WAYS to make the forthcoming election hustings exciting enough to draw in your average citizen will be taxing many good minds at the moment.

Unfortunately, I have nothing particularly useful to add to the discussion except that perhaps questions that reveal something new and different about the candidates might be fun. Such as:

• Tell us one really useful thing. For instance, one candidate whose name contains a cedilla once usefully told reporters how to find them on a keyboard (alt 135, in case you want to try it yourself).

• Show us your party trick (within reason of course). Can you juggle or pat your head and rub your tummy or do any interesting yoga poses – stuff like that.

• Who is the most famous person you have ever met and what did you say to them? A prize to anyone who can beat meeting Gary Lineker and becoming blank enough to ask what flavour crisps were his favourite. Not exactly the high point of this journalistic career.

• Why aren’t you a woman? Why is it that out of 21 Senatorial candidates, only one is a woman? There has always been a bit of a shortfall of women willing to enter politics but one – out of 21 (a record number of candidates standing, incidentally)?

What possible excuse can there be for such a low number of female candidates entering the political fray?
Speaking to female colleagues the reasons seem to be various, if not fully formed, as to why they would never consider a career in politics.

The first to dispel is one that relies only on fear and lingering views of the past to uphold it rather than any knowledge-based research. ‘It just seems quite misogynistic and archaic. It seems about 100 years out of date,’ said one woman. As an opinion, this is fine as far as it goes but, rather like saying that ‘voting won’t change anything’, it only gets you so far and is, frankly, a bit of an Eeyore world-view.

Nevertheless, if it is a view that persists, whether it has any basis in fact or not, it will put women off. However, you have to wonder whether someone who would be so easily put off by a perception would be entering the right career if they came over all political anyway.

Do women think it is unfeminine, perhaps? One of the more telling answers in the completely unscientific survey of opinions was that it was a job that seemed to involve an awful lot of time and effort only to be criticised every step of the way.

The women I spoke to didn’t seem to think that it was a job that offered much in the way of satisfaction. Although helping people was a worthy enough aim that most agreed would be the upside of the job, the downside was that no matter what they did and no matter how well intentioned, there would always be agro.

So, no matter how unrepresentative my group of women, it did leave me with the feeling that in general, women did not want to grow the extra layers of hide required to shake off all the comments which would be made.

Another aspect – and of course huge generalisation – is that women are far more likely to consider in depth whether they are fit for the role before plunging ahead and expecting people to vote for them.

As one of them said: ‘Well, come on, would you do it?’ To which the only response is – and by the numbers I appear not to be alone – hell, no.