Feminism and 12 years of Conservative government in charge in the UK

[JC544D]

After 12 years of the Conservative Government being the leading party in charge of the country, how do you feel they have dealt with feminist issues over what is a decade in power?

... more than a decade in power, sorry.

I think life has been significantly worse for women under this government and the Cameron government. I bear in mind though that I've moved from an exciting time in my life then to a part of my life which feels much less positive.

The thing I have seen personally is the effective destruction of mental health services in this country, across children, adolescents and adults. I don't know if it would have been any better under another government.

Women and children are completely ignored in policy decisions. The impact on those with protected characteristics is meant to be considered with each change in legislation but I don't see that happening.

Tax policy is an obvious example where women are systematically discriminated against. 90% of single parents/ lone parents are women. Yet households with two parents receive twice the tax-free personal allowance, can earn twice as much before they pay higher rate tax, can still claim child benefit and tax-free childcare and 30 hours at nursery when they have double the income of the single parent household, despite there being two of them to share childcare and household tasks. A single adult household should pay 50% council tax, not 75% of what two or more adults pay. It is grossly unfair.

Rectifying this might make it far easier for women to leave abusive relationships as they'd be more able to support themselves and their children. So much for "making work pay". We don't need handouts, just stop taxing us far more than other households with the same income!

I think children are totally ignored because they cannot vote. Child mental health services, the funding levels for education and for SEN provision are an embarrassment. And the social services and care system which should be protecting children and vulnerable women is so underfunded it cannot function.

I'm not at all convinced any of these things would change with a different Government though. I would vote for any party that put fixing all of that ^^ as a manfesto commitment.

I think a lot of feminist issues are about the way social and economic issues impact on women.

With that in mind I think the current state of social care is something that covers a lot of feminist issues, from low pay and poor terms and conditiins in the employed sector. To the crappy £67 a week carers alloeance, to the burden of unpaid care falling on women and impacting on career prospects. I think the government could do so much more.

I think it is very easy to forget things they have done, including:

Increase of minimum wage (mostly affecting women) from £5.80 p/h to £9.50 p/h

Removal of huge numbers of women from paying any income tax and soon NI -- yet still get NI credits.

Reduction of number of years required to get a full state pension to just 30 (again, mostly affecting women)

Allowing women to marry each other.

The upskirting law (Voyeurism Act 2019), Coercive control law (I forget the Acts name) and much more.

That is not to say Labour may have done the same or better or that Borris is somehow a wonderful gentleman to all Uk women - but they Tories have done much to improve matters -- the female representation at the ministerial level is considerably improved since Gordon Browns tenure.

I've been hearing this for a long time, and often on the BBC: 'after ten - [now twelve] years of this Tory government'. The BBC ahem...holds itself as a paragon and loves to separate itself from fake news.

It's as if there never was a coalition government for five years and the Lib Dems were never responsible for anything, although they had a deputy pm and quite a high proportion of government posts, for all the size of the party. The likes of Clegg and Davey did very well out of it and I don't consider for a moment they were interested in women when it came to economic policy. And how is Davey's energy policy doing? They're of the same Oxbridge PPE background as Cameron and Osborne and fit seamlessly together.
Were they ensuring that Osborne's policies had proper equality impact assessments? I don't think so. The Lib Dems have been shouting a lot about young people in recent years but not women. This comes young people focus comes from ex Treasury people now think tanking.

The Treasury then was much as it is now and its policies for the pandemic didn't take account of women - to give a recent example. And look back at how women and their pensions were treated by a succession of governments and PMs. Same old Treasury.

The Lib Dems love to take credit for example for the coalition government's raising of the tax personal allowance thresholds and pretend that they were holding their nose at being in coalition with 'Tories' but in fact they grabbed all the posts and status they could get with both hands and loved it.

@GiraffesInScarfs

Women and children are completely ignored in policy decisions. The impact on those with protected characteristics is meant to be considered with each change in legislation but I don't see that happening.

Tax policy is an obvious example where women are systematically discriminated against. 90% of single parents/ lone parents are women. Yet households with two parents receive twice the tax-free personal allowance, can earn twice as much before they pay higher rate tax, can still claim child benefit and tax-free childcare and 30 hours at nursery when they have double the income of the single parent household, despite there being two of them to share childcare and household tasks. A single adult household should pay 50% council tax, not 75% of what two or more adults pay. It is grossly unfair.

Rectifying this might make it far easier for women to leave abusive relationships as they'd be more able to support themselves and their children. So much for "making work pay". We don't need handouts, just stop taxing us far more than other households with the same income!

I think children are totally ignored because they cannot vote. Child mental health services, the funding levels for education and for SEN provision are an embarrassment. And the social services and care system which should be protecting children and vulnerable women is so underfunded it cannot function.

I'm not at all convinced any of these things would change with a different Government though. I would vote for any party that put fixing all of that ^^ as a manfesto commitment.

I agree that women and children aren't considered in policy. Also about single people living alone and the council tax reduction of only 25% being unfair.

The equality impact assessment in many instances, has I believe, been a tick on a form rather than a serious analysis of policy impact. Having individual earnings and tax for women and men has been an equality policy of Labour for a long time, and encouraging women into the workforce and having their own earnings is meant to instil independence and freedom from reliance on men or husbands and families. Was it Gordon Brown, or Labour earlier, that separated them?

There are still some remnants of policy to favour marriage and couples, as well as obvious financial advantages to coupledom just through earning power and shared living costs. Conservatives have traditionally wanted the tax system to incentivise or reward marriage and coupledom.

@Findwen

I think it is very easy to forget things they have done, including:

Increase of minimum wage (mostly affecting women) from £5.80 p/h to £9.50 p/h

Removal of huge numbers of women from paying any income tax and soon NI -- yet still get NI credits.

Reduction of number of years required to get a full state pension to just 30 (again, mostly affecting women)

Allowing women to marry each other.

The upskirting law (Voyeurism Act 2019), Coercive control law (I forget the Acts name) and much more.

That is not to say Labour may have done the same or better or that Borris is somehow a wonderful gentleman to all Uk women - but they Tories have done much to improve matters -- the female representation at the ministerial level is considerably improved since Gordon Browns tenure.

You need 35 years to qualify for the full state pension, not 30

Findwen
Increase of minimum wage

It's great that the Conservative party now recognise the minimum wage after fighting so very hard to stop it in the first place.

Reduction of number of years required to get a full state pension to just 30 (again, mostly affecting women)

No, this was reduced from 39 to 30 under Labour, and has now gone back up again under the Tories.

Laws such as the upskirting law, the anti strangulation law, and the coercive control law were the result of women campaing; so although they passed under a Conservative govt I dont think its fair to give them credit.

Boris Johnson has a clear and unequivocal understanding of the meaning of "woman".

@BanjoKnockers

Boris Johnson has a clear and unequivocal understanding of the meaning of "woman".

Well yes, you do need to identify exactly who you are targeting to oppress, in order to opress them.

Interesting to see how quiet this thread is in comparison to the threads full of feminists claiming the only party they could bring themselves to was conservative.

I have another question to add to the OPs, on the off chance someone sees this and feels able to answer:

A lot of the trans issues started under the conservative government, there are trans women in female refuges, prisons, and hospital wards. Stonewall has gained momentum. Many large organisations have changed their policies (e.g. girl guiding). What are the conservatives doing to stop and reverse these changes that were made under them?