Former minister blows whistle on over a decade of sexist abuse of female MPs

Caroline Nokes said women in Parliament are deliberately belittled and demeaned by male MPs

A TORY MP has told how she has witnessed women being subjected to deliberate sexist abuse from male MPs for over a DECADE.

In a remarkable interview, Caroline Nokes said she was even told that she was only promoted to a ministerial position because of “certain body parts” she had.

She told GB News: “I think anybody in politics is quite assertive. They’re quite outspoken, they hold strong views.

“What we see in Westminster though, and what I’ve witnessed over the course of the last 12 years since I’ve been an MP, is what I would describe as the deliberate belittling and demeaning of women MPs, a culture which fosters a lack of respect.

“I can remember being told when I was very new minister that I’d only been given that job because of certain body parts that I had.

“And that was what people were saying to my face. Who knows what they were saying behind my back.”

Ms Nokes was speaking during a live interview with Gloria De Piero during The Briefing on GB News.

She said: “We have to get away from this sort of male-dominated culture.

“I desperately want to see the actual position where we see more women in Parliament. I’d love it to be 50/50 but it’s taking too long to get there.

“And in the meantime, we’re still having to contend with some really outdated and frankly, unpleasant attitudes.”

Asked by Gloria if her experience was an isolated one, Ms Nokes said: “No, it’s not isolated. It’s not isolated at all.

“And that’s the challenge, and every single week probably there’ll be some sort of micro aggression and I don’t mean every week I’m the victim of a direct insult or some sort of assault, of course I’m not, but there will be small comments, little bits and pieces here and there that you just pick up and you think, ‘goodness me, nobody says that about a man every time a male politician goes on the media’.

“Nobody comments on what their hair looks like or what they’re wearing, but pretty much every time a female politician does, that’s what we face.

“And the thing that I always comment on is every time I do a media appearance, the first email in my inbox will be absolutely about how I looked, usually to call me fat rather than anything that I’ve said.”

She added: “I think there’s a really interesting and important debate to be had within the Conservative Party and women-only shortlists around whether you reserve some seats for women and whether you have a priority system when there are retirement seats.

“We will recognise those safe seats when long-standing members of Parliament stand down. Maybe we need to be prioritising them for women and the stark reality is that your average female member of parliament will serve one full parliamentary term less than her male counterpart.

“Why is that? Is that because we end up in the marginal seats, is it because, to be quite frank, we go through 10 years or so of low level insidious misogyny?”