IN satisfaction as much as in regret Nancy Astor observed that women

possessed no political past. What they had instead were the accumulated

mistakes of one-sex legislation which provided them with the surest

guide in what precisely to avoid.

''It is no use blaming men,'' she mused. ''We -- the makers of men --

have made them what they are. Now we must try to make ourselves a little

more responsible.'' These days that sentiment, belonging to the first

woman to take her seat at Westminster, travels like a ghostly whisper

along the corridors of the House of Commons which next week commemorates

the seventy-fifth anniversary of women being granted the right to vote.

Obviously much has changed since 1918 and yet in certain respects very

little has altered. We now have the greatest number of women MPs in

Parliament's history but the Commons is still a man's club, the dim

green leather benches and chairs and all those dull grey worsted suits

appearing like set pieces in some early photograph of the Atheneum, and

its hours of business still obstinately structured to neglect family

life fretting beyond its portals. Why, it's only relatively recently

that women members managed to gain adequate lavatory accommodation at

Westminster.

Last year, to capitalise on the women's vote and ensure that the 1992

General Election made some kind of start on smashing the infamous glass

ceiling, all parties selected more female candidates than ever before.

None the less, in the Mother of Parliaments 59 women members remains

pitifully short of fair representation between the sexes, a smarting

irony indeed since more than half of Britain's electorate are female.

Next Monday the Fawcett Society -- campaigners for sexual equality

since 1866 -- will bring together at Westminster Abbey MPs and peers not

only to honour the suffrage struggle but to chart the distance yet to

go. Speaker Betty Boothroyd will lay a wreath at the memorial to

Millicent Garratt Fawcett, and the ever feisty Lady Barbara Castle will

rally the troops.

Three days earlier the Labour Women's Network will offer some

financial muscle by launching Emily's List UK. This is set to be the

sister organisation of that impressively effective American Democratic

action committee which last year raised $6.2m to help triple the number

of Democratic women in the House of Representatives, from 12 to 36, and

those in the Senate from one to five. In America Emily is the acronym of

Early Money Is Like Yeast (it makes dough rise), but here it also pays

homage to two pioneer fighters for the women's vote, Emily Davies and

Emily Wilding Davison.

The aim in Britain is to gather #30,000 which will be used to assist

those women parliamentary candidates whose campaigns are woefully

strapped for cash, and already #16,000 has been pledged by supporters

who include actresses Emma Thompson and Juliet Stevenson and authors Sue

Townsend and Fay Weldon.

Until recently few have bothered to consider seriously the ill effects

of an excessively male-dominated Parliament, yet no-one can believe that

the interests of women (or ethnic minorities, for that matter) are

justly reflected in the House's deliberations when the actual

composition of the Commons is so unbalanced. Would a woman's national

party be the answer? That was Christobel Pankhurst's ambition but its

appeal today remains as remote as ever and the reason, quite simply, is

the obsessive nature of politics itself.

Being a Conservative, a Socialist, a Scottish Nationalist or whatever

does not preclude being a champion of women's rights. Nevertheless party

allegiance is the overwhelming priority for women politicians (as indeed

it is for men), and that instils a loyalty more profound than feminism.

Additionally the very idea of women's subjects is double-edged in

politics for to be confined to these areas exclusively limits your span

of influence, a fate for women that many political men would clearly

relish. When Lena Jeger was about to make her maiden speech Herbert

Morrison told her: ''Stick to women's matters'', and when she didn't but

spoke on the Berlin Conference he was not amused. ''Isn't peace a

woman's matter?'' she retorted.

But the problem is that, whatever their party, many excellent women

who might contribute much to Parliament never get beyond the first

constituency meeting in those drafty halls and threadbare offices where

local party committees choose their candidates. The old prejudice that

women are just not political animals may gradually be lessening, but the

truth is that many unashamed bigots remain left, right, and centre of

politics, and not only do they loathe change, they have the power to

obstruct it.

Of course, the other lingering snag which holds too many women back

from the Commons is the unfair division of drudgery back home. A woman

can be married to a Tory party toff or a card-carrying Socialist but her

own political ambitions will be thwarted if, at the end of the day, he

doesn't stir off the butt of his ideologies to rise up and help her take

out the garbage.