Flicking through my diary this morning, I came across something I’d scrawled as ‘All the Tory ladies’ without further explanation. It turned out to be one of those drinks events for people in Parliament who happen to be women, presumably where we all stand around and talk about how great/terrible it is to be a woman, depending on the sort of day we’ve had. I was reminded of this again by James Kirkup’s excellent blog examining the great power of Mumsnet over the British political establishment. He also charts Number 10’s attempts to appeal to women, by inviting ‘women in the media’ for drinks, trying to get the PM into women’s mags, and creating a good offer for childcare (and if you’re wondering how that’s going, the policy has now descended into the two Coalition parties bickering, girls-school style about who said what when).
Pestering women’s magazines so that the PM’s face shines out on their glossy pages is no bad idea. Better than Gordon Brown sending Caroline Flint to do it for him (which didn’t work out well, either). But politicians – and not just Downing Street – really need to stop assuming that there is something called the Women’s Vote and that its silver bullet is embodied in a childcare offer and touching anecdotes from the PM about the books he reads to Nancy. Yes childcare is important, and it might make a female voter think better of the government, but no more so than a man who is weighing up the overall offer from the government to make his life cost a bit less. A mother of two young children – one in primary school and one just starting to toddle about and yowl if we’re trying to envisage the ‘woman voter’ that strategists are clearly thinking of – might change her mind about the Tories based on their childcare ratios plan (or not, as the case may be), but why would a 50-year old woman who has been back at work for years and whose main child problem is trying to get her grown-up son to clear his old toys out of the garage be swayed by lower nursery charges?
The assumption behind the Women’s Vote is that women worry about things that affect their own lives exclusively, and largely only those parts of their lives affected by their reproductive functions. What if they’re really concerned about the Coalition’s Borrowing Problem, or defence cuts, or how their father might pay for his social care? Or if they’re the sort of women who are almost as scared of children as children seem to be of them? Focusing entirely on childcare is like assuming all British women will be bought off by a state-sponsored Kurt Geiger Allowance. Although thinking about it, that might not be the worst idea.
And there is a strange assumption that Parliament, with its adversarial chamber, is intrinsically unfriendly to women. Sure, there is a Women Problem over here. Alex Forrest has some thoughts about that in her valedictory blog for ITV. But those who think women find Westminster itself off-putting because of the battles that spill out of the Commons need to visit an all-girls school. The only difference between the two institutions is that the inhabitants of the former tend to be bald, have more facial hair, and be less effective at assassinating one another socially. That is more offputting than anything else to women: a building full of men talking to them only about the domestic issues they assume they’re preoccupied with.
The guests at these women’s drinks events don’t really stand around talking about My Day As A Woman. Some of them might be moaning about their nannies, but then it’s probably their male partners who are back at home looking after the children while they drink warm wine. A lot of them will be moaning about the price of their rail fare, and how much housing in London costs, none of which are intrinsically female problems. They won’t be members of Mumsnet, or Netmums, or even Mumswhodon’tspendalltheirtimegettingcrossonthenet. Politicians need to stop assuming that every thought in a female voter’s head as she approaches the ballot box is either occupied by children or Other Women’s Issues. Then they might find it’s easier to get their vote.
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