HAVE you ever wondered what Britain would be like if we had more female MPs?

And come to think of it, more women as local councillors and even elected mayors?

If that sounds like some far-fetched, futuristic never-never land, you could be right.

We Brits are a long way off achieving gender parity in our political representation.

In the 2015 General Election, 191 female MPs were returned to Parliament out of a possible 650 – just 30 per cent. The fact this was a record high tells you how far we still have to travel.

Equally disappointing is the fact that in the forthcoming poll on June 8 it is estimated some 7.5 million people will be denied the chance of even voting for a female candidate because there is no woman standing in their constituency.

There are 104 seats in the upcoming election without a single female candidate – including two in our neck of the woods: Selby and Ainsty, where four men are contesting the seat, and Scarborough and Whitby where eight fellas are fighting it out to represent this slice of the North Yorkshire coast.

Closer to home, York Central, York Outer and Thirsk and Malton each have one female candidate on the ballot.

But if you grab your calculator and do the maths, the chances of electors in our region returning a woman to the Houses of Parliament are slim. Of these five constituencies, there are only three female candidates standing against a total of 23 men.

Even at local level, women are woefully under-represented. On City of York Council, just over one in three members are women: 16 out of a total of 45. What's more, just one of the seven executive members is female.

There is an assumption here, of course, that we want to have more women in politics.

Women make up half the population, so not only is it fair and right but also essential for proper democracy that they are better represented in our decision-making organisations.

Much work has been done to boost the number of women in politics, particularly into Parliament. Both Tony Blair and David Cameron made it one of their goals to increase their number of female MPs.

Who can forget that famous image of the "Blair Babes", when a victorious Tony Blair was photographed shortly after his 1997 landslide surrounded by a record breaking 101 female Labour MPs? It was a triumph for sure: just a decade earlier, Labour only had 21 female MPs. And yet Labour failed to really build on Blair's success. After the 2015 election, it had just 99.

Still, this was substantially more than the Conservatives, who, in 2015, returned just 68 female MPs to Parliament.

The prospects for the number of female MPs rising after June 8 is poor: not one political party has achieved gender parity between its candidates. Labour lead the field with 41 per cent of female candidates, followed by the Greens on 36 per cent, the Lib Dems on 29 per cent, Tories on 28 per cent and UKIP on 13 per cent.

Which is why earlier this year a group of MPs recommended that political parties be fined if they are unable to make sure that 45 per cent of General Election candidates were female, with new legislation to back this up.

The call came from members of the Women and Equalities Committee who also suggested ways in which political parties could encourage more women to enrol in this arena of public life. This included high-quality training and development programmes as well as successful mentoring and outreach work.

Another proposal is to update the Sex Discrimination (Election Candidates) Act of 2002 to allow for all-women shortlists for elected mayors.

The MPs pointed out that Britain has fallen steeply down the world rankings in terms of female representation in its legislature: in 1999 it was ranked 25th, now it lies at 48th, behind countries such as the Netherlands, Spain and Italy as well as Rwanda, Angola and Mozambique.

That is not progress.

One final point. While political parties are looking at ways to bring more women into their fold, they should do likewise for other underrepresented groups such as ethnic minorities, the disabled, young people and gay and transgender.

A Parliament that sets the laws of the land needs to represent all of us – and might be something worth voting for.