Theresa May Was Asked The Weirdest (And Most Sexist) Question On The News Last Night

In an interview for International Women’s Day conducted by ITV, Theresa May was focused on presenting her new, harsher legislation attempting to outlaw physical and economic abuse. Bringing forth protection orders and tougher sentences on offenders, she is trying to keep up with the promise she made last year to tackle domestic abuse in the UK. However, speaking to ITV’s Julie Etchingham she was clearly caught off guard by what many have thought to be a sexist, biased question.

What would be the perfect night for the PM to ‘let her hair down’ with her friends?

She tried to direct the conversation back to her work, but Etchingham persisted, asking what her dream moment would be. May’s response was straight to the point. 'Well, I don’t think that when you let your hair down there’s only one way of doing it. I think it depends on the group that you’ve got, it depends on the time. But as I say, my International Women’s Day is rather more focused not on what we can do to enjoy ourselves but actually on what we can do to help women out there, women who are suffering, women who are being abused and whose lives are being made a daily living hell.’ Ok, there's no way in a million years this question would have been directed at Boris Johnson or Jeremy Corbyn. And there's no way a male politician have received the same treatment if presenting a potentially life changing bill for millions of women. People love making jokes about the ‘MayBot’ and the PM’s lack of emotion but the reality is, even if she did have a more engaging persona, she would still be crucified for showing too much emotion. No one seemed to ask David Cameron what he did on nights out when all those pig rumours were flying around - So, why do we hold such a different standard for female politicians like May? The answer will always be the same. Sexism in politics is nothing new and, unfortunately, it won’t stop being an intrinsic part of the representation of female politicians for a very long time. It’s just a special type of irony that this happened on International Women’s Day.

This article originally appeared on The Debrief.