I just don't get Harriet Harman on this point

http://www.labour.org.uk/harriet-harmans-speech-to-labour-party-conference

"The Tories’ team of men only development ministers will never be able to lead the way internationally in empowering women and girls in the developing world"

One, under Labour, there was only one female Secretary of State, Clare Short, who was never liked by Tony Blair. (Baroness Amos doesnt count to me, since she served for half a year only). If you look back to the ministerial team of Labour's DFID, praticially everyone was a male, except Sally Keeble and Baroness Vadera, who were junior ministers. Even then, none of the females ministers in DFID every made females a priority. So what is Harriet Harman saying? The last Labour Ministerial team was all men--Douglas Alexander, Gareth Thomas and Mike Foster--unless one of them did a sex change.

Two, the current DFID team has placed females as a forefront of its policy, working with UN Women and other agencies.

Must you have a female in every leadership position to have females as an issue? Did Thatcher place females as an important part of its policy?

I don't hate Harriet Harman. But I just don't understand her.

To have people suggesting that ministers, or any other positions, should have a certain number of women or minorities rather than appointing the best person available regardless of their ability. Simply appointing a woman to a ministerial job doesn't aid equality if she's not capable of doing the job.

Labour would be far better off talking about appointments based on merit instead of box-ticking equality or cronyism.

Her whole deputy leadership pitch in 2007 seemed to consist of saying "vote for me because I'm a woman". I doesn't impress and it certainly doesn't convince but Harriet Harman has somehow built her career on this spiel.

I am all in favour of greater representation of women, but choosing a woman just because she's a woman risks the promotion of the likes of Palin.

However, I think Harman has often been given a bad rap (by me, among others, pre-2010). She was a fairly effective acting leader of the Opposition when many of her colleagues were too preoccupied with their internal battles to react effectively to the Tories' assault on the public services.

But how about policy? I mean ok, she's given the least tasteful of all shadow job--international development (which she should be thankful all parties agree on this topic) but harping on men-only ersus women won't score points locally or internationally (where development is).

And I wonder if she would translate that if she was shadowing other positions--defence, health etc. So only if a women is in charge will we see women soliders, more women treated etc etc?