Professor Rainbow Murray joined a panel on BBC World Service to discuss how women change politics. She said: “There isn’t substantial evidence that men and women are significantly different in the way that they approach politics in general. There is evidence that they approach politics differently in matters pertaining specifically to gender, which is to say that on issues such as women’s rights, maternity and so on, women are stronger advocates for these issues and are able to use their personal experience to put those perspective on the table. Otherwise it’s speaking a little bit to stereotypes and gender socialisation and we see that a lot of people who succeed in politics are those who are able to conform to the male stereotype that still dominates politics because that’s what it normally takes to enter the political arena. So even if we believe these stereotypes to be true in the wider population, and again I would be sceptical about that, we can’t assume that they’re true amongst the political population where there’s already a filtering process that goes on before they come in.”Find out more