What on earth are ambitious younger women to make of it …?

• Just when you thought it was safe to say that the tide is turning, that everyone is starting to realise the full extent of the unrealised contribution that women could be making at the most senior levels in business and government, along come two stories that can only serve to remind us that for every two steps forward…

• Let’s start with Nigel Farage’s speech in which he talked about women who have children being “worth less” to certain employers in the City. Not surprisingly, it aroused more than a little comment. Louisa Symington-Mills. COO at LPEQ and founder of Citymothers, concluded her article in The Guardian by saying: “Work, and children, are both facts of life. Why is that so hard to accept?”

• And as if that weren’t enough to make women – particularly, perhaps, ambitious younger women – wonder just how much more of an uphill climb there is to go, along comes the Lord Rennard scandal.

• Much has been written already on this matter and Laura Bates has provided a forceful but measured assessment not just of what some have been saying but also of the wider issues around sexual harassment in the workplace. But, staying with the political theme of this blog, one aspect of the whole business still confuses me.

• How can a political party, in Government, with an historic record of progressive thinking have placed itself in such a mess? Now, of course, when any allegation of this nature is made, due process has to be followed. But if you ask someone for an apology, you presumably think that person has done something wrong. So by asking Lord Rennard for an apology, the Liberal Democrats are effectively acknowledging that he did do something wrong. Why then haven’t they done something more robust about it? Sexual harassment is not, absolutely not, something you sweep under the carpet to avoid embarrassment – even in places as exalted as the House of Lords.