A Mrs Amel Marmouri, from Novara, has just become the first person in Italy to be fined for wearing a burqa in public. Her husband says he will not allow other men to look at her: "If the law says she can't wear one," says Mr Marmouri, "then she will have to stay in night and day."

Unfortunate Mrs Marmouri. How will she adjust to life as a non-person? Maybe she should get in touch with Harriet Harman. Or, since they are more of an age, Yvette Cooper, or any of the other, theoretically prominent Labour women who spent the election campaign either tagged or under house arrest. It appears they did not all go quietly. Yvette Cooper questioned her relegation to a humiliating "second division" event near the beginning of the election campaign and was not seen outside again. When, more recently, a mutinous Ms Harman challenged the terms of her captivity, it is reported that one of her protectors, Lord Mandelson, roughly told her to "shut up".

Although there were worries, after she was gagged, placed in a sack and then dragged away by Douglas Alexander, that Ms Harman might never return, male honour now appears to have been satisfied. At 10 on election night, just as soon as the vote could not be affected, Labour's women were free to resume their traditional work for female emancipation. On Thursday night, there were even sightings of the mythical caravanner, Margaret Beckett. For the Tories, the liberation of Theresa May allowed Michael Gove, just for a few seconds, to stop talking. Although, at the time of writing, Harriet has yet to re-emerge, it can't be long before she's back, stressing the contrast between Labour's diversity and the Tories' arrant misogyny. "Is this the situation in the modern Conservative party?" she likes to quote herself saying, in her first appearance at PMQs. "That women should be seen and not heard?"

Far better to do the thing properly, as in Labour's campaign, and ensure that women are not seen either. Unless, that is, they are content to define themselves as loyal wives, mothers, grannies, relicts or, in this progressive party, repentant prostitutes. Providing these biblical requirements have been met, and are not jeopardised by worldly ambition, Labour will not merely forgive a woman her weaknesses, but actively nurture her special preoccupations with the family, maternity leave and tax credits. Hence the party's devotion to Mumsnet, where the proposal of a pre-eminent reproductive identity, incorporating women of every ideological stripe, has attracted a succession of ministers who would never dream of courting, say, dads, or the one-fifth of women who are united in not having children.

Hence, too, Gordon Brown's immediate approval of Mrs Duffy, before she was disgraced by her opinions. "You're a good woman," he said, on hearing she had issue: just what one would expect from a man whose tribute to his wife, on the eve of the election, dwelt on her peerless servicing of his biological needs. "I think she's doing a great job as a mother and she's doing a great job as a wife." But there is much more, surely, to Sarah Brown than that. In years to come, let us hope she receives proper recognition as a wife who not only outperformed rival wives, with her incessant tweeting, blogging and snogging, but eclipsed every elected woman in Mr Brown's parliament.

Not even Cherie Blair, in her pomp, was capable of this. Norma Major was, comparatively, a radical feminist of the Dworkin school. Mrs Brown's vision of womanhood takes us back much further, before Barbara Castle or Betty Boothroyd got any ideas of political grandeur, to the era of Brief Encounter. Except that, unlike the film's troubled, prewar housewife, Laura, stifled in her claustrophobic marriage, Mrs Brown seems perfectly content with her surrendered status.

It is a clue to Laura's moral confusion, after she meets Alec at the railway station, that she is tempted, briefly, to pretend she understands his doctor's jargon. "I see," she says, when he talks about preventative medicine. "I'm afraid you don't," says Alec. Laura accepts his correction. "I was trying to be intelligent."

That is not a mistake the educated Mrs Brown has made, even once, in her accounts of Downing Street date nights and bathtime frolics. Taking the same, vintage approach to gender roles, each of Labour's election broadcasts was narrated or presented by a man, in a sequence that went from grizzled, via Doctor Who, to outright thug: Sean Pertwee, David Tennant, Peter Davison, Eddie Izzard and Ross Kemp, snarling: "Be careful" at fearful dependents of the female persuasion. Even Labour's rival in female manipulation, the new John Lewis tear-jerker, invests more dignity in a life defined by family responsibilities.

With their working wives, but no female colleagues, neither Cameron nor Clegg did better. Judging by the last few weeks, the political consensus on female respectability places elegant wives and mothers in the first rank, followed by nurses (also known as "angels"), horny-handed "mums", caring grandmothers, cancer victims (treated to a special Labour scare story), single women with children, followed by childless single women who cannot be bribed with tax credits, women politicians and, lastly, the widow, mum of two and former prime minister, Baroness Thatcher. Thanks to Labour's vision of a women-free public life, reinforced by both rival parties, it should be generations before her freakish achievement is ever approached, let alone repeated.

As much as they may welcome this move towards a western caliphate, Wahhabist clerics must be wondering if they've missed a trick. The politicians make it look so easy. But how was wife and mum Harriet Harman, quondam hammer of inequality, made to endorse the instruments of her own oppression? Could it be that Douglas Alexander knows something about patronising and marginalising women that orthodox religious leaders do not? Or did Ms Harman, deputy leader of her party, collude in this operation? All we know, for sure, is that the current generation of Labour mullahs studied at the feet of Blair and Campbell, whose sofa government proved as effective as any medieval method for subduing women and never left a mark.

These electoral campaigns could not, however, have been so damaging to women's prospects in public life without the assistance of British broadcasters. Defying all recent complaints about the absence of mature women on screen, editors ensured that every significant election event was mediated by men, including individuals whose staggering mediocrity or ugliness confirmed that maleness was their only conceivable qualification. In a limited but welcome concession to its critics, the BBC introduced Martha Kearney's "election lunch party" on Radio 4's World at One.

This bitter pill was, however, sugared by that now-customary signal that women and politics have, unaccountably, collided: Martha's home-made biscuits.

• More election comment from Cif at the polls