KIRSTY STRICKLAND: The election campaign that forgot about women

With only a few days to go until polling day, the UK is gearing up for what is being trailed as a potentially historic set of election results.

In years to come, we will look back and remember where we were when Thursday’s 10pm exit poll flashed up on our screens.

We will remember who we were with as we watched scores of Conservative MPs fall at counts across the country.

Millions of words of analysis will be written about the campaign itself.

Ed Davey’s bungee jump might earn a few hundred of them.

Nigel Farage’s six-week long temper tantrum will probably feature too.

Whole chapters will be dedicated to Rishi Sunak’s catastrophic D-Day commemoration blunder and the election betting scandal.

If a picture does indeed say a thousand words then the pictorial record of this election campaign will tell an interesting story indeed.

Blue suits, black suits, red ties.  Bald men, bearded men, bad-tempered men. Men in high vis, men drinking pints.

Many men shouting over each other as a female journalist tries to bring order back to a televised debate.

We will undoubtedly remember the 2024 general election as the moment the Conservatives’ sleaze and scandal finally caught up with them.

General Election campaign has forgotten women

But it should also be remembered as a campaign that seemed to forget women make up over 50% of the population.

This week, new research from Loughborough University showed that since the campaign began, only seven of the top 20 most prominent figures in the coverage have been women.

When researchers looked at the speaking time given to male and female politicians in the media, women made up only 19.4% on the TV and 18.8% in print news.

Dr Jilly Kay, a senior lecturer in communication and media said of the findings: “We’re seeing the continued dominance of men’s voices, which has been an established pattern throughout the campaign.”

It’s not exactly breaking news that women are underrepresented in politics. So why does it matter during an election?

It matters because general election campaign sets the agenda for the next parliament.

Our mostly male political leaders have spoken a helluva lot over the last six weeks.

Has anything they’ve said convinced you that tackling the key issues that affect women is top of their agenda?

Probably not.

Many hours of coverage were given to the main parties’ strategies for tackling the small boats crisis, much less on how they will end the frankly horrifying scale of men’s violence against women.

The austerity agenda that, for over a decade, disproportionality fell on the shoulders of women doesn’t look set to change in any meaningful way in the next parliament.

Every leading poverty organisation and academic you can think of says that the two child-cap on tax credits has plunged mothers and their children into even deeper poverty.

The cap makes the ‘rape-clause’ that stems from it a grotesque necessity and puts women living with domestic abuse in even greater danger. But Keir Starmer, the man who will be our next prime minister, says we can’t afford to scrap it.

I would have preferred to see him interrogated more on the wisdom of that position, than the frivolous charge that some people say he is boring.

Childcare provision, the wage-gap, women’s healthcare, maternity discrimination and reforms to the welfare system are all issues that affect women, and they deserved more attention than a few lines buried deep in a manifesto.

During this election campaign, Keir Starmer’s toolmaker dad got mentioned more often than the fact that, in England, three women a fortnight are killed by a partner or ex-partner.

‘Women are not a niche’

This male-dominated campaign was a failure of political parties, who knew they needed their best players on the field and apparently decided those people were all men.

With some notable exceptions, it was a failure of broadcast media too, for pursuing nauseatingly over-done click-bait issues over those that mostly affect women.

Women are not a niche and these are not niche issues. The next parliament would do well to remember that.

My boyfriend and I are gearing up for a very significant milestone in our relationship.

Forget babies and betrothals, the first election night you spend with a significant other is a memory that lasts a lifetime.

Reader, I simply cannot wait.

Election night is relationship milestone

There is something so romantic about the prospect of discussing seat projections with one another; bonding over the exciting wait for those speedy Sunderland counters to declare the first result of the night and having somebody else on hand to refill the crisp bowl.

We will learn a lot about one another, too. I’m a Sky News girl for election night coverage, but what if he’s a BBC boy?

We’ve made a 24 hour schedule which incorporates voting, tactical naps, and the all-important snack run. Because to me, nothing says true love quite like tightly-controlled election night fun.