doesn’t this sound horribly familiar? After years, it took a television documentary that included one brave woman describing her abuse by Jimmy Savile for the floodgates to finally open.
But all too often, when a young woman complains of being preyed upon by a powerful man she is not believed. There will be suspicions she was complicit.
Channel Four News has broadcast allegations claiming a female party candidate was ‘intimately groped’ by Rennard in 2004, when he was the party’s chief executive. Two more say the same thing happened in 2007. A female intern says he propositioned her at a party conference and she left in tears.
Ironically, when complaints reached the Chief Whip and Jo Swinson, now Minister for Women and Equalities, nothing was made public and we do not know if any action took place to prevent it happening again.
Politicians move in secretive ways to protect their powerful allies and donors — ways that do not encourage ordinary women (and men) to cause a stink if they want to get a chance at a parliamentary seat. They have to shut up and fit in.
At last, the Lib Dems are holding an independent inquiry into these allegations, but Lord Rennard stood down ‘for health and family’ reasons in 2009, so it’s a bit late in the day.
How can we be sure this kind of thing doesn’t still go on in Westminster; swept under the carpet at the old boys’ club?
I had a good laugh when Harriet Harman appeared on The Andrew Marr Show spouting about plans to make all broadcasters list the number of women aged over 50 who present their programmes.
Harriet leads Labour’s Commission On Older Women (they haven’t bothered to speak to me, I wonder why?) and is determined to ‘name and shame’ broadcasters who refuse to put more older women on screen.
Maybe she should start looking closer to home — down the corridor from her office in Portcullis House. Instead of whingeing about the lack of female perspective in the broadcast media, she should start wondering why there’s a gaping hole in her own backyard.
A Freedom Of Information Request reveals that parliamentary computers accessed hardcore porn sites 2,500 times and gay cruising sites 3,500 times in the year to July 2012. In seven months, there were 52,000 visits to a site for men and women seeking extra-marital sex.
Does this sound like a congenial place for a young and ambitious woman to work? No wonder that the majority of new businesses in the UK are being started by women. Even if it means financial risk and long hours, at least this way they are in charge.