Harriet Harman: ‘Women won the argument – now we need to deliver the changes’

In brief...

• Harriet Harman reflected on her decades-long fight for women's rights in politics, noting progress and ongoing challenges, including support for trans rights.
• She recounted early struggles with sexism and the significant increase in female representation since she began her career.
• The former Labour MP also discussed new challenges to women's rights and the growing rise of misogyny.

Harriet Harman has told The News Agents about her decades-long fight for women in politics, how she’s seen a new rise to equality in recent years, and why supports trans rights.

First elected as representative in 1982, Harman stepped down at the 2024 election, having previously served as deputy leader under Gordon Brown. She also chaired the privileges committee investigation into then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson breaking lockdown rules during the coronavirus pandemic, which she describes as "the most deeply important work" in upholding democracy.

She entered politics at a time when there were far fewer female politicians than there are today, recalling being “slapped down” by Margaret Thatcher when she first asked a question in the Commons, about school holiday support for working mums.

She was even called a “stupid cow” by former Tory MP Tony Marlow in the Commons.

She tells Lewis Goodall even members of the Labour Party were “mean” to her during some of her early years.

"I made the mistake of telling the whips that I had mastitis, which is an infection of the milk ducts after I had a baby and I needed to miss a vote," Harman says.

"It was then put in the papers maliciously, and I just thought 'right from this moment forth. I am not ever telling the whips anything personally about me ever again that they can then use against me.

"I had to stick it out. Until more or less all the other women arrived in 1997. At that point, there were a whole load of women the same as me."

1997 was the year the Labour Party, under Tony Blair, took power from the Tories.

When Keir Starmer introduced his new Labour cabinet after his July election win, there were more women on the front benches than under any other government. Harman's no longer an active MP, but says she is cheering on the party, the female members and her successor as the representative for Peckham, London, Miatta Fahnbulleh.

"We have made tremendous advances," Harman says.

"But we have not had one single woman leader and the Tories have managed three."

"Until recently, Tory women went in not to subvert and change the structures, but to do it like the men and to do it on their terms. We Labour women have come in to say we don't like the terms on which we're doing it. We don't like the power structures. We think there's institutionalised inequality. We want everything to change.

She says this makes men in the system more “uncomfortable”.

Harman also spoke about the current situation in the UK surrounding trans rights, and how it has caused division among those campaigning for women's rights.

"I don't accept the notion that feminism has to be postulated against trans rights," she says.

"I think there are circumstances where women have to be protected from abuse, and women who have been abused, have to be protected and supported."

"Women are women who are either born women, or who've transitioned to be women. If you allow somebody to transition, I'm not going to call you a man, because you are not a man anymore. You transitioned to being a woman."

She says wouldn’t want do anything to make their life "more difficult than it is".

"I just always think about the journey from being born, a man or a boy, and transitioning to a woman is not an easy journey," she says.

"I want to be supporting them and their human rights and their dignity and their self worth."

As a feminist, she says she finds the division on the issue "very uncomfortable and worrying", especially when she finds herself with a different stance to other long-time campaigners for the rights of women and girls.

"I hope that at some point there will be a coming together of those views and understanding of the differences on each side," she continues.

Now, she believes that while women have "won" the argument on equality, but adds “we still haven't delivered all the change that is necessary” – and sees opposition to equality rising once again.

"There's still masses of inequality, so there's no resting on laurels," she says.

"But there is also now a backlash, a real misogynistic backlash, so the idea that we've won, I don't think you can just rest easy with that.”

She says her concerns today include the activities of Reform UK MPs on social media and influencers such as Andrew Tate, whose influence she describes as "potentially infecting a generation of young boys."

"We've won the argument up to a point, but it's now being challenged again, from the populist right, so we've still got a fight to be had," she concludes.

"But there's a new generation of women and hopefully their male allies, the sons of the women's movement will fight back and I can cheer them on."

Listen to the discussion in full on The News Agents.