Boris talks the talk on promoting women: so why has the coronavirus crisis been led by men?

If feminism really worked, there wouldn’t be feminism anymore,” suggests social commentator and provocateur Fran Lebowitz who is brightening my long January evenings with her caustic wit in Netflix’s Pretend it’s a City. “It is much better [for women], and yet it’s still horrible.”  

Seeing as we have had a lot of bad news this year and it’s only January, let’s start with what is improving. At long last Boris Johnson seems to have accepted that he has a women problem. He is apparently planning to promote more women to senior Cabinet posts — at the moment there are only four women in the Cabinet, and they barely talk in public. How many of them can you name? But talking the talk on equality isn’t good enough, now he must deliver. In July last year he promised this newspaper he would promote more women to the Cabinet, where are they? For this reshuffle to mean anything, he must have women at the top tables, part of conversations on the issues that affect us all. Yet Johnson is planning a reshuffle only when the worst is over, in June. The boys managed the crisis; paying lip service to equality can wait until it is over.  We also get the feeling he is only doing it because his girlfriend and Allegra Stratton told him to...

Since the first lockdown, it has been men guiding us through the pandemic. Men have appeared 65 times on The Andrew Marr Show and Sophy Ridge on Sunday. One woman has been on both, Priti Patel.  

Meanwhile, we are now intimate with Matt Hancock’s office, as he confounds us with increasingly baffling Zoom backgrounds. Of course it is an issue as knotty as his choice of where to display his certificates. Hancock is the Health Secretary so it makes sense that he talks about health policy on TV and, although he often seems reluctant to answer for himself, Gavin Williamson should be there to defend his education policy. But the near total absence of women speaking for Government points to a more systemic problem. They are not in the jobs that matter.

And that matters because the pandemic disproportionately affects women — the UN has said that it could wipe out 25 years of work increasing gender equality. Women are more likely to lose their jobs as a result of the pandemic and are taking on more childcare. Domestic violence is rising but with courts stretched, prosecution isn’t going up. Wouldn’t it help to have women equally represented and mking key decisions? On Woman’s Hour yesterday, former Conservative MP Anna Soubry spoke of a culture of saying ‘yes’ to the PM, which wasn’t necessarily about gender but did suggest that more men were advanced because they were the ones willing to oblige Johnson. With Cummings came a type of macho politics, with a boys sixth form common room atmosphere. There are women rising up but they need to be seen so that the next generation have women to look up to. Let’s keep applying scrutiny because what’s the point of promoting women if we don’t let them have their say?

Clare Smyth, who last night was awarded three Michelin stars, is an example of how restaurants create opportunity. She left school at 16 and now has her own restaurant, Core. But that industry is in jeopardy. Core is losing £50,000 a month. Smyth says that if restaurants are to survive it is imperative the Government considers business rates and VAT relief so that when they do open they can recover some losses. If not, we risk losing restaurants that are part of the fabric of London.