All Aboard the Pink Battle Bus? Women Voters, Women's Issues, Candidates and Party Leaders

Abstract

Since at least 1997, the main political parties have made significant attempts to target women voters.1 New Labour actively sought to undermine the Conservative Party's post-war advantage among women. Labour under Blair and Brown was explicitly liberally feminist in both dimensions of feminisation—the inclusion of women in politics and the inclusion of women's perspectives and issues.2 The Party enacted legislation designed to further gender equality while using equality guarantees (in the form of all-women shortlists) to ensure the better representation of women on the Labour benches in the House of Commons. As Conservative leader since 2005, David Cameron has adopted the language of liberal feminism, stressing the need for more Conservative women politicians, and fairer access to paid employment for women.3 To understand how the parties related to women voters during the 2015 election campaign, we situate the election within this context of the interparty competition for women's votes that has gradually brought the parties closer together on ‘women's issues' such that all, with the possible exception of UKIP, are competing to be viewed as at least equally liberally feminist.4 We trace how women voters were portrayed and targeted throughout the campaign through an analysis of media accounts and party manifestos. We also examine how women voters evaluated the parties and whether the parties' equality rhetoric regarding women's political representation was manifest in their selection of women candidates in winnable seats.