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”
Dean
I clicked the link for number 14, that’s not what David Chalice said at all! I’m not voting UKIP but at least make this article factually correct!
Emma
Arguably, the British Empire did a lot of damage to what is now the ‘third world’. As did lots of other colonisers like France.
Colonisers like ourselves and the French have a lot to answer for in terms of implementing corruption into Africa
We forcibly went over and took resources. We took people and sold them as slaves. The way we maintained control was via patronage networks (i.e. we paid off different groups to ensure power). Is it any wonder this still persists now, if this was the basis nations were formed on? It is what is known as a neopatrimonial government.
Colonisers also stratified people according to made up ‘ethnicities’ in order to divide and rule. These groups largely co-existed peacefully before this. The divsions lasted long after the empire and were used to justify wars. This lead to genocide.
We did shameful things in these countries. Now they are poor. Is it right that we grow rich of their resources and then do nothing to try and make amends?
Cutting off aid will make us very unpopular in the international community. Rightly so. Do we want to cut ourself off from the world? Would that be good for trade?
As someone that advises others on ‘thinking before speaking’ this may be of interest to you… The British Empire did not exist in the ’14th and 15th century’. That was the dark ages. The Spanish were first. We came later.
And the empire? Vast swathes of it were still under our control as late as the 1960s.
As for India, I reccommend you do some reading on Gandhi and the salt march. That will explain why we still pay aid to India (a clue: we weren’t the good guys).
But enough history. Some people are desperately poor through no fault of their own. Levels of poverty unimaginable here. Removing aid all together could have devastating effect on these people.
What about the human toll?
AM HUDSON JR
Who the f*ck wants the UK to become Australia, its not even in the top 10 of wealthy nations, if you love Australia f*ck off over there
AM HUDSON JR
F*ck off
AM HUDSON JR
Stance of ‘you women’ pick up a book you pr)ck