Photograph taken by the Guardian of the EMILY ELEVEN - the first eleven women chosen to be "EMILY'S LIST". From left to right are: Mary Southcott, Janice Gowing, Janet Sillett with Joan Ryan - now MP for Enfield North, standing behind, Jacqui Smith now MP for Redditch, Barbara Follett - Director of EMILY UK and MP for Stevenage, Sharon Mainwaring, Loraine Monk, Teresa Pearce, Helen Southworh now MP for Warrington South, Valerie Vaz, and Sally Young.

The 1997 General Election was not only a landslide victory for Labour, it also resulted in a significant increase in women's representation in the House of Commons.

Between 1918, when women first got the right to stand for Parliament, and 1997 only 168 women had been elected to the House of Commons.  The figure for men during the same period is 3,994. and gives some idea of the scale of women’s under-representation in the British Parliament.

In the 1992 to 1997Parliament the number of women reached an all time high – 62 out of 659.  More than half of them were Labour. But, despite these advances, the fact remained that women only accounted for 10.2% of the House of Commons and only 14% of the Parliamentary Labour Party. There were also big regional differences with most of Labour’s women MPs coming from England. In the 1992 General Election only three Labour women were elected to Scottish constituencies and out of 27 Welsh Labour MPs, only one was a woman.

The 1997 General Election saw 120 women elected to the House of Commons. One hundred and one of them were Labour, 14 were Conservative, 3 were Liberal-Democrat and 2 were Scottish Nationalists.  The Speaker, Betty Boothroyd, was also a woman. However, the regional disparities remained, with only 4 Welsh Labour women MPs and 9 Scottish Labour women MPs being elected.  Again, this record number made very little difference in percentage terms.  Only 18% of the Commons was female.

In the 2001 General Election the number of women elected dropped slightly to 118. Ninety-four of them were Labour, 14 were Conservative, 5 were Liberal Democrat and 4 were from minority parties. The percentage of women in the House of Commons remained unchanged at 18%.

The 2005 General Election saw 127 women elected to the House of Commons. Ninety eight of them were Labour (this despite the fact that 9 sitting women MPs lost their seats and 8 women standing in former Labour held seats were not elected), 16 of them were Conservative, 10 were Liberal Democrats and 3 were from the minority parties. But, because the number of seats in the House of Commons had been reduced by 13 to 645 the percentage of women rose by 1.7% to 19.7%.

There are now eight women MPs in Scotland, and eight in Wales. Fourteen of these are Labour, with two Liberal Democrats. Following the positive action of All Women Shortlists in Wales, the number of Welsh Labour women MPs has doubled from 4 to 8. However, there was no positive action in Scotland and the number of Labour women MPs in Scotland has reduced from nine in 1997 to seven.

Since its founding in 1993 EMILY’S LIST UK has given grants to many Labour women, some of whom went on to become candidates and MPs. Twelve of them are current MPs.  Their offices can be reached through the House of Commons switchboard at 020 7219 3000, or where underlined can be emailed directly.