LONDON – Until recently, there were more men named John in the House of Commons than there were women members of Parliament.

When all the counting is done Friday, the number of women members of Parliament is expected to reach a record level of about 136, up from 119. Thus, 87 years after women first won the right to vote, women will occupy just more than a fifth of all the seats in the Commons.

According to the Fawcett Society, an organization campaigning for equality for women, the number of female Tory and Liberal Democrat members of Parliament will fall slightly by the end of the day.

The number of women Labour members of Parliament, on the other hand, is expected to swell by around 19 to 113.

The rise of the female member of Parliament is the result of many years’ work by women – and men – from a broad political spectrum, and, controversially, Labour’s policy of quotas, with women-only shortlists in key seats.

Female members of Parliament rocketed to 120 from 63 in the 1997 election thanks to Labour candidates, but numbers fell in 2001 to 115 when key figures such as Betty Boothroyd retired and were replaced by male candidates.

The decline was seen by many female Labour activists as a result of not having an effective mechanism to ensure positive action in favor of female candidates.

“There was a steep change in the level of representation in 1997, but the depressing thing is that it has not been followed through by all the parties, and the rate of change has been alarmingly slow,” the director of the Fawcett Society, Katherine Rake, said.

“You can argue until you’re blue in the face about the rights and wrongs [of affirmative action] but that’s what works.”

According to Fawcett, the Tories selected women candidates in just 12% of their 50 most winnable seats this time around, and the Liberal Dems in 32%.

Labour, on the other hand, had women standing in almost two-thirds of its winnable seats, up from 22% in 2001, even though “names” such as Estelle Morris, the former education secretary; Alice Mahon, the member of parliament for Halifax, and Helen Jackson, of Labour’s ruling national executive committee, were standing down.

A Labour member of Parliament, Helen Liddell, a former Scottish Secretary, has also left to become British High Commissioner to Australia.

Dr. Rake said, “Increasing the proportion of women in Parliament should not depend, as it does, on the electoral fortunes of one party. It is the responsibility of all parties to play a part.”

The Tories and Liberal Democrats argue that their female candidates want to win on their own merits.

The real question for voters is how effective women members of Parliament have been. Research suggests that Britain’s politics have been changed irrevocably, with child care, flexible working hours, and domestic violence all-important issues for Parliament.

Women members of Parliament have also secured a change in Commons’ hours to make the place more family-friendly.

But a recent survey of female members of Parliament laid bare the antediluvian attitude to women at Westminster that still exists. It contained frank testimony about such practices as male members of Parliament juggling imaginary breasts and crying “melons” as women tried to speak in the Commons.

Labour’s Claire Curtis-Thomas said that when she arrived in the House of Commons, she assumed the red ribbons tied to coat hangers were for AIDS day, only to be told they were for members to hang up their swords.

Professor Joni Lovenduski of Birkbeck College, University of London, said, “All institutions are resistant to change, and this [House of Commons] is a really traditional institution.”