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If Emeline Pankhurst and the suffragettes she led were alive today, they would have smiles as wide as the railings to which they used to chain themselves.

Thanks to them, women won the vote in 1918. And nearly 100 years later they are winning real power right across the world, as what began as female emancipation becomes female domination.

Most men would acknowledge that women have the upper hand when it comes to being practical, being able to multi-task, being insightful.

MI5 reckons they are also more perceptive and observant, which is why women make up most of their surveillance teams.

But does being female automatically make women better at governing?

The jury is still out on our first female PM, Margaret Thatcher .

Tory leadership contender Andrea Leadsom’s claim that being a mother gave her more of a stake in the nation’s future provoked such a backlash she had to withdraw from the race.

If Mrs Leadsom (53, married, three children) is to be believed, it was not Theresa May’s childlessness she was having a dig at. It was just that in her mind motherhood is a good qualification for being PM.

Yet David Cameron and Jeremy Corbyn are both fathers but have never suggested that having children helps them to wield power.

(Image: Getty Images)

Some women politicians seem to feel they have to set out their womanly credentials in a way a man would never dream of laying down his manly ones.

Labour leadership challenger Angela Eagle, 55, makes a point of saying she is a gay woman.

The march of women saw Mrs May (59, married, no children) take charge of Downing Street, while Nicola Sturgeon (45, married, no children) commands Scotland.

Mrs Sturgeon’s rival Tory and Labour leaders are Ruth Davidson (37, engaged to same-sex partner) and Kezia Dugdale (34, same-sex partner).

In the Tory Cabinet, Priti Patel (44, married, one child) is now in charge of international development, Justine Greening (47, same sex relationship) was promoted to education, Amber Rudd (52, divorced, no children) becomes Home Secretary, Liz Truss (40, married, two children) is Britain’s first female Lord Chancellor, and Karen Bradley (46, married, two children) takes over Culture from John Whittingdale.

Across the Atlantic, Hillary Clinton (69, married, one child) is on the brink of becoming the most powerful person on earth. Angela Merkel (62, married, no children) holds Germany in her sway – and her challengers are all women.

She faces Frauke Petry (41, separated, four children) on the far right and Sahra Wagenknecht (47 on Sunday, married, no children) on the far left.

And if she sees them off at next year’s election, her most likely successor is defence minister Ursula von der Leyen (57, married, seven children).

French president Francois Hollande faces serious competition next year from the National Front’s Marine Le Pen (47, twice divorced, three children), and his former partner and rival Segolene Royal (62, single, four children by Hollande) may throw her hat into the ring.

Rome’s first female mayor is Virginia Raggi (37, married but estranged, one child). Poland’s PM is Beata Szydlo (53, married, two children) and Norway’s is Erna Solberg (55, married, two children).

(Image: Getty)

Women are in charge in South Korea, Taiwan, Bangladesh and Chile and after her release from house arrest Aung San Suu Kyi (71, widowed, two children) ­became Burma’s first female foreign minister and is now effectively PM.

She may yet become its president – but at present she is disbarred under constitutional rules specifically designed for her, which say that a widow and mother of foreigners cannot hold the post.

Not since Tudor times have women so dominated public life. In those days Mary I (married, no children) and Mary Queen of Scots (married, one child who became James I) vied with our greatest monarch Elizabeth I (single, no children).

But even Elizabeth was not above using her gender to rule in an age dominated by men. She revelled in the title of Virgin Queen, married to her nation. No male head of state has felt the need to boast about being a virgin king.

Boudica (widowed, two children) was the British warrior queen in 60 AD who gave the Romans a bloody nose for flogging her and gang raping her daughters.

During her rebellion, she sacked Colchester, St Albans and London.

Queen Victoria (widowed, nine children) does not really count, because by her day Parliament was more powerful than the monarch.

For centuries it was religion which did most to suppress the rights of women . But in the early days of both Christianity and Islam it was very different.

The Bible makes clear that Mary Magdalene was the one disciple who understood what Jesus was on about. The 12 male apostles were exasperatingly dim, constantly having to ask Jesus to repeat what he had just said.

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Mary is there at the crucifixion when most of the blokes have run away, and she is given the honour of being first to discover the resurrection.

It was women who bankrolled Jesus’s ministry to keep the show on the road.

And so in early Christianity women had equality with men. And it was this inclusiveness which made the new religion so attractive to female followers.

Once men got control of the church, women were squeezed out. It was not until last year that the Church of England managed to appoint its first woman bishop – and even then, not without opposition.

In Muhammad’s day during the Seventh Century, Islam also embraced women as equals. It was only later that they had to cover up.

Muhammad’s edict that men could take up to four wives was not for the sexual exploitation or oppression of women but for their welfare.

It ensured that if they were widowed when warrior husbands died in battle they and their orphan children would be looked after.

(Image: Getty)

Muhammad’s first mosque had the huts for his wives around it. This was to show the sexual, sacred and domestic were fully integrated and there was no discrimination between men and women.

Wives had to be treated equally and could initiate divorce proceedings, while husbands could not seize their property – all rights that Western women were not to enjoy until the 19th Century.

Women have achieved much since the 1918 Representation of the People Act granted votes to all men over the age of 21 and women over the age of 30.

The age discrepancy was to ensure that men did not become a minority of voters because of the huge numbers killed during the First World War .

The goal for modern politics then is that it should be gender equal and gender neutral.

In that way there will soon not be anything remarkable about women reaching the very top.