The notion of a glass ceiling posits that women politicians are unlikely to reach executive roles at the same rate as their male colleagues based solely on their sex. In this paper I adopt a cohort study research design to elucidate a case where no glass ceiling is visible in executive appointments. The 1997 British parliamentary election saw a record number of women elected to the House of Commons for the first time, the majority for the Labour party. In this paper, I compare the career trajectories of men and women Labour MPs elected simultaneously across the thirteen-year period of majority Labour government that followed. Employing the measurements of women’s executive presence outlined by Krook and O’Brien (2012), I use descriptive and inferential statistical analysis to explore the proportions of men and women reaching frontbench and cabinet office, the prestige of office appointments, and the gender-type of these appointments. I tentatively find sex equality in all of these areas. To explain such a finding, I adopt a theory of supply and demand theory, and argue that when an increase in demand meets a concurrent increase in supply, sex equality in executive appointments is possible. Specific to this case, this was embodied in the adoption of a sex quota by the Labour party prior to the election and the seeming support for sex equality more broadly of the individual responsible for executive appointments, Prime Minister Tony Blair. Additionally, measures of candidate quality show no significant differences in the educational or political backgrounds of men and women, potential measures of suitability for executive office. The paper closes by recommending the use of more cohort research designs in future work in the field.
