MPs from all parties have urged ministers to do more to improve rights for women.

The main business in the Commons on Thursday was given over to mark International Women's Day where there were calls to help women in developing countries and to end the scourge of domestic violence.

The annual day marked across Europe started in 1911 and minister for women Patricia Hewitt compared how times had changed.

In 1911 the pay gap between men and women was 55 per cent. It is now 19 per cent which Hewitt accepted was still too much.

Oxford and Cambridge then refused to give women degrees, now 50,000 women with degrees are unemployed, the trade and industry secretary said.

There were other conflicting statistics that showed progress for women has been slow.

Today, a third of new business start-ups are by women but one woman dies every three days due to domestic violence.

Hewitt highlighted the problems faced by women living in Third World countries. Fair trade would do more to take women out of poverty Hewitt said.

There was also a pledge that in April the government would implement make a raft of policies on the children's tax credit, maternity pay and leave for fathers.

"If we simply left these changes to voluntary activity it would take far too long and parents can't afford to wait," she said.

"We have come a very long way and, as Emily Pankhurst said, it is deeds not words that matter."

Theresa May, the Conservative Party's first woman chairman, said the key issues facing women today were personal safety, pensions and education for their children.

Referring to her own battle to reform the way candidates are recruited, May said the key was encouraging women to stand which went against "the attitude of young men that it is their's by right."

"We must encourage women to believe in their own equality," she said.

The Liberal Democrat's spokesman on women's issues, Sandra Gidley, also called for more women to take part in public life.

"What we need to do is to make people aware that more than one kind of person becomes an MP," she said.

Labour backbencher and former transport minister Glenda Jackson said it was vital for the Commons "simply not only to look like this country, it has to listen to it".

Fellow Labour MP Dari Taylor called on the criminal justice system to wake up to the issue of domestic violence.

There were 290,000 domestic violence offences last year, he said, nearly double the number of street crime offences, she told MPs.

Conservative backbencher John Bercow said the issue of selection of MPs in his party was more about age.

"Older people are prejudiced whether they know it or not," he said.