Thatcher is often described as a role model inspiration for women leaders. It is true to say that as the first woman prime minister she achieved high office and recognition never afforded to a woman before. However, as a woman leader myself - can I truly see her as a role model?

We are often told that the UK lags behind other countries when it comes to the number of women in senior roles: as Members of Parliament, on company boards, or otherwise visible in public life. I have a feeling that at least some of this phenomenon is directly attributable to Mrs Thatcher herself.

Power's action on the brain has many similarities to drugs like cocaine, and can cause similar changes to the brain, including, in extreme cases, a sort of addiction to power. Margaret Thatcher found it exceedingly difficult to live without this drug and harbored a bitter and unforgiving resentment against the colleagues who brought her down until dementia came over her.

What worries me most about Thatcher's death is not the Bieber generation tweeting their desperate confusion about why someone's name they don't recognise is trending. What is far more concerning than that is how Britain's only ever female leader being gone will impact the future of women in politics.

Thatcher was certainly not a feminist either in principle or in practise. She is alleged to have said that feminism was "poison". Far from seeing herself as a role model to female politicians, she actually promoted fewer female MPs than her male predecessors. She was the archetypal successful woman who revelled in being 'one of the boys'. But in a curious way the cult around her, particularly in the later years of her career, was one that could only have been excited by a woman.

The attraction of this political party for women is simple. Green Party benefits include practical things as a national rape crisis hotline, options for job-share, equal pay, maternity care, childcare and maternity/paternity leave, supporting breastfeeding, support for domestic abuse and violence.

America awoke on Wednesday morning to find it still had a Democratic president, but also that it was more female, a bit gayer and slightly more stoned...

Home secretary Theresa May, the most senior woman in government and Treasury minister Chloe Smith were among the guests at the First Women Awards on T...

The capital city's four million women residents are more likely to live in poverty, experience a wider pay gap, and are less likely to work once they have children than women living elsewhere. In fact, London has the lowest level of maternal employment in the country: just over half of the city's mothers with dependent children work - compared to almost two thirds across the UK.

Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper has been voted the likeliest candidate to be the next female prime minister. This was the outcome of a debate o...

Tory MP Louise Mensch has insisted she was joking when she complained in an interview about not having been promoted by the prime minister. The MP ...

Last year's general election saw the number of ethnic minority MPs double from 14 to 27, with Priti Patel becoming the Conservative Party's first Asia...

90 years after women first got the vote, men outnumber women 4 to 1 in Parliament. It's not just the lack of women in politics generally that's concerning, it's also their virtual absence in the higher echelons of government.

On Saturday the 17th September, the Liberal Democrat conference passed a motion on the reform of the House of Lords. One of the amendments in particular is very relevant to increasing the numbers of women the UK Houses of Parliament.

Lets select and elect more human beings please. Let's even encourage our friends and relatives to stand for public office. You know the saying, decisions are made by those that show up. And finally let's not sit quietly as the press dig around in peoples lives, bringing up stuff that frankly just doesn't matter.