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”
Hannah Gold-Lewis
Lets just get something clear, immigrants are not the problem. Statistically, immigrants have contributed a very fair amount to the country. There are far more British people who are contributing nothing than there are immigrants, and if immigrants come to Britain and work (which, by the way, most do) they are paying some form of tax, and guess what? That goes towards healthcare. Crazy, right? Can you BELIEVE immigrants get the same rights? How awful. So please, do everybody a favour and actually educate yourself on the facts of immigration instead of pointing fingers, because that says enough about your ignorance, if we are being honest.
Nat
It’s a misconception everyone has calling this party racist, it doesn’t ban immigration it tightens laws allowing for more skilled immigration (which Australia run successfully) it is prohibiting unskilled immigrants thus refusing the ability to claim free healthcare and benefits in the first 5 years, Easing pressure on tax payers. Children are entitled to this as when they begin work they will then be paying tax and NI as part of their wage. It’s simply not a case of your not British go home as everybody seems to be insinuating
Anti-PC Bridage
If you vote for UKIP you’re a racist, ignorant and a bigot! Says the ignorant fool, the irony.
I wonder how much dirt we can pull on Labour and Conservative MP’s to put together to write a completely biased article against them?
I have already made my vote for UKIP this morning, good luck to them.
J Haigh
Before you start spouting you really should get your facts correct!
Chloe
Do you have kids? Well if you have your very hipacritical , if baby’s get in the way then put it away , so stop being prick and maybe actually wrap your dick , you wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t fro women , UKIP <—- HIPACRITICAL CUNTS