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”
JT
“We the people” would get shafted just as much under UKIP as we would under any other government.
I’ll not vote UKIP now or ever. It goes against every ounce of sensibility. I’ll not vote for a party that refused to vote/voted against an equal pay scheme. I’ll not vote for a party who would seek to limit my freedom based off of nothing but their own bigotry. I’ll not sit idly by and let some homophobic jobsworth implement a law which would attempt to limit where I choose to shop, to eat, to drink. UKIP are cancerous.
laura
Ukip vote here!!
Half of the things they’re saying about women there are true so stop crying about it.
men are better at sports. A man and woman both top of their game running a marathon, the bloke is coming first by about 30 mins. Deal with it.
And women who want time off to have babies can’t always expect their job waiting for them. Things move on and the company needs to continue.
laura
Ukip vote here!!
Half of the things they’re saying about women there are true so stop crying about it.
men are better at sports. A man and woman both top of their game running a marathon, the bloke is coming first by about 30 mins. Deal with it.
And women who want time off to have babies can’t always expect their job waiting for them. Things move on and the company needs to continue.
bleh
theres a word for people who read this, took in every word, and still want to vote ukip. who can tell me what that word is
brittas
Would be more convinced about ukip ‘s concerns about the importance of sovereignty and not having British policy influenced by outside bodies if they were voting against TTIP or joining the effort to remove the clause allowing foreign companies to claim compensation from us in the event that a new policy is deemed to have adversly effected their profits . At least MEP’s are elected , why should foreign businesses have the right to hold us to ransom about what changes we make for our own benefit ? Yet UKIP have no problem with that .