Emmeline Pankhurst may have started life as an idealistic Mo Mowlam type of gal, says Lauren Booth, but then she turned into Anne Widdicombe

Emmeline Pankhurst was the mother of modern feminism. I wonder how she’d feel looking at 21st century British women, with our jobs, bank accounts and mortgage-related ulcers. Chances are, she’d feel both proud and disappointed with our progress over the last 75 years. It was in 1917 that Emmeline and her daughter, Christabel, founded the Women’s Party and pledged support for ‘equal pay for equal work, equal marriage rights and equal rights over children for both parents’. Yet, almost a century later and 30 years after the introduction of the equal pay act, the gap between men and women’s average hourly earnings has not only stalled - it has widened. In 1998, the New Earnings Survey showed that full-time female employees received just 80 per cent of men’s gross hourly earnings (down 0.1% on the previous year). For part-time workers, the gap is even wider with women in this area earning 58 per cent of the hourly earnings received by full-time male employees.

Pankhurst began her political life as a committed socialist. In her role as a Poor Law Guardian, she regularly visited the local workhouse where the misery and suffering she witnessed reinforced her belief that female suffrage was the only way to end women’s misery. Sadly, winning the right to vote was only the beginning. In 1997 many believed that the election of over 100 women MPs would have a significant impact on the way women were treated and paid at work, this has not been the case.

It’s not that Labour hasn’t shown an interest in women’s issues; it’s simply that the Government is unwilling to alienate powerful business support by imposing more regulations. Ministers may have extended maternity leave and benefit, but the Government still prefers to ‘encourage’ big employers to treat their staff equally rather than legislature to force them into providing parity of pay and conditions.

In terms of equal pay and opportunities, Britain is the most sexist place to work in Europe. The wage gap between men and women is much smaller in France and Germany, even Portugal. A new mum in Finland enjoys nine months paid leave compared to our 4.5months (increasing to six next year). On average a continental woman earns 6% more than her UK counterpart.

Over the last decade, the media has been eagerly creating an image of men as the ‘real’ second-class citizens. According to endless features the collapse of heavy industry, the falling exam grades of male pupils and the rise in young male suicides, mean that nowadays men need more ‘support’ than women.

We should remind ourselves that when Emmeline Pankhurst found her struggle for women’s rights ignored by the press, she became more militant, not less. Between 1907 and 1912, she was imprisoned numerous times and endured ten hunger strikes over an eighteen-month period to raise the profile of her cause. Finally, universal suffrage, including women’s, was granted in the year of her death, 1928, but not before she had undergone a sea change in her views.

Emmeline may have started off as an idealistic Mo Mowlam type of gal, headstrong and determined to recruit working-class women into the struggle for equality, but by her sixtieth year she had she had become a prototype Anne Widdecombe. After using her party’s influence to support the war effort, she abandoned her earlier socialist beliefs entirely and even advocated the abolition of trade unions. When her daughter, Sylvia, still an active socialist, had an illegitimate baby, Emmeline refused to see either of them. Her transformation into Tory, establishment figure was complete in 1925, when she was adopted as one of their candidates in the East End of London.

Like our own mothers’ inconsistencies, Emmeline Pankhurst’s become clearer the older we get. We may be disappointed that she changed from an enthusiastic, militant, world-changer into a judgemental protector of the status quo, but we should love her all the same. After all, she’s part of the reason that we are who we are today.