A CHAMPION of democracy joined one of the world's most exclusive clubs yesterday.

Aung San Suu Kyi is only the second woman to address both houses of Parliament, the first being the Queen. It was a fitting honour for a woman who has been compared to Dr Martin Luther King in her peaceful struggle against oppression.

Particularly in an age when politics has become devalued as a profession, when public service is seen as the domain of those driven by status and riches, the Burmese opposition leader stands out as a symbol of purity, an unalloyed good thing.

In Westminster Hall, the lords and ladies, MPs and their guests heard Suu Kyi quote Churchill and ask for Britain's continued support as the country progresses towards democracy.

The last comparable occasion was when Nelson Mandela came to Westminster in 1996. Just to see the South African President in that setting, and knowing what it had taken to reach that point (as much as any of us could appreciate) was extraordinarily moving. There are not many who can look a giant in the imposing surroundings of Westminster Hall. Mandela was one of them. Suu Kyi, despite her tiny stature, was another.

Everywhere she has gone in Britain this week, from the BBC to pay tribute to the World Service that kept her in touch with the outside world during almost two decades of house arrest, to Oxford University to collect an honorary doctorate, Suu Kyi, now 67, has been met with affection. Ditto when she was finally able to visit Oslo to collect the Nobel Peace Prize awarded in 1991.

There is one thing, of course, that sets her apart from Dr King, Mahatma Gandhi and their rare ilk. Despite all the words spoken by both men, all the questions put to them, no-one ever inquired, as has been done of Suu Kyi this week, how they could even think of putting a political cause before their families.

It is a question that has dogged Suu Kyi since she opted to remain in Burma in 1988 rather than return to her husband and two sons in Oxford. When she decided to stay, fearing the Burmese junta would not allow her back in if she left, her sons were 15 and 11. She did not go back on her decision, even when her husband, Michael Aris, was diagnosed with cancer and the military refused him permission to visit her. He died in 1999.

Rather than seeing this exile from her family as a selfless act of heroism, some regard Suu Kyi's remaining in Burma as a demonstration of selfishness. The subject is handled with varying degrees of politeness, but it is always there, lurking. How could a mother leave her children was just one of the questions asked during a phone-in on the Jeremy Vine show on BBC Radio 2. From the Nobel Peace Prize to being the object of middle Britain's chintz-covered scorn. Welcome to the West.

It was clearly not enough to take on a junta that became a byword for viciousness. Not enough to stand by her people when the rest of the world was ignorant at best and uncaring at worst. Not enough to hold fast to her principles. Why opt for all that when you could be at the school sports day in Oxford?

Women the world over will recognise the double standards at work here. The fairer sex is used to such unfair treatment, even if it is expressed more subtly than in the past. It is rare to find a prospective employer, male and female, so gauche as to ask a job candidate about their breeding plans, but the question is always there. Same goes for when a promotion is in the offing. Ms A might be better than Mr B, but will she be able to drop everything and be in Berlin in the morning?

The more women advance professionally the less it seems they are able to do to the same degree as men. Bother your pretty little head with politics, dear, as long as you concentrate on so-called women's issues such as child care or health. Medicine? Life as a part-time GP for you. Corporate jungle? Mind your head on the glass ceiling and watch out that nappy wall doesn't fall on your head. All petty stuff when compared to Suu Kyi's trials but one suspects, after some of the questions posed this week, she would sympathise.

Those who criticise her sotto voce can have no real appreciation of what she, "The Lady", was up against. To leave the country would be to hand the junta, a ruling elite that frequently pilloried her as an "outsider" anyway, a propaganda victory. To quit would be to deny her roots as the daughter of General Aung San, who fought for independence from the British as hard as she has battled for democracy.

As difficult as it was to get her message across to the outside world from a sealed-off Burma, it would have been harder to do so from Oxford. Not at the start, when her message would have been fresh and new: Oxford academic speaks out for her fellow countrymen and women. But after a time she would have been condemned to the fate of many a lonely exile abroad, preaching to the converted and the uninterested.

Suu Kyi has responded to questions about her attitude towards leaving her family behind with customary grace, explaining that the children were loved and well cared for at home, and that the struggle, and cold, hard reality, demanded the sacrifice.

It is just as well she wears the slights so lightly, for her struggle is not over yet. Her country remains, as she consistently points out, poised at a delicate moment in its history. Ethnic tensions, disgruntled members of the ruling regime concerned that too much power is being given away, gross economic inequalities, a Western world caught up in its own economic cares – all could see the gains in Burma reversed. This was recognised yesterday in the British invitation to the Burmese government to visit the UK. The door opened by David Cameron in his visit to the country must remain so.

As for Suu Kyi, having made a virtue of not compromising in political matters, she is about to find that sometimes politics is nothing but give and take. At least now she is able to have her family around her, the family she was so long denied by circumstance. Mother to two sons, mother of a nation, Aung San Suu Kyi is woman enough to hold down both jobs.