Nineteen April 1918, one of the few dates not widely commemorated in the frenetic suffrage centenary year of 2018, was the anniversary of the most significant legacies of the campaign for women's suffrage. On that date Nina Boyle, a fifty-three-year-old former militant suffragette, had her nomination to stand as a candidate in the upcoming Keighley by-election rejected. The returning officer made it clear that his decision had nothing to do with Boyle's sex. Her papers were out of order as two of the required signatories were invalid; one was not a qualified elector and the other did not live in the constituency. Had her papers been legitimate, Nina Boyle would have been the first woman to fight a parliamentary election in Britain—and possibly the first woman MP.

As other centenary events made clear, those two honors went to different women. Constance Markiewicz was the only one of the seventeen women candidates who stood in the General Election in December 1918 to be elected. As a member of Sinn Féin she took neither the oath nor her seat. The following year, Nancy Astor successfully defended her husband's seat in a by-election to become the first woman MP to sit in Parliament. Rachel Reeves's Women of Westminster: The MPs Who Changed Politics, published to mark this centenary, offers an overview of some of the personalities and issues that stand out from women's first hundred years at Westminster from the earliest pioneers to the more recent intakes (including Reeves herself).

Reeves shows how from the beginning women faced an uphill struggle for acceptance and found it difficult to adapt themselves to what remained very much an old-fashioned men's club. Confined to the tiny “Lady Members’ Room,” they often had to walk miles of corridors to find a lavatory or bath, and they were initially refused entrance to some of Westminster's social facilities. They were treated very differently from their male colleagues. Their dress and appearance were constantly criticized in press reports. Astor reacted against this by adopting what she referred to as her “uniform” of a black suit, white shirt, and black hat, but others who adopted a less regimented approach found every outfit choice would be pored over. Despite their small number, they were often unrecognized by staff of the parliamentary estate. “I'm not a lady, I'm an MP,” Ellen Wilkinson informed the policeman who tried to stop her entering the smoking room after her election in 1924 (xvi). Depressingly, such stories keep recurring throughout the book, suggesting that little has changed over the century. Jacqui Smith's choice of a lower-cut top while she was home secretary led to the tabloid headline “Minister for Melons” (207) while Dawn Butler, a black MP has been repeatedly mistaken for a cleaner by her male colleagues (228).

A number of factors, including the lack of women MPs, the common if invisible barriers against their presence and the fact that many women voters turned to them rather than their male constituency MPs for representation encouraged cross-party initiatives on issues such as divorce law reform, equal guardianship of children, and equal pay. Here Reeves's inward focus on Parliament misses some of the wider coalitions of women's organizations beyond Westminster that shaped some of the more feminist priorities of many women MPs. Particularly when their numbers were small, many (although not all) party women valued connections with a wider women's movement. Mavis Tate's Equal Compensation Campaign, for example, which argued that women civilians should be paid the same for war injuries as men, was largely driven by the extra-parliamentary work of the Women's Publicity Planning Association, which used its journal International Women's News to launch a “bombs don't discriminate” campaign. The unsuccessful Equal Citizenship (Blanket) Bill promoted by a number of feminist organizations, including the Six Point Group and Open Door Council, failed to win party support, but it was influential in promoting Mavis Tate's later Equal Pay Campaign Committee.

Women of Westminster is described by Reeves as “a biography of Parliament told by the women elected to it” (2). Using this approach, Reeves switches between biographical sketches of the key women and descriptions of particular issues and campaigns. It is not neat—there are alliances and factions, women working collectively and against each other, friendships and hostilities—but neither is the life it depicts, although Reeves might have been more attentive to larger questions such as whether greater numbers of women in the legislature do lead to significant changes for women within and beyond Westminster. Reeves is sometimes less critical of her subjects than she might be. Harriet Harman's acceptance of a cut to lone parents’ benefits, which she later admitted she “should have fought” (190), is one example where the implications of a socialist woman acting against the interests of some of the poorest women in society might have been afforded more discussion. Elsewhere, the defense of former home secretary Jacqui Smith that press coverage of her fraudulent expenses claims had “a sexist element to them—people couldn't believe that I spent more time at the home where my children weren't than where they were” (207), appears to have been accepted at face value with no questioning of the actions that led to the coverage.

Reeves's position as an insider lends a compelling edge, particularly when she describes the appalling abuse still suffered by many women MPs (something she links, chillingly, to the murder of her friend and parliamentary colleague Jo Cox). Elsewhere, disappointingly, much of the biographical material centers on figures already well served by autobiographies and biographies, such as Harman, Ellen Wilkinson, and Teresa May, and the text lacks the breadth of perspective apparent in Linda McDougall's Westminster Women (1998). This is particularly striking in the coverage of the interwar years, where readers familiar with the work of Elizabeth Vallance, Brian Harrison, or Pamela Brooks will find nothing new. Women of Westminster is an appropriate celebratory centenary read but ultimately not a significant addition to historical analysis.