Parliament is a rough place, according to Brighton MP Caroline Lucas.

She says it’s not so much about tangible obstacles, but rather the atmosphere that makes it so.

“It is not a progressive workplace and it should be,” said Caroline, the country’s only Green Party MP.

“Some of the behaviour that goes on there would be a sackable offence anywhere else – you only have to watch Prime Minister’s question time to see it. People are mocked and bullied and it is an off-putting environment – and not only for women.”

Having joined the Green Party in 1986, serving as a county councillor in Oxfordshire and an MEP before her election as MP for the Brighton Pavilion constituency in 2010, she is now a seasoned politician. While her politics chiefly focus on environmental issues, her first speech in Parliament was a call for the post of MP to be opened up to job-share.

She suggested pairs of parliamentary candidates should be allowed to stand in general elections and share the job if elected.

“This would open up jobs in Westminster to women and allow MPs to retain stronger ties with their constituencies,” she said.

“It is Parliament that has to change to make things easier for women to come into politics,” she said. “Women shouldn’t have to develop tough skins or change. There are obstacles for both women and men: if they have small children or are carers, they have to seriously consider how they are going to combine both.”

She cites her own experience of being ejected from a council chamber for breastfeeding her infant son and the case of Lib Dem equalities minister Jo Swinson, who wanted to take her newborn baby with her to vote in Parliament.

“I hardly think it would be too much of a disruption,” Jo Swinson said in an interview in The Guardian. “You can take a sword through there, but you can’t take a baby.”

Prehistoric is the word used to describe Parliament by Jemima Bland, the Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate for East Worthing and Shoreham.

“I have worked in international business and it’s the only word I can think of,” she said. “We have a pale and male Parliament and Cabinet. But there’s a lot going on behind the scenes to make it more female-friendly, and we are moving in the right direction.

“There are 64 women in Parliament – we are behind Afghanistan, Algeria and Cuba – and we do not have a Parliament that reflects society. At the moment, children’s rights are being discussed and gay rights have been on the agenda, but where is the debate about the number of women in Parliament?”

As Labour’s parliamentary candidate for Brighton Kemptown and Peacehaven, Nancy Platts has yet to experience Parliament as a workplace. She has come into politics as an older woman who isn’t aiming to be a professional politician but as someone who already has “proper work experience and wants to make a difference”.

But her experience of political campaigning so far has convinced her of one thing: women fight more fairly.

“Women concentrate on the issues and ask voters to vote for them on the issues, but men make it more personal,” she said. “I have stood in both an all-women election and against men, and women fight a cleaner campaign. Abusive comments about me have been posted on social networking sites by men opposing me in this campaign and I am really sad to see that coming into politics in Brighton.”

She believes fewer women than ever are being tempted into the political arena.

“Women have said to me that they have been put off coming into politics because they do not want to be targeted and picked on on Twitter and Facebook,” she said. “And that means that women who may have worked for years in community groups, for example, and have gained valuable insights into the needs of their local community are being lost to politics.”

Prospective MP Maria Caulfield, the Conservative candidate for Lewes and a nurse at the Royal Marsden Hospital leading research into breast cancer, has suffered no patronising comments by her male colleagues.

“I have to say that I have not been treated any differently because I’m a woman,” she said. “My party does not give any preference to any women, and my male colleagues have been nothing but supportive.”

Her advice for any woman thinking of going into politics? “If you are going to put yourself up for election, you have to take everything that’s thrown at you,” she said.

Have you been put off taking a job because you would be a woman in a man’s world? Or are you the only woman in your workplace? Let us know at women@theargus.co.uk.