WHAT DOES it take to get noticed in the Conservative leadership contest? Well, it helps to wear a tie and talk in a deep voice. Otherwise, the chances are that you will either be written off or — worse — ignored altogether.

That has been the fate of Theresa May. Last week she made a bold and thoughtful speech about the feminisation of politics and the Tories’ failure to understand it. She correctly identified many of her party’s flaws and offered a cogent programme for redressing them. She also gave the strongest of hints that she was considering entering the race.

And what was the response? Only four national newspapers even mentioned the speech, and in three of the four it was an add-on to a news story about David Cameron. (It should be admitted that The Times failed to report it at all.) May has her flaws. She is not very effective in the House of Commons — but nor is the frontrunner, David Davis. She is not as intellectually able as, say, David Willetts — but nor is Davis, either. She is certainly less of a bruiser than Davis — but in electoral terms that might be a bonus.

In May’s favour is that she is brave enough to tell it as it is. And — critically — she genuinely sees how it is. In the modernisers’ favourite phrase, she “gets it”. As early as 2002 she famously told activists that the Tories were seen as the “nasty party”. She was right, and they needed to hear it.

Now, I don’t for a moment suppose that May will or even necessarily should be the next leader of the Tory party. But, judged purely on merit, she would be better than, say, Tim Yeo or Alan Duncan. Yet the latest Ladbrokes odds have Yeo at 20-1 (even though he has told friends he isn’t going to stand), Duncan at 25-1 and May way out at 40-1, behind even William Hague and George Osborne, who have both made it quite clear that they are not running.

The trouble is that May is not being judged purely on merit. She is also a victim of the sexist attitudes of Conservative MPs and, to a lesser extent, political reporters. They convince each other that she is not to be taken seriously — and so she isn’t. When she used to make these points about the women’s vote in Shadow Cabinet, her colleagues mostly rolled their eyes.

Twenty years ago, when I first started writing about politics, Labour was like that. There were only a few women MPs, and only they cared about increasing their number. As a result they were marginalised. It was only when men in the party started to see the electoral point of Labour looking more representative that positive action was taken. It worked.

Once there were more female MPs, they started agitating for the party to pay more attention to the issues that female voters really cared about: public services, childcare, work-life balance. To begin with, neither the men in the party nor male political journalists saw these as important. They preferred to pontificate on “proper” issues such as defence, Europe or the economy.

But then, at last, Gordon Brown took up the cause and, by the time of the last election, childcare and parents’ rights were at the heart of the manifesto. The personal has become political and, in electoral terms, Labour has capitalised on it.

The Conservatives are still near the beginning of that trajectory. Few of the leadership candidates understand the feminisation of politics and its importance in attracting vital women’s votes. (Andrew Lansley and David Willetts are honourable exceptions.) Most of them still think it is wussy to talk about childcare, let alone to put it at the centre of their agenda. Most of them pay lip service to getting more female MPs but balk at the positive action necessary to achieve it.

But if they want to win another election, they simply have to attract back the women voters who have deserted them since 1997. And that will involve both feminising their party and feminising their politics.

The men probably won’t take it from me. “Oh, God,” they’ll be thinking if they have even read this far. “There she goes again, banging on about women.” If Matthew d’Ancona or Bruce Anderson made the same points in the Telegraph or The Spectator, the MPs would listen.

So to that extent, Theresa May and I share a problem. But — since women make up more than 52 per cent of those who vote — it’s a much bigger problem for the Tory party than it is for either of us.

Times Recommends

• Five golden rules for regulating banks
• Uighurs’ cry echoes round the world
• It is not just democracy that is illegal