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Eight reasons British women are more left wing than men

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Last week’s Heywood and Middleton by-election saw 58% of women but only 38% of men saying they’d vote Labour, providing more proof that men are more right wing and women are more left wing. So why are women more left wing than men?

The Labour Party’s claim that the Conservatives are anti-women has been a common political theme since the last general election. In reality, to paraphrase the pollster Lord Ashcroft, the Conservatives aren’t unpopular with women, they’re unpopular with everyone and seem to be attracting equally low numbers of male and female voters.

The Labour Party, in contrast, does have a gender imbalance in its supporter base. It attracted just 28% of male voters at the last general election and lost to UKIP amongst male voters in the recent Heywood and Middleton by-election (41% to 38%), though it held onto the seat by attracting far more female voters than UKIP (58% to 21%).

British women, it seems, are now more left wing than men. So why is this? Here we provide eight possible reasons.

1. Young women are more idealistic

Both men and women seem to get more right wing the older we become. According to YouGov, 38% of young men and 34% of young women support UKIP or the Conservatives compared with 56% of men over 60 and 57% of women over 60.

Meanwhile on the left of politics, 48% of young men and 54% of young women support Labour or the Lib Dems, compared with only 39% of men and 39% of women over 60.

So women’s greater leaning to the left seems to be limited to the younger generation.

2. Women care more about health services

When asked about specific issues, men and women have similar concerns such as the economy and immigration. One area that a higher proportion of women consistently highlight as a concern is the health service. One poll found that 35% of women name “improving the NHS” as one of their top three political priorities, compared with 26% of men.

Another survey found that men were twice as likely to support a 5% cut in NHS spending. As the NHS is traditionally seen as being a greater priority to the left than the right, women’s leftward leaning could be the linked to their concern for the NHS.

3. Women don’t support war

Another area of policy where there is a significant gap between men and women is in support for British troops engaging in war. According to Peter Kellner of YouGov: “there seems to be something close to a cast-iron rule, when it comes to military action, there is a persistent gender gap of around 20 points”.

Women Men
March 2003: % supporting British participation in Iraq war 43 63
March 2011: % supporting British military action in Libya 37 53
Jan 2013: % supporting help for France in Mali 35 58
Jan 2013: % saying Prince William should serve Afghanistan 53 68

Source: YouGov

As the doves on the left of politics are generally considered to be less willing to engage in warfare that the hawks on the right, women’s reluctance to support military action may also shape their left-wing politics.

We should remember, however, what George Galloway, MP, had to say on the matter:

“[We were told]…for years in the Labour Party, if only we could get more women into parliament there’d be fewer wars, less aggression and all of that. There was 101 ‘Blair babes’ elected in 1997 and all but three of them voted for every war that Tony Blair took us into.”

 4. Women think about family more

According to Dr Rosie Campbell, women are more inclined to view politics through the lens of family life. In one set of focus groups, Campbell recorded 77 mentions of family from women, compared with 11 men. Lord Ashcroft Polls also found that only women mentioned “family” in their top 20 words when asked to describe the characters of Cameron, Clegg and Milliband.

Could it be that women are more left wing because the left is seen as having more family friendly policies in relation to issues like childcare and parental leave?

5. Women are more censorious

Dr Rosie Campbell’s work has also highlighted that women tend to be more authoritarian than men. For example when asked if the censorship of films and magazines is necessary to uphold moral values; women are twice as likely to strongly agree while men are more than twice as likely to disagree.

Could the left’s greater interest in censoring lads mags and Page 3 be drawing more women to the left of politics?

6. Women prefer the public sector

The majority of public sector workers are women and the majority of private sector workers are men. On this basis, it’s perhaps not surprising to learn that men are nearly three times more likely to strongly agree with the statement: “private enterprise is the best way to solve Britain’s economic problems”.

As the political left which is historically seen to favour the public sector over the private sector, maybe this is why women are more likely to be left wing?

7. Women are more unionised

Men have traditionally dominated the trade union movement. Ten years ago this was still the case with 3,752.000 men being a member of a trade union in 2004, compared with 3,587,000 women. In the intervening decade, women have begun to outnumber men, with the figures for 2012 showing 3,142,000 male union members and 3,613,000 female members.

Could women’s increased involvement in the trade union movement be at the heart of women’s greater tendency towards the left of politics?

8. Women are more reliant on state benefits

Women are more likely to be reliant on welfare benefits than men, according to the Fawcett Society, who estimated that around 20% of women’s income is made up of welfare payments and tax credits compared to 10% for men.

Maybe this is why more women than men oppose freezing welfare benefits and reducing child tax benefit. One benefit that women are more supportive of cutting than men is unemployment benefit. This may be explained by the fact that it is one benefit that more men rely on than women.

As the left is generally seen as being more generous with welfare payments, this may be one reason why more women vote for parties on the left.

For more on this subject, see our article men are more right wing and women are more left wing.

If you liked this article and want to read more, follow us on Twitter @insideMANmag and Facebook

Article by Glen Poole author of the book Equality For Men

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Are men more right wing and women more left wing?

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Does the fact that more men are voting UKIP reveal a masculine tendency towards right-wing politics, asks Glen Poole?

Last week a stark gender divide in the nation’s political beliefs was revealed when a poll taken prior to the Heywood and Middleton by-election found that 20% more men would vote UKIP than Labour (41% v 21%) while 20% more women would vote Labour than UKIP (58% v 38%). As a result, the female electorate won the seat for the Labour Party.

This wasn’t a one off result. Men and women in the U.S.A have been voting for the “masculine” Republicans and the “feminine” Democrats along gender lines for 50 years now. Obama won the 2008 election by one percentage point amongst men and 12 points amongst women, while Clinton’s lead amongst women in 1996 was event bigger at 18 per cent.

Women in the UK have been slower to make the leftward shift, with 20% more women voting for Margaret Thatcher than Michael Foot in 1983 and 10% more women voting for John Major than Neil Kinnock in 1992. It wasn’t until as recently as the 2005 election that a “women to the left, men to the right” gap began to open up in the UK, with more men than women deciding to vote for Michael Howard.

By 2010, Labour was haemorrhaging male voters, with only 28% voting for Gordon Brown. Meanwhile, women’s combined centre-left vote (Labour and Liberal Democrat) was 57% compared to 50% for men.

Looking at the combined right-wing vote, 38% of men and 36% of women voted Conservative in 2010 and men were 50% more likely to vote for one of the “other” parties, with UKIP and the BNP on the right collecting most of those votes. More recently, a 2013 YouGov found that 52% of Conservative voters and 57% of UKIP voters are men.

VOTING BY GENDER AT UK GENERAL ELECTIONS 1974 TO 2010

Con (m) Con (f) Lab (m) Lab (f) *Lib (m) *Lib (f)
1974 32 39 43 38 18 20
1979 43 47 40 35 13 15
1983 42 46 30 26 25 27
1987 43 43 32 32 23 23
1992 41 44 37 34 18 18
1997 31 32 45 44 17 18
2001 32 33 42 42 18 19
2005 34 32 34 38 22 23
2010 38 36 28 31 22 26

*Includes Liberals/Alliance and Lib Dems

Source: Ipsos MORI

IT’S RAINING MEN 

Much has been made of the Conservative’s apparent woman trouble since the last general election, particularly by Labour whose deputy leader, Harriet Harman, famously claimed “it’s raining men in the Tory Party”.

There is some evidence for such claims, with one Guardian/ICM poll revealing that Labour had a 7-point lead over the Tories (36%-29%) among men and 26 point lead (51%-25%) among women. What the media didn’t report was that those figures also showed that while the Conversatives had a 4% male-female gender gap (29%-25%) the Labour Party recorded a 15% female-male gender gap (51%-36%). Based on these figures, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to claim that “Sisters are doing it for themselves” in the Labour Party.

Several analysts (see Kellner, Ashcroft and Wells) have challenged the theory that the polls reveal a significant gender issue for the Conservatives, pointing out that the small polling samples have large margins of error; though this didn’t stop Cameron appointing an adviser on women’s issues.

So what does this tell us about gender and politics? One thing is clear, men and women consistently vote for all of the main parties, as YouGov’s analysis of men’s and women’s voting intentions over a 5 month period shows (see below), the gender differences are often unremarkable.

VOTING INTENTIONS BY GENDER (SEPT 2013 TO JAN 2014)

Con (m) Con (f) ukip(m) ukip (f) Lab (m) Lab (f) Lib (m) Lib (f)
Jan 14 33 33 13 12 38 40 9 9
Dec 13 33 33 13 11 38 40 9 9
Nov 13 33 32 13 11 38 40 9 10
Oct 13 33 33 12 10 38 41 9 9
Sep 13 33 33 13 11 37 40 9 10

Source: YouGov

Irrespective of their voting intentions, there is evidence to suggest that even on the right of politics, female Conservatives tend to be more left wing than male Conservatives. So why is it that women tend to be more left wing than men? We explore this question in our companion article: Eight reasons why British women are more left wing than men.

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Article by Glen Poole author of the book Equality For Men

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Why are the Lib Dems supporting men who buy sex?

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What’s large, gold and has wings? According to the former MEP, Chris Davies, it’s the flying golden penis trophy he won for being Politician of the Year at the Erotic Awards 2010.

Davies proudly shared this information with his Lib Dem colleagues in Glasgow this week, as the party revisited its policy on decriminalising sex work. True to their promise to fight for a stronger economy and a fairer society, the Lib Dems want women to be free to sell sex (and men to be free to buy it), without fear of prosecution—and who can say fairer than that?

Forget the NHS and Europe and the bedroom tax, this is one area of policy where the Lib Dems have put a “bit of blue” clear water between themselves and the other major parties.

Earlier this year, an All Party Parliamentary Group of mostly Labour and Conservative MPs called for an overhaul of the UK’s laws on prostitution, which would make it legal to sell sex and illegal to buy it.

Do men drive women into sex work?

According to the Labour MEP, Mary Honeyball (yes it’s her real name), the aim of this approach is to target “men who treat women’s bodies as a commodity without criminalising women who are driven into sex work”.

The policy is supported by a bizarre alliance of left-wing, feminist, female MPs, who see prostitution as violence against women and right-wing, male, Christian politicians, who take a hard moral stance on abortion, gay marriage and men who pay for sex.

Meanwhile, in a conference room as empty as a Lib Dem promise on student loans, a few of the party faithful were busy congratulating each other for having the best prostitution policy in the country.

We’ve all heard of punters who visit prostitutes and “just want to talk”, well when the Lib Dems visit sex workers, they just want to listen. The biggest disagreement during the debate came when two delegates argued about being the first politician to invite sex workers to speak at a party conference.

Should consensual sex always be legal?

The conclusion the Lib Dems have arrived at is that the industry isn’t as grim and oppressive as we’re led to believe and we should all be free to buy and sell sex as we please, as long as we’re being kind to each other and not breaking any other laws in the process.  “It is a fundamental liberal value,” said Councillor Matthew Winnington from Portsmouth, “that consensual sex between adults should be legal”.

So why should men care about this? The vast majority of us don’t use sex workers so why should we give a damn about the way male “Johns” are policed?

Some men’s rights campaigners have, not surprisingly, framed the issue as a fight against feminist zealotry. There is some truth to this position. The proposal to decriminalise prostitutes, while simultaneously making it illegal for clients to pay for sex, is known as the Nordic model and is a feminist approach pioneered in Sweden. It’s built on a view that women don’t choose prostitution, but are forced into it by we bad men and our evil patriarchy.

Is this a feminist issue?

However, many of the key people who want to rescue female prostitutes and punish their male customers, are far from feminist. They are in fact traditional conservatives who take a paternalistic view of “sexual transgression” and think that we good men and our benevolent patriarchy should be saving fallen maidens in distress from the few bad guys.

At the same time, the liberals who oppose the Nordic model see themselves as progressive feminists. So the distinction here isn’t between feminists and non-feminists, it’s between authoritarians and libertarians.

As a man, I’m not particularly concerned which side of the authoritarian/libertarian divide you come down on, as long as you treat people equally. It seems only fair that if we make selling sex a crime, we should make buying sex a crime too. Similarly, if we decriminalise prostitution, then surely this should apply to both the buyer and the seller?

The idea that prostitution is predominantly a one-way crime perpetrated by men against women, is absurdly sexist and discriminatory. The suggestion that all prostitution is violence against women and all female sex workers are driven into the oldest profession by evil men, infantilises women and ignores what sex workers are saying about their own experiences.

Sex work is worth £5 billion

Yes there is exploitation, abuse and trafficking and this should be stopped. Yes there are sex workers who are controlled by addiction and they should be helped. But if the Lib Dems, with their flying golden penises have got it right, then Labour and the Conservatives are lying to us about sex work. Whether you like it or not, the sex industry is worth £5.65 billion to the economy and, according to the Lib Dems, the majority of people earning that money are doing so through personal choice and free will.

Is prostitution a social evil caused by men and suffered by women? Not according to Dr Belinda Brooks-Gordon, a lecturer in Psychology who summed up the debate for the Lib Dems saying “any amount of criminalisation, no matter how slight, gives authoritarians the excuse to harass women, men and transgender sex workers”.

She asked conference to spare a thought for the diverse range of punters the Nordic model would criminalise. “Consider the young man with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, paying for the first non-medical touch he’s had in his life,” she said. “Consider the widow or the war veteran, whose life’s been ruined, paying for a bit of company. Consider women in posh spa hotels, paying for a full massage with a happy ending.”

However you vote at next general election, if you want to speak out about the criminalisation of men who pay for sex, at least the Lib Dems have given you a “respectable” argument: “it’s not the male punters I’m most concerned about about, no, it’s the rights of disabled men, war veterans and sexually frustrated posh ladies I’m fighting for!” Nice trick, as sex workers say.

—Picture Credit: Flickr/brh_images

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Article by Glen Poole author of the book Equality For Men

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