“Number Ten, Maggie’s den” proclaimed the Sun headline on Saturday 5 May 1979, alongside a photograph of a waving Margaret Thatcher outside Downing Street after winning the general election. Compare that to this week’s front page after the news broke that Theresa May would be the new leader of the Conservative party and hence the next prime minister. “Heel boys”, reads the headline, above a large photograph of May’s kitten heels appearing to trample on the heads of her male opponents and colleagues.

It has been almost 40 years since Thatcher’s victory. Have we really gone backwards since then?

Back in 1979, much of the front page coverage of Thatcher’s win seems to have made little comment on her gender, with headlines like “Maggie’s made it!”, “Thatcher takes over no. 10” and “It’s Maggie”.

Compare this to some of the recent coverage of female leadership bids by May, Andrea Leadsom and Angela Eagle. “Woman back in No 10”, read one front page, and: “Here come the girls”, proclaimed another – as if the defining characteristic of the candidates was their gender.

Some commentators seemed to marvel at the fact that May and Leadsom had different views, despite both being women. One news piece about May’s advocacy of women in politics was illustrated with a picture of her shoes. In fact, disembodied photographs of May’s shoes appeared again and again across major news platforms as her victory was announced.

One writer urged readers to vote for May on the basis of her marital and child-free status, extolling the virtues of the fact that she cooks a new recipe every week. A profile of May’s husband Philip made sure to mention whether or not he thought his wife was a “corker” when they first met.

A cartoonist depicted May and Leadsom’s leadership battle as a spat over a handbag.

And today we have the added platform of social media, where scores of people have seen fit to judge Angela Eagle’s suitability for the position of Labour leader based on the tone and pitch of her voice.

Of course, Thatcher faced some sexist and infantilising coverage too – when she visited Buckingham Palace for the first time, one front page read: “A new girl drops in at the palace”, and an election headline urged voters to “Give the girl a chance”.

But even if things haven’t got worse, it certainly doesn’t feel like they’ve improved much either. It might even be argued that Thatcher faced less media sexism upon her 1979 election than on her death in 2013, when she was branded a “witch” and memorialised with headlines like “Margaret Thatcher: a better politician than wife and mother”.

Not to suggest that prime ministers and politicians don’t deserve scrutiny. But this kind of meaningless, sexist commentary takes valuable attention away from what we should be concentrating on. As long as the front pages focus on May’s kitten heels, her voting record and policy decisions get less attention.

While the focus was on the ridiculous argument about whether motherhood made Leadsom a better candidate for prime minister than May, less attention was given to Leadsom’s opposition to mandatory paid maternity leave for small businesses, or May’s previous opposition to various human rights legislation. Every column devoted to May’s hairstyle or suits is a missed opportunity to scrutinise the treatment of refugee women detained, on her watch, in Yarl’s Wood Immigration Centre.

One thing Thatcher didn’t have to contend with, which has dogged both May and Leadsom, is the inevitable and tedious comparisons back to the first female prime minister. As if all female leaders must naturally espouse the same policies and have the same characteristics, the front pages have descended into frothing speculation over the “Battle of the iron ladies” and the question of who would be the “New Maggie”. Inevitable and tedious comparisons of Thatcher and Mays’ “signature style” soon followed.

Of course, there is one other notable similarity in coverage. Though they became prime minister almost 40 years apart, both May and Thatcher had their faces emblazoned on front pages declaring their victory next to scantily clad female models.

This article was amended on 12 July 2016. We originally referred to “topless female models”, this has been changed to “scantily clad”.