Labour leader Ed Miliband has criticised the lack of promotion of women by David Cameron's ruling Conservatives in a fiery Prime Minister's Questions session.
Describing the Conservatives as an "old boys' network", Miliband slammed a decision by the party to deselect long-serving Member of Parliament Anne McIntosh for the next General Election.
Embarrassingly for the Prime Minister, his front bench was full of male MPs for the session, while Miliband packed his front bench with women.
Miliband also noted that there are just as many members of David Cameron's cabinet from two fee-paying schools as there are female members. The ruling coalition has been criticised in the past for hindering social mobility, with the current cabinet the least diverse in years, if not decades.
There has been activity in all of the major UK political parties in recent years to promote more women to Parliament, occasionally controversially in the form of 'all-women shortlists' in some parliamentary constituencies.
The coalition parties have been wholly unsuccessful in returning women to Parliament though. In the aftermath of the 2010 General Election, 31 percent of Labour MPs were female, compared with 16 percent of Conservatives and 12 percent of Liberal Democrats.
This deficit has given the government a headache, as Labour has a broad pool of female talent to draw from. In contrast, promising female MPs on the government benches have largely fallen by the wayside.
Louise Mensch was part of the parliamentary committee charged with interrogating Rupert Murdoch over the phone-hacking scandal that engulfed his newspapers. Following that role, she suddenly stood down as MP citing family reasons and now writes for Murdoch's Sun newspaper.
Other promising female careers in the coalition government have also fizzled out, including that of Sarah Teather - now a regular rebel against government policy. Teather has announced she is stepping down at the next election.
Others, including Nadine Dorries, have also taken to frequently opposing their own party. Indeed, Dorries has also criticised the Conservative leadership, dismissing them as "posh boys."
However, there must inevitably be an allowance for the prospect that any MP, regardless of gender, may fail to fulfil early promise - at best serving as a good constituency MP. The problem for the coalition is there are still not enough female MPs to source talented potential cabinet members in sufficient numbers.
The true failing, it would seem, is not just the failure to get enough talented women into high-profile government roles, but getting them into Parliament in the first place.
