David Cameron has lined up an all-male team to attack Labour over the economy, raising concerns within his own ranks that he has downgraded his pledge to promote women in the Conservative Party.

Three years after he vowed to “end the scandal of under-representation of women in the party” there are just seven women in the Shadow Cabinet and three on the party’s Board.

Only 69 of the 331 prospective Tory parliamentary candidates are women. The European Parliament and Welsh and London assemblies each have one elected Tory woman. Mr Cameron’s senior backroom team is male dominated, with men in all the top jobs and in 11 out of 17 non-administrative roles.

The news that Philip Hammond, the Shadow Chief Secretary, will join George Osborne, Ken Clarke and William Hague to head the unofficial group on the economy has sharpened concerns, particularly among female Conservatives. A high-profile female parliamentary candidate said: “The fact that there are not more women in the inner circle inevitably affects policy. It’s deeply worrying.”

Unease about the role of women in Mr Cameron’s party has been growing since his reshuffle in January, when he removed Caroline Spelman as party chairman, failed to increase the number of women in the Shadow Cabinet and did not promote ministers such as Justine Greening and Maria Miller as many expected.

Aides say that many existing female MPs have underperformed and point out that just 17 of the 125 female MPs in Parliament are Conservatives.

Ms Spelman was demoted after a parliamentary inquiry into her Commons allowances. A senior Conservative said that Theresa May was regarded as a “mechanical” media performer. Neither Baroness Warsi and Baroness Neville-Jones has fulfilled initial expectations when they joined the Shadow Cabinet in 2007.

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