Former British PM Theresa May Victorian Liberals’ secret weapon to recruit women

In a surprise move, the Victorian Liberals have recruited former British PM Theresa May to help close the party’s gender gap.

Former British Prime Minister Theresa May has been unveiled as a secret weapon to help the Victorian Liberal Party encourage the number of women in parliament.

Mrs May has agreed to travel to Melbourne early next year to hold a series of talks about how to close the party’s gender gap.

The former PM was behind a stunning push to increase the number of women in the UK’s Conservative Party when she co-founded the Women2Win program in 2005.

At the time there were just 17 Conservative women MPs, representing less than one in 10 members of the parliamentary party.

By 2020 that number had increased to 87, with female representation growing to one in five MPs.

Victorian Liberals behind the push to bring Mrs May to Melbourne hope she can help the party replicate the success here, where seven of the party’s 31 state MPs are women.

“Mrs May will engage in a series of conversations supporting the good start of recent preselections in state and federal seats, such as Jess Wilson in Kew and Sharn Coombes in Dunkley,” a Liberal source close to the negotiations said.

Theresa May has experience in increasing the number of women in conservative politics. Pictured here with former US president Donald Trump. Picture: AFP

“She’s keen to talk about the success of the program and provide some mentorship about being a woman in politics in which she has a very good pedigree.”

Plans to bring Mrs May to Melbourne last year were derailed by Covid restrictions.

It is understood she has nominated a series of dates between British parliamentary sitting dates that she could attend during the first quarter of 2022.

But any trip would remain subject to pandemic restrictions.

The Liberal Party has historically maintained opposition to the introduction of female quota targets.

However the NSW state executive in May set a recruitment target to increase the number of women chosen as candidates to contest next year’s federal election.

No such targets were set in Victoria, with the party committing to the Women2Win program instead.

The Victorian version of the program was started by Matthew Guy during his first stint as party leader in 2015.

But it has failed to have the same impact as the British version.

Mrs May spent three years as Prime Minister after replacing David Cameron in 2016 following Britain’s referendum vote to leave the European Union.

Only the second woman to hold the role after Margaret Thatcher, she resigned in 2019 after failing to achieve a Brexit deal.