{"id":293852,"date":"2016-06-14T10:30:20","date_gmt":"2016-06-14T14:30:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/2016\/06\/brexit-where-are-the-women\/"},"modified":"2025-08-28T15:28:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T19:28:09","slug":"brexit-where-are-the-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/fr\/2016\/06\/brexit-where-are-the-women\/","title":{"rendered":"Brexit: Where are the women?"},"content":{"rendered":"

On June 23rd, Britain will vote in a national referendum on whether we want to remain part of the European Union, or leave it.\u00a0As the debate heats up, themes have emerged –\u00a0immigration<\/a>,\u00a0sovereignty<\/a>, the\u00a0economy<\/a>, which box will lead us quickest to apocalypse\/World War Three<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But one theme stands out to me. And that theme is men.<\/p>\n

The debate, the campaigns, the voices and the issues have all been overwhelmingly dominated by men.<\/p>\n

Who are the key voices, and who is leading the \u201cLeave\u201d and \u201cRemain\u201d\u00a0campaigns<\/a>?<\/p>\n

Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, David Cameron, George Osborne, Iain Duncan Smith, Jeremy Corbyn, William Hague, Peter Mandelson, Jacob Rees-Mog, Michael Gove, Douglas Carswell, Chris Grayling, George Galloway and just last week, Tony Blair.<\/p>\n

(They’re also all white men, in case you’re wondering).<\/p>\n

The major\u00a0funders\u00a0<\/a>of the two campaigns are also all men.<\/p>\n

The discussion has been dominated by male business leaders. Like the 300+ business leaders who wrote an open letter in the\u00a0Times\u00a0<\/a>in support of Brexit. Of that group, 292 of them were men. Only 14, or less than 5%, were women.<\/p>\n

Then there were\u00a0the FTSE100 leaders who wrote in the Times against Brexit. They were overwhelmingly men too.<\/p>\n

This summary\u00a0piece\u00a0<\/a>on the two camps doesn’t name a single woman or company headed by a woman. All the key figures identified are men.<\/p>\n

Women public figures do have views on the referendum.\u00a0Theresa May<\/a>,\u00a0Priti\u00a0<\/a>Patel,\u00a0Sarah Wollaston<\/a>,\u00a0Kate Hoey<\/a>,\u00a0Stella Creasy<\/a>, Angela Merkel, Nicola Sturgeon. But where are they? Have they been sidelined, or have they chosen to absent themselves?<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, some of the women who have spoken up have been ridiculed.<\/p>\n

When actor Emma Thompson shared her thoughts on Brexit, she was told by the\u00a0Sun<\/a>\u00a0newspaper to ‘shut yer cakehole’, and called a ‘pro-EU luvvie’.<\/p>\n

And Priti Patel, a Conservative Minister and Leave supporter, was subject to\u00a0this<\/a>\u00a0charming remark from leading union boss Tim Roach.<\/p>\n

\u201cPriti Patel, surely a contradiction in her name.\u201d<\/p>\n

And if you need statistical proof that women voices have been absent in this debate, a\u00a0Loughborough University<\/a>\u00a0study found that just one in ten voices quoted in the media on Brexit were women. It led one prominent woman MP (and my former boss) to\u00a0file a formal\u00a0complaint\u00a0<\/a>with the broadcasting watchdog about the gross imbalance.<\/p>\n

\"Photo:<\/a>
Photo: Shutterstock \/ John Gomez<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And what about the issues? Why an almost obsessive discussion about immigration and the economy?<\/p>\n

The first time women were mentioned in the context of immigration was Nigel Farage’s\u00a0claim<\/a>\u00a0that remaining in the EU would lead to the sexual assault of British women. He appears to be unaware of the\u00a0473,000<\/a>\u00a0sexual assaults that already happen every year in the UK, very few of which are committed by illegal immigrants<\/p>\n

Yet Britain’s membership of the\u00a0European Union has been responsible for many of women’s legal gains on the path to equality. For example, equal pay for work of equal value, part-time work recognition, maternity\/paternity leave and pregnancy protection.<\/p>\n

The European Court on Human Rights has expanded Britain’s\u00a0human rights case law, especially for marginalised groups like refugee women, children and black and ethnic minority (BAME) women.<\/p>\n

From the issues given widespread attention, you’d never know women existed, let alone that there was a strong gender angle to the Brexit debate.<\/p>\n

So why is this?<\/p>\n

Given that business and the economy have dominated the political debate, and these two fields are disproportionately male, perhaps its inevitable. Politics itself is disproportionately male. It could\u00a0also\u00a0be the male-dominated editorial media, who decide which issue matters.<\/p>\n

\"Photo:<\/a>
Photo: Shutterstock \/ MediaPictures.pl<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And perhaps it’s self-reinforcing. Polling shows women are\u00a0twice\u00a0<\/a>as likely to be undecided on Brexit as men, but women also strongly feel neither campaign has addressed issues that matter to them.<\/p>\n

“Or as Alison Cawley, 54, a\u00a0former headhunter from Taunton<\/a>, puts it: \u201cI am tired of debates between man one and man two, both trotting out predigested \u2018lines to take\u2019 and sounding about as authentically engaged as a speak-your-weight machine… Given that politics and business are still dominated by white middle-aged men, it\u2019s not surprising that theirs are the dominant voices here.\u201d<\/p>\n

“Angela Eagle put it even more bluntly: “Women’s voices have been drowned out by the unmistakably masculine and noisy playground spat that is taking place between Tory blokes.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

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On June 23rd, Britain will vote in a national referendum on whether we want to remain part of the European Union, or leave it.\u00a0As the debate heats up, themes have emerged –\u00a0immigration,\u00a0sovereignty, the\u00a0economy, which box will lead us quickest to apocalypse\/World War Three. But one theme stands out to me. And that theme is men. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":913,"featured_media":257030,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[9212,9406,8366,8741],"article-status":[],"irpp-category":[],"section":[],"irpp-tag":[],"class_list":["post-293852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-democratie","tag-referendum-2","tag-united-kingdom-fr","tag-union-europeenne"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nBrexit: Where are the women?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/fr\/2016\/06\/brexit-where-are-the-women\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"fr_FR\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Brexit: Where are the women?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"On June 23rd, Britain will vote in a national referendum on whether we want to remain part of the European Union, or leave it.\u00a0As the debate heats up, themes have emerged –\u00a0immigration,\u00a0sovereignty, the\u00a0economy, which box will lead us quickest to apocalypse\/World War Three. 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