Search

This article explores the role gender plays in the harassment, abuse and intimidation (HAI) of parliamentary candidates in the UK at election time. Using data from the Representative Audit of Britain surveys (2015–2019) this article takes an intersectional approach to investigate whether trends identified in 2017 suggesting that women candidates reported more incidences of HAI and were more likely to be concerned for their personal safety as a result than men, remain apparent in the subsequent election. Results suggest that HAI is getting worse for candidates in general, and the gender gap is widening. About three in every four women experienced some levels of fear while campaigning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When it comes to gender and voting behaviour Britain had become something of an outlier. Whilst more countries shifted along Inglehart and Norris' "rising tide" continuum from traditional gender gaps, to realignment, into modern gender gaps (Inglehart and Norris 2000, "The Developmental Theory of the Gender gap: Women and Men's Voting Behaviour in Global Perspective." International Political Science Review 21 (4): 441–462, 2003, Rising Tide: Gender Equality and Cultural Change Around the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), Britain remained at the realignment stage. But in 2017 a modern gender gap emerged with a greater proportion of women than men voting for Labour, and a greater proportion of men than women voting Conservative. In this paper we examine the 2019 European Parliament and General elections to assess whether the modern gender gap persists in Britain. We show that whilst in the 2019 General election we again observed a modern gender gap, it nevertheless is rooted in the specifics of the political context in Britain, specifically post-EU referendum cleavages. Moreover, the gender gaps in the European Parliament election reveal a more nuanced picture, and demonstrate how the electoral context shapes the gender vote gaps we see. Our results indicate that the presence of the modern gender gap in Britain is contingent, rather than the result of long-term realignment, as well as provide evidence for key processes that may cause gender gaps to vary across time and space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political parties increasingly segment the electorate to target subgroups of voters, giving more attention to some groups at the expense of others. In the UK, there has been sporadic and often marginal attention paid to women voters. However, the gender gap may now be too large to ignore in contemporary British politics. In this article, we question why more attention has not been paid to the preferences of women voters by political parties, and demonstrate the importance of considering gender as a crucial electoral divide in Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on data from the Parliamentary Candidates UK project, we profile the socio-demographic characteristics of parliamentary candidates standing in 2015 and compare elected MPs to previous cohorts since 1979. We argue that the 2015 cohort of candidates largely resembles the archetypal candidate identified by Durose et al. (2013, Parliamentary Affairs, 66, 246–267). Despite smaller parties' campaign rhetoric of a 'new kind of politics', parties across the spectrum offer up very similar candidate profiles. We find a narrowing of occupational backgrounds, with fewer candidates and MPs from manual occupations, and an increasing percentage of candidates and MPs with a university education. Competition across the parties, particularly in terms of the selection of women and black and minority ethnic (BME) candidates, has positive consequences for the representativeness of Parliament. However, despite a record number of women and BME MPs elected, Parliament remains disproportionately white and male. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do gender quotas reduce the quality of politicians elected to a legislature? For the first time in the literature, this article addresses this question by examining the quality of 'quota women' compared to their non-quota colleagues at three stages of their political career: their electoral performance, their qualifications for political office and their post-election legislative career trajectories. Drawing on the unique case of Britain following the 1997 general election, no significant difference is found between the quality of 'quota women' and their non-quota colleagues. Voters do not punish 'quota women' at the ballot box; 'quota women' are as equally qualified for political office as their colleagues; and the gatekeepers of executive office do not discriminate against 'quota women' in front-bench promotions. Considering this, the article concludes by asking whether the similarity of 'quota women' to their colleagues may actually impact on their capacity to affect transformative substantive representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of conservative women is expanding to compensate for the historic over-emphasis of gender and politics research on left-wing women. We add to this burgeoning literature and assess the extent to which the modern gender gap in political attitudes – where women have moved to the left of men – is evident among supporters of the British Conservative Party. We find that, like women party members, women Conservative supporters are noticeably to the left of men, but only on economic issues. This sex gap cannot simply be accounted for by women’s employment in the public sphere, lesser interest in politics or because they are more morally conservative than male Conservatives. These findings are likely to have serious implications for intra-party discipline, the support for the Conservative Party at the next British general election and, if replicated elsewhere, speak to what it means to ‘represent’ the interests of right-wing women. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Feminization of the Conservative party was one of the most visible leitmotifs of Cameron's modernization strategy in the period 2005-2010. In this article we assess the extent to which the party, while in coalition with the Liberal Democrats from 2010-2015, delivered on its pre-2010 commitments for women. We consider two dimensions of feminizing politics; the descriptive representation of women within the Conservative party in the House and in Government, and the substantive representation of women's interests in the form of policy programmes and legislation. In respect of descriptive representation we find that the Conservative party has faltered since 2010: refusing to use quotas and even dropping the 2010 'A list' equality promotion strategy. Turning to the substantive representation of women it is clear that the Conservative party has instituted an array between these inclinations, although there is a tension between the party's liberal inclinations and its continued emphasis on the value of the traditional family. A more radical critique is levelled at the party's commitment to financial austerity and the disproportionate effect this has had on women; the question as to whether women are viewed as the target of spending cuts or collateral damage depends on whether one employs an economically liberal or more leftist definition of feminization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a substantial academic literature addressing the representation of women in British politics. The majority of recent work focuses on issues of demand (such as gender quotas) and issues affecting the supply of women candidates have been largely overlooked. However, more recently the use of job shares for MPs has been proposed as a possible solution to supply-side problems. This article tests what the British electorate's reaction to such arrangements might be. It finds no great support for the introduction of job-sharing candidates but nor does it detect overwhelming opposition. Explaining the case for job sharing increases its support slightly but no argument has especially strong impact. The counterarguments have some impact but are also not very strong. When the various pro- and anti-arguments are made together, they appear largely to cancel each other out. Opposition is greatest among men, Conservative or UKIP voters, and those over 60. Support is greatest among women, Labour or Liberal Democrat voters, and younger respondents, especially those of an age most likely to be taking advantage of job shares themselves. When confronted with job-sharing candidates most of the public appear to make judgements on the basis of the candidates offered, rather than automatically rejecting job-share set-ups out of hand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been extensive consideration of women's under-representation in the UK parliament. Here we are interested not only in the question of sex and political representation, but in parenthood too: in short, whether national politics is closed to women, and possibly men, with young children. We start with a review of the academic literature on legislative recruitment to see what it has to say about mothers-almost nothing has been written about fathers. Based on a 2013 survey of UK MPs-men and women-we then identify key features of parents' presence at Westminster. For the first time, we can be sure that mothers are in fact significantly under-represented in the House of Commons. We then consider whether arguments made to support the descriptive representation of women have purchase for mothers. Finally we consider how political institutions might be reconfigured not to be merely woman or even mother-friendly, but to be care-friendly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The localness of candidates is hardly mentioned in discussion of British elections, but an increasing amount of evidence suggests that voters want 'local' candidates. Rosie Campbell and Philip Cowley examine the importance of being local in UK politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Feminist political scientists have had a two-track response to Robert Putnam's work on social capital. They have critiqued his original approach for failing to take gender into account, but they have also highlighted the potential of the concept for illuminating mechanisms that reproduce unequal gender relations. In the British case, Peter Hall and Vivien Lowndes have shown how key elements of Putnam's measures are highly gendered. Vivien Lowndes set out a research agenda for assessing the impact of men and women's group memberships upon political participation. This article tests Lowndes' research questions using British data from the Citizenship Survey 2007. Men and women in Britain do belong to different formal associational networks but these differences do not appear to have a strong impact upon whether they participate in politics. Lowndes' critique of the social capital literature's failure to incorporate women's informal child-care networks is supported; involvement in child-care networks is positively related to political participation in the form of signing petitions and negatively related to contacting Members of Parliament. Crucially, there are small but statistically significant divergences in the types of activities men and women undertake for organised groups and these roles are associated with variations in political participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses gender differences regarding public opinion, particularly in regards to voting, in Great Britain. The author investigates the ways in which voters engage with women's issues during elections, with focus given to the British elections of 2012, and notes women's political preferences regarding taxation, public services, and public expenditures. Differences in political party affiliation between men and women are noted, with the author explaining women's higher likelihood to support the Labour Party. Other topics discussed include gender equality and issue salience.

The point of departure for this study is the recent work of Burden (2008) on the “gender gap” in partisanship in the United States. He shows that the preponderance of Democratic identification among women is partly a function of the measurement of party identification. When respondents were asked “Do you feel that you are” rather than, more traditionally, “Do you think of yourself as” a Democrat or Republican, the sex gap narrowed to statistical nonsignificance. Burden's explanation for this result lies in the psychology of partisanship. The traditional “think of yourself as” (or cognitive) question primes women to consider their partisanship as a social identity, which in turn activates the stereotypical association between women and the Democratic Party. The “feel that you are” (or affective) question encourages a deeper, more personalized response, rendering social identity less relevant and thereby nullifying the effect of that stereotype. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current British government policy on sex work aims to reduce prostitution, challenge its inevitability and in terms of support services for sex workers is heavily focused towards exiting strategies for those in sex work. Exiting programmes are complex, often lengthy and need to meet a range of holistic needs in order to assist individuals who want to leave sex work and problematic drug use. Addressing drug use has been to the fore as part of exiting programmes due to the very high rates of problematic drug use reported amongst female street sex workers and drug use being identified as a key factor shaping routes into and sustaining involvement with street-based sex work. This contrasts with the much lower levels of problematic drug use found amongst indoor sex workers. This article brings together findings from a 2002 Home Office funded study of sex work and drug use careers and a 2007 UK Network of Sex Work Projects review of specialist services for sex workers which looked at the provision of ''exiting services'' within projects. The principle of sex worker choice united all of the surveyed projects so that irrespective of whether exiting was seen as a vital goal or a potential end point, choice was seen as crucial for client engagement and for the ethics of service delivery. Findings suggest that current government policy focused on exiting is unlikely to meet its aims and whilst exit support is a vital part of holistic needs, an emphasis on exiting at a strategic level can endanger and erode other vital aspects of support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The year 2010 constituted a favourable opportunity for the greater descriptive representation of women in the UK Parliament. The parties were publicly competing over the issue; Parliament had its own Committee looking at it; and there were plenty of vacancies for candidates in each of the parties' held seats, as many more MPs than usual stood down. The outcome was disappointing. There was an overall increase in the number of women MPs - up from 128 to 142 - but this was only a 2.5 per cent increase on 2005. Inter-party differences remain. The Liberal Democrats witnessed a decline in the number and percentage of their women MPs and candidates; the Tories saw a doubling of their number, with women now constituting 16 per cent of their parliamentary party; and Labour has both the largest number and percentage of women MPs. These patterns are best explained by the parties' different attitudes towards equality guarantees - measures that, all other things being equal, return women MPs to Parliament. In other words, Labour's All Women Shortlists once again delivered. The other parties' efforts were simply less efficient at translating women candidates into MPs. Looking to the future, the picture is far from rosy. The Coalition's plans for political reform will likely increase competition for selection at the next general election to women's detriment, and the impact of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority raises the possibility that their supply might decrease too. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports the number of sex workers in Scotland and England who are in contact with specialist services for sex workers. Then, using methods and multipliers derived from the frequently quoted Kinnell study (1999) the paper provides various updated estimates of the wider population of sex workers. We point out the limits of our estimates and the methodological difficulties of estimating the size of this hidden population. The paper argues that many claims about sex work made by politicians and the media are misleading especially where they conflate sex work with trafficking and abuse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UK general election of 2010 should have been a critical one for women. But it was not to be. Despite all of the main political parties claiming to want more women MPs the increase in their number relative to the 2005 Parliament was just 2.5%. Women remain under-represented numerically in the House of Commons, constituting less than one-quarter of all MPs. The election campaign was largely women free too, as women married to politicians gained more attention than women politicians. Moreover, and despite enhanced inter-party competition over the women's vote—or rather, and more accurately, the votes of middle income mothers, otherwise known as the ‘mumsnet’ vote—women's issues and perspectives were marginalised from the campaign proper. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Discusses the political activity of women during the 2005 British General Election. Review of the campaign since 2001; Extent to which political parties highlighted women in their campaign; Summary of how well women are represented at Westminster.

Research has shown that a characteristic feature of female street prostitution globally is the high incidence of violence perpetrated against women by men who approach them as clients. Given the absence of legislation in the United Kingdom that enhances the safety of street sex workers, this article contends that schemes which promote interagency working between sex worker outreach agencies and the police are vital in tackling the unacceptable level of client violence in street prostitution. A case study of a scheme operating in Merseyside is provided and positive intermediate outcomes are discussed. The scheme—known as "Ugly Mugs"—encourages women to report violent incidents to outreach workers who can disseminate the information to other sex workers and the police. "Ugly Mugs" has resulted in an increase in reports of violence and contributed to convicting two clients of violent crimes against street sex workers, thus demonstrating the valuable role such schemes can play in crime reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is not intended as a comprehensive study of gender and attitude in Britain. Neither is it a thorough analysis of gender and vote in Britain. It is, however, designed to ascertain whether there is any evidence to suggest that men and women might think about politics in different ways. Mainstream measures of ideology are examined and it is asked whether they can be applied equally to both sexes and also whether issues that might be defined as being especially important to women, such as health and education, provide more powerful explanations of women's voting choices than men’s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has demonstrated a significant relationship between the geographical distance from a voter to a candidate and the likelihood of the voter choosing that candidate. However, models of this relationship may be mis- or under-specified, by not taking into account voters' perceptions of distance or not controlling for other possible factors related to a candidate's ‘localness’ which may influence vote choice. Using a two-wave panel survey carried out during the 2015 UK General Election, this article tests a more fully specified alternative-specific multinomial probit model of candidate-voter distance. We show that, although the effect size is smaller than in previous tests, candidate-voter distance mattered in the 2015 General Election, an effect that is robust to controls not only for party support and incumbency, as previous research had demonstrated, but also to measures of voter information, candidate presence and marginality. We also find that contiguity mattered: candidates living in non-neighbouring constituencies have a lower likelihood of vote than those living in neighbouring constituencies or in the constituency itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been well established that those working in the sex industry are at various risks of violence and crime depending on where they sell sex and the environments in which they work. What sociological research has failed to address is how crime and safety have been affected by the dynamic changing nature of sex work given the dominance of the internet and digital technologies, including the development of new markets such as webcamming. This paper reports the most comprehensive findings on the internet-based sex market in the UK demonstrating types of crimes experienced by internet-based sex workers and the strategies of risk management that sex workers adopt, building on our article in the British Journal of Sociology in 2007. We present the concept of 'blended safety repertoires' to explain how sex workers, particularly independent escorts, are using a range of traditional techniques alongside digitally enabled strategies to keep themselves safe. We contribute a deeper understanding of why sex workers who work indoors rarely report crimes to the police, reflecting the dilemmas experienced. Our findings highlight how legal and policy changes which seek to ban online adult services advertising and sex work related content within online spaces would have direct impact on the safety strategies online sex workers employ and would further undermine their safety. These findings occur in a context where aspects of sex work are quasi-criminalized through the brothel keeping legislation. We conclude that the legal and policy failure to recognize sex work as a form of employment, contributes to the stigmatization of sex work and prevents individuals working together. Current UK policy disallows a framework for employment laws and health and safety standards to regulate sex work, leaving sex workers in the shadow economy, their safety at risk in a quasi-legal system. In light of the strong evidence that the internet makes sex work safer, we argue that decriminalisation as a rights based model of regulation is most appropriate., (© London School of Economics and Political Science 2018.)