Equalities Minister Jo Swinson is back at her desk today, six months after giving birth to her son, Andrew. To mark the occasion, she spoke to the Independent on Sunday about the new flexible working rights which come into force today and the treatment of women in politics and on the internet. This means that every employee will have the right to request flexible working. Amusing points to note: first of all, the sub-editor can’t add. They know she was born in 1980, so why put her age at 36? Secondly, the official at the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills who didn’t seem to know who Jo was? Really?

Here are some of the key points of her interview. Firstly, on how parenthood has changed her. I wonder if her husband Duncan Hames, or any other man, has been asked this:

You have this entirely different sense of perspective. You’re looking at the world through someone else’s eyes and it is a life-changing event. It’s been an absolutely wonderful experience so far, and every day there’s something new. But I don’t feel that as a politician I’m hugely different. Obviously I have a different set of experiences that chime with experiences that many of my constituents have. I think I essentially still have the same set of values and the issues that are important to me don’t seem to have changed hugely.

On the new flexible working arrangements, Jo says that enabling it is just the start of cultural change:

Sometimes, as a mother, people are expecting that they may have to be flexible and that you may have to work slightly differently, but Duncan has found that that’s not quite so automatic, necessarily, for fathers. And so I think those cultural issues are quite deep rooted and are not going to be changed overnight. But that’s very much what we are wanting to start to change, with the shared parental leave and the communications that need to go alongside that.

The conversation then turned to the subject of body confidence and the way women in public life are often judged on their appearance in a way that men never are. Jo said that this sort of treatment could put women off high profile public life:

You just need to look at Twitter when Question Time is on, and compare the comments that are made about the male panellists and the female panellists – and that is whether or not they are politicians.

There is a significant minority out there that decides that the best way to take issue with what a woman is saying and with her views is to attack the way that she looks.

If you look at the role models that are out there, the women that tend to be photographed tend to be actresses and models, whereas the men are often in the media because of what they do in terms of business and sport. You look at the sports pages and you’d often be forgiven for thinking women didn’t do sport.

When you have an undercurrent of misogyny in some of the online sphere, that can be offputting for young girls.

And she knows that there is a great deal to be done to sort our own party’s gender balance:

No parties are 50/50, but I’m going to be the first to say that my party needs to do a huge amount better and I’ve invested a lot of time in supporting and mentoring other women in the party.

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings