Since 1918, a total of 450 women have sat in the Westminster parliament.

459 men sit in the current House of Commons.

This means that, despite nearly a century of work, the entire number of women members of parliament ever elected has never outnumbered that of the men in any one parliament.

On the other hand – and more positively – the number of women in Westminster is now at an all-time high. As the recently published Sex & Power 2015 report shows, 29 per cent of the House of Commons is now female, a significant increase on the 23 per cent level before the election.

However, this still leaves us some way to go before we reach a third. It also does not do much to bring us into line with our European neighbours, most of whom have long had more than 35 per cent women in their legislatures.

In terms of the highest echelons of politics 32 per cent of Conservative cabinet ministers are women. Labour, the Scottish National party and the Liberal Democrats have all done well to have 50-50 shadow cabinet teams – in the case of the Liberal Democrats, despite the party not having any women MPs at all.

Where Labour does very clearly lead the way is in the number of women MPs – 43 per cent of the parliamentary Labour party are now women, as opposed to 36 per cent of SNP MPs, and 21 per cent of Conservative. However, there is no room for complacency, and 50-50 remains an aspiration rather than a done deal.

Apart from anything else, Labour needs to be doing some serious thinking about how to broaden and deepen the diversity of women coming through, and it needs to address the structural and cultural barriers inside the party that impede all women at all levels. This is particularly true of the party away from Westminster, where pressure to create and sustain change has been applied more episodically and with varying levels of success.

Which brings us to the biggest problem, which is in local government leadership. Shockingly, there are only 18 Labour women leading local authorities in England, and none in Wales. Just two of Labour’s elected mayors are women.

This is not just a single-party issue; a mere 49 of the 333 English councils are led by women of any party, and just two (both Plaid Cymru) of the 22 in Wales. In Scotland, women are equally thin on the local authority leadership ground.

Indeed, women have never constituted more than 17 per cent of all local authority leaders, and until this year the underlying trend had been downwards for some time.

Sex & Power 2015 concentrated on Westminster, but the 2016 edition will look in detail at local government. Apart from anything else, the omission of women from the top levels of local and regional leadership will have a direct impact on devolution, with women largely being excluded from key meetings and decisions.

If there was half as much outrage over the absence of women from local government leadership as there was recently about their absence from the ‘great offices of state’ on Labour’s frontbench there would be a greater prospect of action. The parliamentary progress reported in Sex & Power 2015, though not yet enough, shows what can be done where there is at least some serious intent. It is high time the political community showed the same level of determination elsewhere.

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Nan Sloane is director of the Centre for Women & Democracy and the author of the Sex & Power 2015 report. She tweets @NanSloane