UK MP Accuses Brown of Using Wome as "Window Dressing" - Building Gender Balanced Business

• As she joined the rush of ministers quitting the British government, Caroline Flint added a particularly stinging blow to the attacks on Prime Minister Gordon Brown: The Europe minister said the Labour leader used women as “window dressing” for his government.

• Brown has been tied to a number of issues related to empowering women, especially poor women in the third world. But he has also been accused of governing through a small coterie of mostly male officials, a point Flint made in her June 2009 tha accused Brown of running a “two-tier” government that excludes women from his inner circle.

• Flint added, “Several of the women attending cabinet – myself included – have been treated by you as little more than female window dressing. I am not willing to attend cabinet in a peripheral capacity any longer.”

• Brown recently made Harriet Harman, Labour’s deputy leader who is also women’s minister, the second most senior cabinet minister after him.

• Harman told ITV News of Flint’s frustration with Brown: “To attack his attitude -– and to say he doesn’t take women seriously -– she is wrong on that. I can understand that her frustration has boiled over but I think she is wrong on tha.”

The Guardian report