No Ordinary Woman

Jo was a powerful advocate of civil liberties, and abhorred discrimination in any form. She was an ardent unilateralist and a passionate campaigner for women’s rights, for which she received the Good Housekeeping ‘Woman of the Year Award’ in 1989. The chapters here tell of her being the first MP to raise in the Commons such sensitive issues as violence against women and female genital mutilation, and of how she was the instigator for a Minister of Women in the Cabinet. As the Shadow Minister for Women, it was expected that she would be the first Cabinet Minister for Women, but her untimely death meant that it was not to be. In the words of Rt Hon Dame Margaret Beckett MP, ‘All of the women of this generation owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Jo Richardson who was the first person to devote all her political endeavours to transform the position of women, and laid the foundations for everything that followed.’