I might be an empowered woman, but it’s not all I am. I might fight for women’s rights, but it’s not my only battle

Letters from a Swing Voter

“Notice to Epicene Women: Electioneering women are requested not to call here. They are recommended to go home, to look after their children, cook their husbands’ dinners, empty the slops and generally attend to the domestic affairs for which nature designed them. By taking this advice they will gan the respect of all right-minded people – an end not to be attained by unisexing themselves and meddling in masculine concerns of which they are profoundly ignorant.”

I have this note framed, hanging above my chest of drawers. I read it every morning, out of habit because it is there, and it reminds me that the UK has come so very, very far. It never fails to bring a smile to my face, but this morning I was prompted to look at it more closely, mull over each of the words and think about what life might have been like for the author – a Henry Wright – to drive him to nail this to his shop door. And how much harder it was for the suffragette who called there.

Women, I am told this week by all and sundry, will decide this coming election. It’s a shame we’re not in on this pact, that this responsibility is granted to us by the predominantly male political and media spheres of influence. We are advised to use our vote wisely, to lead with our hearts and instincts, to remember the very many in our roles as mothers, wives, daughters and sisters. From where I’m standing, I’ve never felt so patronised. We might have been late getting involved in the voting game, but I think I can be relied on to make a decision based on the distinctions I draw between right and wrong, and not fritter my vote away on preconceived notions of my role as ‘carer’ or ‘nurturer’. You would never hear a commentator mutter that men will decide this coming election, although, with grinding perpetuity, that will be exactly what happens.

I cannot, in the limited space I have here, go into the depths of the arguments concerning women and politics – if you’re interested please look at Fawcett, who have a great campaign asking what the election will do for women. What I want to highlight is that female voters are not a minority to be wooed into the polling booth, despite what the media would have you think. We do not have such specific needs which preclude our ability to vote on the wider issues. Women, like men, have as much that divides them that unites them, and politicians of all colours would be advised to remember that.

According to the most recent British Election Study, women are almost twice as likely to be undecided about who to vote for than men. No wonder, on hearing that little gem, Cameron and Brown hot-footed it to the toasty hearths scrubbed clean by middle England’s swinging mums, to drink tea and chat about biscuits with rictus grins. I’m sure this seemed an entirely respectable approach, if Enid Blyton had written the election script. Seemingly, women’s votes are up for grabs like a sweetshop free-for-all, and we are made to look as sugary, sickly and fleeting as a handful of candy.

Winning the female vote doesn’t mean you need to parade around with your telegenic and doting wives, or talk about family values on GMTV, or tweet your domestic drudgery on the campaign trail. That might appeal to some, but it doesn’t get me. Show me how you’ll end pay discrimination, provide affordable childcare, prevent shops from stocking Nuts Magazine at the eye-level of an eight year old, and hire more women at board level. But also show me how you’ll get us out of this economic mess, how you’ll end a war you should never have entered, how you’ll provide more social housing and better schools and more jobs. You see, I might be an empowered woman, but it’s not all I am. I might fight for women’s rights, but it’s not my only battle.

Women’s issues have too long been confined to marginal forums and made to appear shrill and reactionary. I spent a long time deliberating whether I would write this piece at all, despite that fact that one of the main reasons I am interested in politics is because I experience sexism, to greater and lesser degrees, every day of my life. That isn’t designed to get a rise out of you, that’s just a fact. I believe gender legislation will pave the way for greater social change. Raise women, and you raise us all. I hope it goes some way to explaining my reasons for thinking carefully about who I vote for, and why that has been reinforced this week as I watched each of our slick party leaders use contrived and out-dated measures to pander to a demographic who need more than lip-service from their politics.

I’ll finish with the words of one commentator far more eloquent than mine, from Melissa Benn:

“It’s about how we create realistic structures for our daughters, to help them balance personal and professional lives, keep believing in themselves and fighting for the things they believe, from glowing beginnings through to the inevitably trickier end”.

You don’t need to be a woman for that to be a manifesto you can believe in.