After a long struggle, women got the right to vote in the aftermath of the First World War. The process of integrating them into political life, however, was not immediately straightforward. The Representation of the People Act 1918 enfranchised approximately seven million women over the age of thirty, or women over twenty-one who were householders (or married to one). However, in an oversight that reveals much about the role women were still expected to play in British society, the legislation failed to address whether women would be allowed to stand for election to parliament (Cowman, 2010). This ambiguity gave long-time campaigners for women's political rights an opportunity. Several women, such as Christabel Pankhurst, forced the issue of women standing for election by submitting nomination papers regardless. Eventually, a bill was introduced to settle the matter, which resulted in the rushed Eligibility of Women Act 1918 (Beddoe, 1989) that allowed women to stand for election on equal terms with men. This new legislation, therefore, meant that women could be elected members of a parliament nine years before they were eligible to vote for it (Cowman, 2010), highlighting the absurdity of the rationale for denying women the right to vote as men did in the first place.

Since the bill only became law three weeks before the election, women candidates had little time to find a seat, let alone one that was winnable. As a result, only one woman was elected in the 1918 general election. This was Constance Markievicz, who, as a Sinn Féin candidate, refused to take up her seat, and was also imprisoned at the time of her victory (Beddoe, 1989). The following year, Nancy Astor became the first woman to take up her seat in parliament when her husband was ennobled and she was elected in a by-election in his former constituency. In 1924, Margaret Bondfield became the first woman member of the government as a parliamentary secretary at the Ministry of Labour, and she went on to become the first woman cabinet minister in 1929 (Zweiniger-Bargielowska, 2001). The British press took great interest in these early women parliamentarians, focusing primarily on their private lives and style of dress (Cowman, 2020).