A record number of women will stand in the December general election.
Provisional analysis, carried out by the PA news agency, shows that a total of 1,120 female candidates have registered – 34% of the total.
This is the highest proportion of women candidates in a general election in history, up from 29% in 2017 and 26% in 2015.
More than half of all Labour’s candidates are women – a UK first for a major political party.
By contrast, around three in 10 of those standing for the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats are women.
A total of 3,322 candidates are currently preparing to stand in next month’;s ballot – a small increase on the 3,304 candidates who stood in the 2017 general election.
The total for 2019 could be revised slightly in the next few days, after the PA has completed its final verification of candidate data.
The news came just a day after it was revealed that women featured in just a fifth of election coverage so far, despite taking leading roles in some of the UK’s most prominent political parties.
Labour is backing 631 candidates in the December election (not including the Speaker, Lindsay Hoyle), 333 of whom are women – a total of 53%.
The percentage of women candidates has risen considerably since the 2017 election, in which 42% of Labour hopefuls were women.
For the Conservatives, 190 of their 635 candidates at this election are women, making a total of 30%.
This is a very small increase on 29% in 2017.
Of the 611 Lib Dem candidates, 188 (31%) are women – up from 29% last time.
The Brexit Party had the smallest percentage of female representation amongst candidates – 54 of their 275 total candidates are women, making up 20% of the candidates.
Two of the smaller parties have higher levels of female representation at this election than both the Tories and the Lib Dems.
The Greens have 498 candidates and 204 (41%) are women. For the SNP, 20 of its 59 candidates (34%) are women.
Meanwhile, exactly a quarter of Plaid Cymru’s candidates are women: nine out of 36.