The significance of this ‘achievement’ is underlined by the fact that 77% of seats at Westminster are occupied by men. This means that the make-up of Parliament does not reflect the wider population, in a substantive or symbolic sense and thus questions are often asked about the representative capacity of our elected representatives. Worryingly, this lack of parity reinforces perceptions that consider women in positions of power to be an ‘abnormal state of affairs’. In this sense, powerful women are assessed differently to men and often held to higher standards. Indeed, one only has to reflect on the experiences of Estelle Morris, who left government for the last time in 2005, to see that women are not permitted to fail in the way that men are.