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”
Lindsey Stewart
When I saw the 15 reasons I couldnt believe it like can you imagine not wearing trousers and being not believed if your raped or no where to go to if this happends I mean wouldnt man be going out there just freely taking advantage of women this guy is off his rocker ,it must be all the beer he keeps drinking he is a real women hater ,I mean them 15 reasons are harsh I was going to vote until I saw this but I dont want a women hater ruleing our country ,but his right in the immigration we as a country souldnt be used for our nhs, pay your way is right I know some one that his gran come here to stay for 6months got a hip replacement on the nhs and then went back home tut tut very bad , same with jobs , and housing if you come to this country you should be able to keep your self or family for a year you should have medical cover as well then im sure they would tnink twice to come here that would then take the pressure off the nhs and housing, and jobs, now im going to do some homework and see who im going to vote for tomorrow .
John Goodwin
What a bigoted statement, how ironic
John Goodwin
Well said
cara
Where can I read about what they are offering the UK. .. up the lefties!
Robin
Hopefully you will go on Hanad, long enough to see the population rise to around 100,000,000 people in this country, when the NHS will have been scrapped because it couldn’t take the strain, when kids don’t even learn medieval language because of insufficient schools, when people are forced to live 10 to a house because there isn’t enough houses, when the infrastructure starts to collapse and there are insufficient jobs for everyone. I’m not talking 500 years hence either but less than 100! This country has seen 10 million immigrants since the 1950’s. There are now 63 million people in Britain with around 300,000 more coming in every year. By my reckoning (including the current birth rate of around 700,000 per year) that makes it around 37 years before we reach the 100 mill mark. Not a pretty future for anyone aged under 30 now!