About 100 years ago, women were throwing themselves in front of horses in order to get the vote. But the suffrage movement doesn’t seem to appeal to so many female voters anymore, as Harriet Harman says that women just don’t turn out as much as men.
Voter turnouts have lowered for both sexes since the 1992 election, when Poll Tax was a major issue for voters, but the drop is more significant in women.
According to statistics put together for the British Election Study and analysed by the Commons Library, all carried out at the request of Harriet, Labour’s deputy leader, 9.1 million women who were eligible to vote just didn’t turn up to vote in 2010. That’s compared to 8 million men who were missing. Over 1 million is a lot of extra women to be missing from the polls, right?
Announcing the findings, Harriet quite rightly wants some change. First off, Labour will try to get women voting by bringing ‘politics to the school gate and shopping centre’ which would sound ridiculously stereotypical were it not true.
She also wants there to be a ‘women’s manifesto’ in which politicians tackle issues such as childcare, domestic violence, equal pay and the representation of women in public life, The Telegraph reports.
‘Women are less likely to vote than men and the gender voting gap is widening. We believe that this election will be a watershed for women in this country,’ she says.
‘Politics is every bit as important and relevant to the lives of women as it is to men. Labour has set itself the challenge to make this case to the missing millions of women voters,’ and adds, ‘There’s been a lot of talk about UKIP or the SNP holding the balance of power.
‘The reality is that the 9.1 million women who did not vote in the last general election will hold the balance of power and decide who walks into Number 10.’
We’re a website for young women, and the last we heard of it, the two sections of society that could sway this election do not include a load of hairy-eared old blokes voting for UKIP, but either young people or women – people exactly like you. Register to vote here: gov.uk/register-to-vote
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.