Politicians, campaigners and women of every political stripe have united in their condemnation of the Sunday Times for its presentation of a book extract about Nicola Sturgeon, in which she revealed that she had a miscarriage at the age of 40.

While Sturgeon herself has received widespread support, there was anger about the way her disclosure was trailed as a “tantalising secret” by the newspaper and accompanied by a panel headed “childless politicians”, listing only high-profile women without children.

Childless politicians panel in the Sunday Times magazine. Photograph: Clipshare

The “childless politicians” box, which appears to have excluded the many male politicians without children, drew cross-party condemnation.

The Scottish Conservative leader, Ruth Davidson, described the use of the word tantalising as “crass and wrong”, while retweeting the panel, which she was included in, saying: “Oh, I do SO enjoy when I’m categorised as a ‘childless politician’.”

Chris Elmore, Welsh Labour MP for Ogmore, tweeted: “I’m a childless politician too. Guessing because I’m a man it doesn’t matter.” His comment was supported by Conservative MP Anna Soubry, who replied: “It’s irrelevant man, woman, trans, whatever!” adding, with frustration: “I sometimes feel we’re going backwards, not forwards.”

Fellow Conservative MP Therese Coffey demanded to know the reason why the Sunday Times had only included women in its list of childless politicians. “What about male politicians with no kids?”

The former Green party leader Natalie Bennett, who was also included in the list, criticised the Sunday Times as “living in [the] 1950s”, adding: “20% of British women aged 45 [have] no children, expected to rise to 25%.”

Emma Ritch, director of Engender Scotland, said Sturgeon’s sharing of her own experience to illuminate some truths about women’s lives was both brave and thoughtful. “This is a useful moment for women trying to live their lives in public,” she said. “The question of work-life balance is always interrogated from the perspective that women should have children. But her own words are extremely nuanced, described the many different reasons why women do not have children, all of which, as she says, should be free of judgments and assumptions.”

Women 50:50, the Scottish campaign for equal representation in parliament and beyond, tweeted its own panel of male politicians without children.

Its founder, Talat Yaqoob, said: “Nicola Sturgeon was detailing a personal story, which she herself states is to overcome the taboo of talking about miscarriage, yet the paper reinforced every taboo with the panel they used to highlight it. I wonder, did they call Ruth Davidson, Natalie Bennett or Justine Greening before printing it? Did they ask for their personal stories and issues they would like to highlight? No, there was no context to their inclusion in the article, they simply printed their faces and pointed at their childlessness, as if there was something wrong with it.”

Yaqoob added: “A picture listing male childless politicians has never appeared in a paper. There are far fewer male politicians without children than there are women, because maternity discrimination and childcare difficulties are very real issues in politics. Women are still seen as the primary caregivers and therefore leadership positions are dominated by men, but instead of giving this inequality the attention it rightly deserves, all this did was place the issue on the women themselves.”



A spokesperson for The Sunday Times said: “We felt our piece highlighted sympathetically the treatment of women politicians and the subject of miscarriage but on reflection we could have presented the sidebar more sensitively.”