Why it's crucial for women to exercise their right to vote in the general election

In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s a general election tomorrow. It’s a pretty big deal, right? Voting to give someone the power to run the country. Why then does there seem to be a gender divide, with more men than women expected to turn out to vote?

The Fawcett Society recently highlighted a potential “gender voting gap,” predicting that a potential eight million women will not head along to put their chosen X on their voting card.

According to the Women’s rights charity, an average of recent polling data shows that 2.5% fewer females say they are certain to vote than their male counterparts.

And this downturn in female voting isn’t necessarily a new thing. Statistics gathered following previous elections revealed that more than nine million women failed to vote in the last general election, compared to eight million men.

The study, carried out by the House of Commons Library at the request of the then Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman, showed that 9.1 million women didn’t turn out to vote in 2010.

A further survey revealed that only 54% of 25-34 year-old women made it to the polling booths in the last general election meaning that millions of women’s thoughts, opinions and ambitions have gone unheard.

There’s little doubt the figures seem to highlight a downward trend in the numbers of women voting and suggest that the ‘turnout gap’ between the sexes is getting wider.

Our suffragette sisters would be turning in their graves!

Because the fact is the female vote wasn’t always a given. Before 1918, women played no role in national politics. It was assumed women would not need to vote because their men folk would handle anything politically orientated, while their wives took care of matters in the home and raised children.

Sounds pretty old-fashioned doesn’t it? But thankfully, in the early 20^th century two groups of women were determined that women should play their part in parliamentary elections.

The ‘suffragists’ campaigned using peaceful methods, like lobbying, while their ‘suffragette’ counterparts were determined to win women’s right to vote by any means possible.

Their militant campaigning, which really took off in 1903 when Emmeline Pankhurst founded the women-only Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), encouraged women to abandon their ladylike tactics in favour of more forceful means.

These means sometimes included unlawful acts, like hunger strikes, which often put their own lives it risk. But it was those, often violent acts of raiding and window smashing, that attracted the most publicity and possibly helped to get the women’s right to vote partially achieved in 1918 with the Representation of the People Act, which allowed some women over the age of 30 to vote in national elections.

The Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act followed later the same year and allowed women to stand as Members of Parliament.

But women were not able to vote on entirely equal terms until 1928, when the Equal Franchise Act was passed which finally allowed women to have the same voting rights as men.

So when you see everything that our our female ancestors went through to ensure we had the right to vote, it’s a little disappointing to learn that women today aren’t now choosing to exercise that vote.

But why are women turning their back on Politics?

For many women it’s about not feeling that their vote will make a difference, something that non-partisan campaign #SHEvotes wants to change. The organisation run by four friends wants to encourage women to rock up tomorrow and make their opinion count.

“We really want to reframe it [political disengagement] and turn it on its head,” Fanny Calder, one of the organisers behind #SHEvotes told Huck Magazine. “We want to say that the fact that young women haven’t made a choice, that they’re not expected to vote, means that they absolutely have a massive impact in the turn out of this election.”

“Most of the polls are factoring in the fact that most young women won’t turn up, so if they do turn up, things are going to change. That’s the real excitement behind this cause. Women are really more powerful than they think they are, if they turn up and vote,” Fanny Calder continues.

Other women are choosing to stay away because they just don’t know who to vote for and following recent events are feeling disillusioned by the whole idea of politics. But the organisation wants to encourage women to take to the party-neutral websites such as Who Should You Vote For and I Side With to see which party’s policies speak to you most.

Because that’s the thing if you’d like to be able to get a foot on the property ladder in the next fifty years, feel strongly that you’re paid the same amount as your male colleagues, are angry that you can’t seem to find a work/life balance, then you need to vote to ensure that your opinions are heard.

Speaking about the ‘gender voting gap’ Chief Executive of Fawcett Sam Smethers told The Pool: “Almost 100 years on from the first women getting the right to vote, we still see what is likely to be a significant gap in turnout by gender.” That’s why the organisation is calling on all women to make sure they exercise their right to vote tomorrow.

In the words of Paloma Faith: “Women fought long and hard for us to have a voice. When you think of the suffragettes and hear what they fought for it sounds cheap to say I didn’t vote because nobody really appeals to me.”

We couldn’t have put it better ourselves.

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