MP Maria Miller used to hold the top job for gender equality in the country: Minister for Women. Now out of the cabinet, her new role as chair of the Women and Equalities Select Committee is to hold Prime Minister Theresa May and her ministers accountable for their progress on equality.

She has not held back from publicly criticising the government on a number of issues, including the rejection of proposals to get more female MPs into parliament for fear of additional "regulatory burden" on political parties.

Miller herself has faced her own share of controversy, from both ends of the political spectrum. Her argument that the abortion limit should be lowered from 24 weeks to 20 has met forceful critiques in the UK press. Miller has also faced opposition to her support for transgender rights and same-sex marriage (as Equalities Minister, she was responsible for drawing up and signing the act into law).

Miller launched the first ever Parliamentary debate on transgender issues, has published a report calling for a radical change in attitudes to transgender people, and has also argued that the UK should de-gender passports. More recently, her focus has been an inquiry into widespread sexual harassment and violence in UK schools.

You have been a well-known advocate of women’s empowerment throughout your political career. Why is this issue so important to you?

In 2005, when I joined parliament, I was one of only 17 women in my party. The world kept telling us that women were doing well and breaking down the barriers everywhere, but I was still just the 265th woman to be elected to parliament ever, and the 38th woman to be in the cabinet.

That’s pretty shocking, and the UK is not dissimilar to any other Western democracy - look at Congress: there are less than 20% women represented there. I want parliament to be as strong as it possibly can be. To have authority, it needs to be representative of the people. Right now, it’s not.

In working on gender policy, has concern over men's reactions and sexual harassment gotten in the way of pursuing topics that may seem controversial?

I was interviewed the other day on Channel 5 in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal. I was given a question - which I hadn’t been told about before - which was whether I had ever experienced sexual harassment. I never lie - so on the spot there, I had to say yes. But, you know, if I had been asked before the interview I may not have agreed to answer.

"I have experienced much more harassment in parliament than I ever did [in advertising]"

I came to parliament as second career. Before that, I worked in advertising for a long time, and I have experienced much more harassment in parliament than I ever did there, partly because in advertising my bosses were mainly women.

The type of harassment I’ve faced, being in the cabinet, is pretty unusual. You get letters from obsessives, repeat threats and online stalking - things that sound freakishly different. In my position, as a confident woman with political legitimacy, I have the tools to keep safe - although my colleague Jo Cox didn’t, of course.

Does speaking out about topics like this change my male colleagues' perceptions of me? It certainly does - but the thing is, I don’t care. I have my own legitimacy, so I can talk about these things without worrying what they think. It’s interesting to see who has joined the movement, and it’s mainly been older women. It’s probably easier once you have the capital to speak out. That was the issue with Weinstein: it was a lot of younger women without power.

When you are advising the Prime Minister or Minister for Women today, what do you tell them is the low-hanging fruit for women’s empowerment?

I know they understand the challenges women face, I know they understand how much is still to be done. But they are facing all those same obstacles I did. The most important thing is definitely giving women the ability to be equal at work. The gender pay gap is an enormous problem - it’s not simply going to get better by itself. It’s not a generational thing; our workplaces are not structured in a way that will allow it to disappear.

"Does speaking out about topics like this change my male colleagues' perceptions of me? It certainly does - but the thing is, I don’t care"

Giving both men and women the opportunity to have time out when they have children - shared parental leave - is so important. The lack of jobs suitable for people over 35 with caring responsibilities is also critical; we have to deal with flexible working, as it’s the only way to get the most out of women. Today more women are getting university degrees than men and at the start of their careers, the gap is not yet there.

Who are your best allies in policy work on these issues?

You know, the real allies that help me more than anyone are MPs in other parties. One of the achievements I’m proudest of is getting compulsory sex and relationship education in schools. We got 37 cross-bench MPs to sign an amendment - it forced the Government to introduce its own amendment and the statutory guidelines got changed, which is not an easy thing to do.

There were serious challenges in that accomplishment; sex and relationship education comes up against issues to do with LGBTQ, with religions, and so on. But I worked with David Burrowes- who I’m really at the other end of the party with - but his help was critical, and Sarah Champion from the Labour Party.

"Many of our laws are designed for an offline world"

Another example of how critical it is to build alliances is something I’m also very proud of: our work on revenge porn. Just a few years ago it wasn’t illegal; getting that changed was a real feat of building alliances. I worked with Minister Chris Grayling - he’s a dad, he has a daughter and he totally got it - and together we managed to make revenge porn a crime.

The Crown Prosecution Service kept telling me that it was technically already illegal, but no cases had ever been brought because it was so complex. Since we’ve made the law clear, more than 500 cases have been prosecuted. Many of our laws are designed for an offline world; it’s a totally different thing if a picture gets posted online, as it can reach infinitely more people.

One thing nobody ever tells you about government is the importance of compromise. The sex education policy could be much better, but some change is better than nothing. You have to be able to compromise to get anything done.

What have been some of the hardest challenges you’ve come up against?

I was the Minister who signed off the equal marriage act. Marriage is a state service; we can’t provide it to only a select group of people. That work faced a tremendous amount of opposition. But, in fact, I was actually really shocked that we faced even stronger opposition with our work on recognising the discrimination faced by transgender people. I couldn’t believe the transphobic attitudes of some of the media.

"Marriage is a state service; we can’t provide it to only a select group of people"

In terms of making real, broad-stroke policy progress, one issue is that the UK political system is very fragile. Nothing is written down, and for any change to happen we need consent that is hard to come by as those with power are still overwhelmingly male.

One of the changes I’m most proud of is establishing the Women and Equalities Select Committee in 2015. I didn’t realise until I was made Minister for Women that there was nobody holding the government to account on gender and equality - so it’s a really critical development.

What’s next in your work - what equality developments can we expect to see from you?

The Women and Equalities Committee is working on three big reviews at the moment. The first is around older people; there are these huge pools of labour that just can’t get into the market, and it’s very interesting to work on. We’re also doing something on the Gypsy and Roma communities. And the other is Dads in the Workplace; the workplace is just not designed for anyone with a caring responsibility.

(Picture credit: Flickr/Department for Digital)