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?
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James Bloodworth is the editor of Left Foot Forward. Follow him on Twitter
512 Responses to “15 reasons women shouldn’t vote for UKIP”
pheeze
Brits ARE migrants. All of us. Nothing left to discuss.
pheeze
Rambling accusations aside… why not offload the costs onto the taxpayer? As someone who does not have (and does not intend to have) children, I for one am OK with paying taxes to let the state pick up the slack for this. The only alternative is to put the burden on the employer. For a large company that’s a drop in the ocean; for a SME that’s a potentially crippling liability; but regardless, both of them will recoup their costs by simply paying women less. So if the burden doesn’t fall on the state, it will fall on women. That’s not fair on anybody.
(BTW: I appreciate your passion, but try to reply without accusing anybody of murder, K?)
Guest
So basically you are demanding pre-censorship, regardless of the issue. Well, that kills any interest I have in whatever rambling accusations you’re making and I won’t bother reading them.
Thanks for the confession, though.
pheeze
lol wut
Alex
ahh yes, the old “poor country with pace program argument” for cutting foreign aid, well guess what, we have a long standing agreement with India to supply said aid, how were we supposed to know foreign aid would do its job and improve a country? it is not going to Muslim extremists, though UKIP general line on Muslims is “what’s the difference?”and as for dictators, name some, go on, name one we’re “supporting” with foreign aid. and what about Trident? you know, that £35 Billion relic of the Cold War, are you really advocating we keep a weapon designed to only kill civilians? UKIP want to implement an immigration policy like Australia’s, you know, the country that routinely oppresses its native population and turns away asylum seekers and refugees who face certain death. you do know that fracking causes damage to the environment right? it pollutes the water and causes tremors, plus by extracting more oil we will only have more greenhouse gasses to pump into the atmosphere and increase global warming, speaking of that UKIP denys what is widely regarded as scientific fact. I wouldn’t trust Farage to run a jumble sale, yet alone this country, his views are from the 1950’s. Of course the European Court of Human Rights is a bad thing, we set it up after all, and all it has done is force nations to treat there citizens like, you know, humans, what’s next, pulling out of the Geneva Convention? the Universal Deceleration of Human Rights. ahh yes, the BBC, arch enemy of the Right as it Left Wing, arch enemy of the Left as it is Right Wing, you know, the most unbiased and balanced news source out there, DO YOU WANT IT TO BE BOUGHT BY MURDOCH!?!?!? and of course it was Labour who made the banks in the United States collapse and cause a global economic crisis, and having gold reserves is soooo important for a country that left the gold standard over a century ago