AHC: Female PM of the UK in the 1950s

That is difficult, but less difficult the earlier the POD. For the Conservatives, Florence Horsbrugh who was Minister of Education from November 1951 to October 1954. For Labour there is Ellen Wilkinson, if she hadn't died in February 1947, she was Minister of Education, or Dr. Edith Summerskill who was Minister of National Insurance from February 1950 to October 1951. But all these women would need to have had more senior cabinet posts.
 
Challenge: Have the United Kingdom have a female Prime Minister some time during the 1950s.

It simply isn't possible with the personnel available at the time. Given that in the 1950s the natural political course meant that an MP would need to be in the House for at least twenty years before being ready to be PM (and would need to be even more proven in the case of a woman), then you'd probably need a POD probably no later than 1931 and certainly no later than 1935.

As with Thatcher, the most likely route would be for a woman to take the leadership of the opposition unexpectedly while bigger beasts stood back for whatever reason. To become PM in government would very probably mean being Chancellor of the Exchequer or Foreign Secretary first and those were not posts to which PMs have much appointed women even now, never mind then.

The difficulty is that generating a plausible scenario where a woman was senior enough to become PM in the 1950s means she has to leapfrog the wartime generation, which is difficult: that service, whether political or military, brings a lot of prestige.

To make a minimal change, you'd be looking at a woman taking over:
- from Churchill after he loses in 1951, which means butterflying Eden (and perhaps others) away, followed by her winning in 1952-6, depending on how long an Attlee third term lasts.
- from Attlee if he won in 1951, which means butterflying away any number of senior Labour figures.
- from Eden in 1957.
- from Eden / Macmillan / Butler / whoever, if the Tory Party suffered serious internal revolt after Suez, forcing an early election that Labour won.

Alternatively, you need a much earlier POD - back into the 19th century - enabling women to stand for parliament and so both a much larger number of available candidates and a nation and political system more used to women at the top. That's not impossible - electoral reform to include wealthy women was on the agenda that far back - but it does result in something of a blank sheet as to possible candidates for the job.

Without massive or very early changes, I don't think you can plausibly get a woman PM before Barbara Castle. Even then, you'd have to butterfly away In Place of Strife (appoint her to a different job?) and she wouldn't be PM before the 1970s.
 
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