It’s madness itself that women are still being depicted as too mad to be trusted with power. Britain is falling behind – frustratingly slow – global progress on this issue. And until the age-old stereotype of the hysterical woman is dismantled, we’ll fall further behind.

This year’s International Women’s Day theme is ‘Equal rights, equal opportunities: Progress for all.’ Costa Rica can certainly celebrate the theme with pride – Laura Chinchilla was recently elected its first female president. This brings us to just eleven women world leaders – in Chile, Argentina, Liberia, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Germany, Iceland, Switzerland, Croatia, Costa Rica, Lithuania and Finland. Yet Britain is far off electing a female political party leader – let alone another female prime minister.

The anti-feminist nature of our society is to blame for this. It has two main, damaging characteristics: female hypersexualisation, and the idea that women are irrational, illogical and hysterical. The latter is rooted in a long history of literature and language. From Shakespeare’s Ophelia to the madwoman in the attic in Jane Eyre, literature’s image of the hysterical woman is as stubborn as it is ugly. Even our modern vernacular reflects this – the word ‘hysterical’ itself comes from the Latin hystericus – ‘of the womb’ (the removal of which is still called a ‘hysterectomy’).

The dialogue of madness still permeates discussion of women in the media and politics. Worryingly, it’s today’s centre-right press and politicians who foster this archaic stereotype. Consequently, talented women are being pipped to the post by less qualified, less experienced and less capable men.

Take Harriet Harman. Belittlingly labelled ‘mad Hattie’ in Boris Johnson’s Daily Telegraph column, the right have created their own brand when discussing ‘Harriet Harperson’ – as a hysterical feminist who won’t rest until women rule the world. Rather than discuss, she ‘raves’. Instead of proposing bold policies, she embarks on a ‘crazy crusade’ (Dominic Lawson, The Times), or ‘a mad Equality Bill’ (Simon Heffer, The Telegraph). A recent New Statesman poll of pundits revealed she’d be most likely to be pipped to the post in a Labour leadership contest by David Miliband. Yet Harman is the far more experienced candidate and a braver voice on the left who takes radical action to make society fairer. Ironically, her pay-audit proposal to finally equalise the shameful gender pay gap is the antithesis of Thatcherite policy. Britain’s only female prime minister did almost nothing for other women, slamming a firm glass door behind her for years to come.

Another under-valued woman who has been dismissed as ‘bonkers’ (by the Daily Mail) is Cherie Booth. Lambasted mainly for not playing the passive, dutiful wife, she was unafraid to use her well-formed opinions as a top QC. But instead of a fair analysis of her views in the press, we’d be treated discussion of how wide-eyed, frantic and hysterical she looked. Similar tactics were used with the choice of pictures of Hillary Clinton in the reporting of the Democratic primaries, which told an insidious story of female madness propaganda. She, of course, was pipped to the post by the less experienced Obama, who was always photographed in sharp juxtaposition looking steadfast and in control

Cherie was pipped to the post by Tony early on in both her ill-fated political career and initially in her legal career. That she had proven herself to be more capable than him – she got the top first in her Bar exams in the same year Tony got a feeble third – is depressingly trumped by the fact she inhabits a society that still treats women with a voice as insane for shunning lady-like elegance (read: silence).

This International Women’s Day, it’s time we reclaimed our overlooked ‘loony left’ women from those on the right who are threatened by their ability to change this patriarchal society. Otherwise the ‘madwoman’ remains confined to the attic, never climbing out to reach the true helms of power.

Photo: When the aperture shuts 2008