Women with young children are seen as the floating voters with the biggest influence in this election – hence the sudden focus on party leaders’ wives
It’s not only Mel Gibson who is finding out ‘What women want?’ these days. Like the male chauvinist character in the film, who develops the ability to hear what women are thinking, party leaders Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg are all pondering the same question.
As the upcoming general election result remains too close to call, the role played by female voters in what has been dubbed the ‘Mumsnet election’ will be central to the outcome. Women with young children have been identified via polling data as a main target – there are 53 constituencies where mothers could swing the result. No surprise then that each party is making its own play to attract female voters.
Using Mother’s Day last Sunday as a useful prompt, the government has announced plans to overhaul maternity wards to make room for extra beds and to allow new fathers to spend the first night of their child’s life with their family. Under the reforms, the NHS constitution will also be rewritten to give pregnant women a legal right to choose where they give birth, including the option of a home birth.
The plans form part of a five-year programme to reform children’s services from birth to age five, announced by Health Secretary Andy Burnham and Children’s Secretary Ed Balls in what appears to be a well-timed bid to appeal to middle-class families and, most importantly, to mothers.
Meanwhile, over at Conservative headquarters, Cameron is equally concerned to capture the female vote. And his wife Samantha is playing a starring role – including appearing in a TV interview last weekend as part of a special with Trevor Macdonald. In it, Cameron told Britain to ‘get ready’ for his wife hitting the campaign trail as his ‘social action’ champion.
Not wishing to be left out, Miriam Gonzalez Durantez, the somewhat lower-profile wife of the Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, will speak on the record about her husband in a TV documentary and join him on the campaign trail one day a week.
Some commentators are now wondering if there will not only be a TV debate between the party leaders but perhaps also a spin-off event featuring their wives. As a feature in a weekend newspaper put it – not so much Desperate Housewives as ‘Disparate Housewives’?
But behind all the posturing and publicity, what concrete policies are the parties promising to women voters who have yet to make up their minds?
Most ‘female’ policies are not aimed at women as a whole but rather at mothers, hence the strong focus on maternity services, health care, childcare and education – all services that mothers rely on and are required to interact with on a regular basis.
The Conservatives have proposed a major overhaul of maternity care – not just promising more choice over where mothers have their babies but allowing money to follow the patient and opening up maternity care to a wider range of providers. They also promise to set up local ‘maternity networks’, although it is not clear what this means in practice. Likewise, in education, the buzzword is choice, with plans to set up a network of ‘free schools’, including giving parents the option to get more involved in the running of schools.
The LibDems are more openly focused on an equality agenda, which includes: making employers check for pay discrimination; providing 20 hours per week of free, quality and flexible childcare; extending parental leave to 19 months; and enabling everyone to ask for flexible working. These policies, however, have less chance of coming to fruition unless we end up with a hung Parliament in which Clegg is able to exert a greater influence.
While each party is doing its best to attract the female vote, it is not clear whether it is working. All the political wives are great role models but will women tire of seeing them being wheeled out to ‘humanise’ their husbands? And do women really only want to hear about maternity services and childcare or are they more worried about the economy, crime and taxes? If only Mel Gibson were here, perhaps he could give Britain’s politicians a steer in the right direction.
Helen Disney is chief executive of the Stockholm Network, a pan-European think-tank
