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”
Ben
Shut the fuck up
Benz'adick
Nice concise argument there Ben!!
David
This article takes a lot of comments out of context.
I think we can all agree that Godfrey Bloom is politically inept in terms of his comments on women – he’s entitled to his opinion (opinions that are shared by large amounts of people from his generation) but Farage was right to boot him out of the party.
I want to focus on a couple of points raised that unfairly paint UKIP as anti-women.
Firstly. Farage did not say (mean) that women are worth less when they become mothers. He was addressing the fact that anyone that takes an extended amount of time off from work in a niche part of the city (bond trading) is worth less – regardless of gender. Purely because you lose your contacts /relationships and hence become worth less. This is a mere fact, and i’m shocked the fact he is stating a fact is such an issue?
If a man in the bond sector took a year off for paternity, he would also be worth less. I’m sure the author of this post would not have a problem with that comment being stated.
Secondly. When Godfrey Bloom suggested that no employer in their right mind would hire a women of child bearing age, he was referring to the fact that there is so much legislation dictated by the EU that make it difficult to justify hiring someone who might leave to have a kid that employers naturally are worried about hiring someone. This again is a fact. Think about it, if you are employing someone who you suspect might immediately go on maternity leave and cause you a recruitment nightmare of course you’d think twice.
The final point listed in this article refers to a UKIP donor. Just because someone donates to something doesn’t mean the thing they are donating to is naturally a bad thing. I’m sure many murders, rapists and child molesters have donated to the Barnardos charity before.
For the record, I’m a conservative voter – and i’m a 1st generation immigrant. I just hate seeing one sided stories that conveniently misrepresent what people have said (regardless of political persuasion)
paulzappa
thats my mind made up then ,,, lol ukip for me ,,, but seriously a couple of the points are valid ,,,most are bollox ,,but i bet if you bug theTory boys club youd get much the same stuff ,,,its just scaremongering to discredit Ukip
1 hr · Like · 1
Jean
I bet you read the Guardian!