Who to vote for as a feminist

[WorkingBling]

I am really struggling ahead of the elections. I have decided that commitment to feminist principals needs to be a strong part of my voting decision making process. But I honestly am not sure this helps.

Lib dems have terrible track record and while I like nick's wife, I can't vote for a party where there's only one woman I am impressed by.

Instinctively i am more of a labour supporter but with the exception of Harriet H I honestly feel underwhelmed by their female representation and view on women.

This leaves the conservatives. There are a number of woman in the party who impress me. But Dave doesn't strike me as a man who really believes in feminist principals.

Help please. All you lovely informed women must have some thoughts.

I used to vote tactically to keep tories out - which meant voting Lib Dem in my constituency (despite being a labour supporter all my life - not a cat in hells chance here). Never again. I have looked at policies and overall agree with more Green policies than any other party so will be voting for them.

I'm surprised so many people wouldn't vote green just because of their prostitution policy. I don't think prostitution is a good thing at all, but it's going to happen whether it's legal or not. Better to protect the women that are doing it instead of adding a criminal record to their probably huge list of problems. If prostitution is black market, women are more likely to be treated badly as they can't go to the police to say they've been abused.
Just my opinion though. I'm gonna be voting green.

The OP's question (and the title of the thread) is who to vote for as a feminist. You might say you don't care enough about the prostitution or any other feminist issue to base your vote on that, in which case you're not voting as a feminist.

maiscout there are many threads on here discussing prostitution in detail and in particular, the fallacy of legalisation or decriminalisation. The Nordic model removes criminalisation of the women in prostitution. I don't want to derail the thread into a discussion about prostitution but here is an article about the situation in Germany where it is legalised:

www.spiegel.de/international/germany/human-trafficking-persists-despite-legality-of-prostitution-in-germany-a-902533.html

I don't think anyone expects a party to have all policies that you agree with - no one here is daft

But you weigh up the ones you don't according to your own views, and against their policies that you do agree with, and decide whether the good outweighs the bad or that the ones you disagree with are tolerable enough to vote for that party

I think it is perfectly reasonable to agree with most policies of a party but feel that you cannot vote for them as you can't stomach a particular policy you don't agree with

Still say as a feminist I want policies that support all of us. Good social care, supported Nhs, good education-money invested in us. Women rely and work in these areas and a party that supports these things can only be good for women(and our children)-Labour

I don't think anyone anywhere really supports the criminalisation of those supplying sex, I just can't get my head round the harm minimisation argument of decriminalising the demand when the demand IS the harm. It's illogical.

I wouldn't have a problem with it in principle though, if all else in society was equal, the average age of entry to the industry was over 21, people were queuing up to do it so nobody ever had to be forced into it, it was as normal for one sex to purchase such services as any other. That all seems quite a long way off though.

Poverty and prostitution go hand in hand, how many rich people choose to be prostitutes? Tackling poverty, giving opportunity and looking at drug addiction is the answer - Labour

You're voting labour, I get it

Well that was the question, who to vote for as a feminist

Somewhat naively, I was hoping not to get into a discussion over whether or not prostitution should be legalized, as it always gets heated and I didn't want to derail, just to say that I'm very conflicted re. voting green and that was the reason. I am aware of the law re. prostitution (i.e. legal, but not if more than one person working together, no soliciting/kerbcrawling) but realise that my post did not make that clear.

labour are sort of on my list, against my better judgment, simply for having the better proportion of female MPs

but is still only about a third, it's not very persuasive

plus they are labour

Prostitution and exploitation go hand in hand. Exploitation based on poverty is certainly important and tackling poverty and drug addiction is certainly important. I don't think the Labour Party has a policy on prostitution which is at least better than a policy to legalise / decriminalise.

Florafox:
Fair enough, I'm sure many places that have legalized it have not done it well, and exploitation still happens. I think if it was well regulated it would be better, but there's no saying that would happen.
I don't think the current system we have is working though as many women are too worried about the punishment from police if they report being exploited.

Tackling poverty would definitely be the way to go, but I don't think Labour would be any good at that. They certainly haven't been in the past.

I thought conservatives would not fair well due I believe to 11 of them being against the pay equality bill that someone posted earlier, I don't think there were any other parties.

There are though the odd rumblings that Teresa May as a potential candidate after Dave, but that could be abotehr 5 yrs i guess.

With the Lib dems they had Lord Rennard sexual harrassment debacle.

So I guess leaves greens and labour?

To be fair to labour they actually did an enormous amount to try and lift children, women and single parents out of poverty. It wasn't perfect but they did engage with the issues on a social level in a way that many other parties don't.

I came across this the other day which might possibly be relevant... parliament's list of which mps (all 39 of them) who supported an early day motion welcoming the stop the war on the poor initiative in America and the possibility of starting one here.

www.parliament.uk/edm/2014-15/249

I think anyone who is concerned about poverty need to take a good look at any existing mps whose names aren't on there, and question them very closely before voting for them. And anyone who is not concerned about the rise in poverty in the uk ought to be!

Blimey my grammar's gone to the dogs

I tend to go Labour as historically their policies have, in a round-a-bout way, benefited women, as the problems they have tried to tackle have disproportionately affected women.

I don't know that any incoming government is going to be able to un-do what this coalition have been doing to health and social care and welfare.

Locally, I live in a Labour constituency, and our MP has been helpful to us, but he's also a bit 'boys club' and I lost a bit of faith after he failed to pull up members of his team on their poor, sexist, behaviour.

When talking about policies (feminist or otherwise) we do have to look at track record vs manifestos. With the understanding that various pressures may lead governments in very different directions from where they planned (not least of all, global economics).
In general I prefer parties that have better social policies.

The best way would be for us, women and feminists, to keep the pressure up and go for nominations ourselves.

This has been very interesting so far, and that link was particularly helpful.

I think the point about voting in your local constituency for the candidate who seems to be the most likely to support feminist principals is a good one and it has motivated me to actually research local candidates - something I haven't done much in the past.

My concern with voting for a party in the first place was exactly as highlighted here - how many policies really do actually change things for women. So choosing individuals who I believe might make a difference definitely seems like a better solution.

i agree with you workingbling. i tend towards greens though i am concerned about the legalised prostitution proposal, but my local labour candidate is an excellent woman and labour policies have served women relatively well so far. i am so utterly disillusioned with the leaders of the majority of parties though - many seem to be completely interchangeable