It's news that will embarrass Britain's multi-tasking Education Secretary Nicky Morgan.

Because despite the fact she's also Minister for Women and Equalities, her Department for Education failed to include a single woman in its new AS and A-level philosophy courses.

While the works of Plato, Aristotle, Descartes and David Hume were recommended in drafts of the syllabus, no female philosophers were mentioned.

Nicky Morgan's (pictured) Department for Education failed to include a single woman in its new AS and A-level philosophy courses

The omission was highlighted during an 'equality analysis' of the new exams and officials hastily added female thinkers to the final papers which will be introduced into schools in 2017.

They include Oxford academic Anita Avramides and US professor Lisa Shapiro.

The row follows last year's controversy over music GCSEs excluding female composers.

But perhaps Ms Morgan just can't win – as her education department is now being attacked for 'tokenism'.

Former Tory Minister Ann Widdecombe, who read philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford, said: 'It's daft. You need to study the great philosophers, first and foremost.

'If they all happened to be male because that is historically how it fell out, then so be it.'