In passing, also, I would like to say that the first time Adam had a chance, he laid the blame on a woman.

Astor’s quip invokes the Genesis story of Adam and Eve to satirize a long-standing cultural reflex: when trouble arises, men (or institutions dominated by men) shift responsibility onto women. By saying Adam blamed a woman “the first time” he had the chance, she frames misogynistic scapegoating as primordial and habitual rather than exceptional. The line also works as a rhetorical reversal: a biblical narrative often used to justify women’s culpability is repurposed to highlight male evasion of accountability. In Astor’s public persona—as a pioneering woman in British parliamentary life—the remark reads as both comic defiance and pointed social critique.