U.K. cabinet too male, too white?

LONDON - Prime Minister David Cameron's three-day-old administration was panned by activists, newspapers, and even some of his coalition partners Friday for picking an almost entirely white, male, and upper-class cabinet despite pledging that his Conservative Party would no longer be an "old boys' club."

Cameron and his deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats, both grew up in wealthy families and attended elite schools.

Their 23-member cabinet includes Britain's first female Muslim cabinet member, Sayeeda Warsi, but she does not have a defined policy area. There are three other women, only two of whom will run government departments, the mark of power.

Twenty-two cabinet members are white, and at least 16 went to top universities Oxford or Cambridge.

Cameron has tried to change the Conservative Party's image as a club of aristocrats hostile to minorities and indifferent to the poor. He has pledged that a third of top government jobs would go to women and has boosted minorities.

The participation of the left-leaning Liberal Democrats also had raised expectations of more diversity.

"Cabinet jobs for well-heeled school chums," the Daily Mirror tabloid scoffed. "A huge step backward," wrote gender-rights activists in a letter to the Times of London. Radio shows were inundated by similar complaints.

"When you look at the negotiating teams, they were male and pale," Liberal Democrat lawmaker Lynne Featherstone told the BBC, referring to senior leaders from both parties who cobbled together the power-sharing deal.

Other European nations have more gender equity at the top. About half of Norway's and Sweden's cabinets are women. Germany has six women in its 16-member cabinet.

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair had six women in his 2005 cabinet. Gordon Brown, who resigned this week, had five.

Eight percent of Britain's population consists of ethnic minorities, with Indians and Pakistanis the largest groups.