Thinking of voting for UKIP tomorrow? If you care even a jot about the rights of women, think on.
Thinking of voting for UKIP tomorrow?
If you care even a jot about the rights of women, think on.
Here are 15 reasons why women (and men who believe in equality of the sexes) should sooner drink poison than vote for the Kippers tomorrow.
1. Nigel Farage on women: “Godfrey’s [Bloom, former UKIP MEP] comment that ‘no employer with a brain in the right place would employ a young, single, free woman‘ has been proved so right. With this lunacy, that if you have children you get three months paid leave off work, or six months paid leave off work – he absolutely got it spot on.”
2. UKIP want to scrap paid maternity leave (in line with Lesotho, Swaziland, the US and Papua New Guinea).
3. UKIP want to make it legal for employers to discriminate on the basis of gender (as well as race).
4. This would also entail the scrapping of employment regulations against sexual harassment and safeguards for part time and irregular workers, the majority of which are women.
5. Nigel Farage informed City high flyers that they are “worth less” to employers if they become mothers or that motherhood is a lifestyle choice.
6. Patrick O’Flynn, MEP Candidate, also say that pregnant women in the workplace are a “disaster”.
7. UKIP’s MEPs have consistently failed to represent the interests of women. They have voted against or simply not turned up to key votes in the European Parliament on ensuring equal pay, combating violence against women and ruling out FGM, to name but a few.
8. Since the 2009 European Election UKIP’s only two female MEPs, Nikki Sinclaire and Marta Andreasen, have both left the party. Andreason said Farage “doesn’t try to involve intelligent professional women in positions of responsibility in the party. He thinks women should be in the kitchen or in the bedroom”. Nikki Sinclaire won an Employment Tribunal claim for sex discrimination against the party.
9. Roger Helmer, UKIP MEP and candidate in the Newark by-election, said, “Rape is always wrong, but not always equally culpable.”
10. Godfrey Bloom, a former UKIP MEP, was not reprimanded for hugely sexist statements such as, “[feminists are] shrill, bored, middle-class women of a certain physical genre” and, “Women, in spite of years of training in art and music – and significant leisure time in the 18th and 19th Centuries – have produced few great works”
11. Stuart Wheeler, the party’s treasurer, said that women were “absolutely nowhere” when they compete with men in sports where they are not physically disadvantaged. He said, “I would just like to challenge the idea that it is necessary to have a lot of women or a particular number on a board… Business is very, very competitive and you should take the performance of women in another competitive area, which is sport where [men] have no strength advantage.”
12. In November 2013, UKIP MEP, Stuart Agnew said (in a debate on women in the boardroom) that “Women don’t have the ambition to get to the top, something gets in the way. It’s called a baby… Those females who really want to get to the top do so”.
13. David Chalice , a senior party official in Exeter, has voiced his belief that women should stay at home and that “cash-strapped Moslems” should have multiple wives.
14. Demetri Marchessini, the party’s sixth-largest individual donor in 2013, said there was no such thing as marital rape, arguing: “If you make love on Friday and make love Sunday, you can’t say Saturday is rape.” He also claimed women should be banned from wearing trousers because they “discourage love-making”.
15. Need I go on?
Want to read more post like this? Then *sign-up to Look Left* and make sure you have the facts to rebut right-wing spin
James Bloodworth is the editor of Left Foot Forward. Follow him on Twitter
512 Responses to “15 reasons women shouldn’t vote for UKIP”
alex
wow, you really are completely ignorant. wake up to the real world, there are huge issues in the world aside from the ones you want to listen to you sanctimonious prick.
PoundInYourPocket
Equality of opportunity is and always was a sham; it just makes people feel as though they too could escape from poverty. But, it doesn’t work like that unless everyone starts from the same position. Inherited wealth and privelidge makes a complete nonesense out of the term “equality of opportunity”. It simply doesn’t exist. Equality of Outcome is the correct measure against which to judge how non-discriminatory a society is. So – yes – 50% of MP’s should be female unless there is some reason why women choose not to be in Parliament. If the figure is less than 50% it’s an indication that there is a discrimminatory process at work. This applies to ethnic minorities as well. And as you say, a good measure would be on “little finger length” as if the distribution of “little finger length” of MPs differs from that of the population, it’s a another indication that there could well be yet another discriminatory process in action. Otherwise why would there be a difference. My wild guess is that MPs probably have statistically longer fingers as they are probably from wealthier backgrounds with less neglect and better nourishment. Showing, yet again, discrimination in action.
LB
There is NEGATIVE cash
===================
What’s that?
I asked how much they owed for pensions? That needs a X pounds answer. Nothing to do with insurance for unemployment etc.
You need to do a bit more.
I’m not running a ponzi. That the welfare state, and I’m just a victim forced to pay for it.
On the solution, the solution is to change the ponzi pensions for funded pensions. No abolutition.
So what does you state system owe people? X pounds. Can’t be hard to tell people can it if you are proud of the results.
A non answer just draws the conclusion its bankrupt and you don’t dare tell people.
Leon Wolfeson
So you haven’t read my post, I see, as you spew crap. Keep demanding pensions not be paid, you genocidal maniac, as you call the existence of taxpayers a “ponzi”.
LB
You might call the tax payer a ponzi. I don’t.
The state pension system, and the civil service pension schemes are ponzis.
The evidence is.
1. The necessity of getting new joiners into the system to pay for early joiners.
2. The absence of any accounts as to how much the system owes.
3. The annual rate of increase of the estimates of what is owed, exceeding the income.
So its different. Yes, the pensions should be paid. Will they be paid? Nope. It will collapse.
There’s a difference between should and can, but that’s obviously gone over your head.
So come on, how much does the state owe for the pensions?