Harriet Harman named PM adviser on women and girls

Keir Starmer has appointed Harriet Harman as the Prime Minister’s adviser on women and girls, according to the government announcement on gov.uk. Baroness Harman will report directly to the Prime Minister in what is described as an unpaid, part-time post. If that sounds like a quiet Whitehall reshuffle, it is worth slowing down. The job is supposed to help push the whole government to act more clearly for women and girls, especially on safety, opportunity and representation.

If you are hearing Harman’s name for the first time, the important point is that she is not a newcomer brought in for a headline. The government presents her as a long-standing advocate for women and girls, pointing to her work on women’s political representation, maternity rights and violence against women and girls. That background matters because adviser roles can rise or fall on credibility. Ministers are more likely to listen to someone who understands how Parliament works, how laws are shaped and how hard it can be to turn a promise into something people can actually feel in their lives.

The role itself is designed to work across government rather than sit inside one department. According to the announcement, Harman will work with ministers to tackle violence against women and girls, widen economic opportunity and improve representation for women in public life. Put simply, her task is to join things up. She is expected to draw on conversations with women across Parliament, identify where misogyny still blocks progress, and help turn concern into action inside government rather than leaving each department to work alone.

One line in the announcement carries real weight: the government says that, for the first time, the scale of violence and abuse faced by women and girls in this country is being treated as a national emergency. That language is serious. It tells you ministers want this seen as a problem for the state to respond to at full strength, not as a private issue to be pushed to the margins. The government’s Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy says the aim is to halve these crimes within a decade. The approach, as ministers set it out, is to stop violence before it starts, pursue perpetrators more relentlessly, and give better support to victims and survivors.

This is also where government machinery comes in. Harman is expected to work with the Cabinet Secretary as well as ministers, with the aim of shifting culture inside the Civil Service and ministerial offices. In everyday terms, that means looking at how decisions are made, whose voices are heard and whether women are getting fair opportunity inside government itself. **What this means** is simple: policy is only one part of the story. If the state wants better outcomes for women and girls, it also has to examine its own habits, its own workplaces and the way power moves through official institutions.

The government also leans on Harman’s past record to explain why she has been chosen. In an earlier spell as Solicitor General, it says she helped make domestic violence a government priority, and that work led to the Domestic Violence Crime and Victims Act and a network of 60 specialist domestic violence courts. Whether you see this appointment as symbolic or practical, that history gives the role some weight. It suggests Starmer is not only looking for a public advocate, but for someone who knows how to move an issue from speeches and promises into the detail of law, prosecution and delivery.

There is a wider point here too. Violence, representation and economic opportunity are often discussed as separate topics, but this announcement treats them as connected. Safety affects who can take part in public life, who can stay in work, and who feels that politics is built for them at all. So this appointment matters for two reasons at once. It is a political signal that women and girls are meant to sit near the top of the government’s agenda, and it is a test of what follows next. The real measure will not be the title itself, but whether this role helps produce safer lives, fairer chances and a government that responds with more speed and seriousness.