Can Labour count on the support of women voters, asks Zoe Tyndall

The exit polls from the 2010 general election show that, despite an overall lead of seven per cent for the Conservatives, their lead among female voters was only five points, half of what it was among men. This echoed results from 2005 and continued New Labour’s trend of enjoying disproportionate levels of support from women.

Some commentators have looked to international data from similar electorates, particularly the United States, to take this further, arguing that women tend to be more progressive than men. Take the American presidential election in 2012, where the gender gap grew from 13 points in 2008 to a full 20 points. If the election had been decided on men’s preferences alone, Mitt Romney would have won by eight points, compared to the 12-point lead Barack Obama enjoyed among female voters.

So, what is going on here? Are women naturally more progressive or does Labour need to work in order to win a disproportionate share of the female vote? And, if so, how?

This gender gap in voting has been much discussed, particularly since 1997, but there is a question as to whether Labour can still rely on this electoral advantage.

There is no shortage of headlines claiming that it can: the Guardian’s analysis of its own ICM poll in February was headlined ‘Poll shows noxious combination of cuts to child benefit and tax credits, plus NHS and childcare fears, have turned females off.’ The data cited appeared to show a 26-point lead among women for Labour, compared to only seven points among men. However, as YouGov’s Peter Kellner subsequently demonstrated, this type of poll often relies on very small sample sizes (in this case around 200 men and 200 women), casting doubt at least on the scale of this supposed gender gap.

In fact, the voting intention trackers in July which use bigger sample sizes (for example, those of Populus and YouGov) paint a rather different picture, indicating that the gender gap is currently negligible.

The historical data in the UK certainly indicates that New Labour turned the tide on the gender gap – winning women’s support for Labour for the first time. In 1997 and 2001, the gender gap was virtually non-existent; before this the Conservatives had always enjoyed a higher lead among women. In 1992 this lead was six per cent and in 1974 it was as high as 12 per cent.

New Labour actively set out to attract female voters with policy on childcare, domestic violence, working families tax credits, preschool education – as well as all-women shortlists and (relatively) high numbers of female MPs.

It is interesting to see that in the Tory panic about the female vote (as revealed in 2011 through a leaked memo which outlined ideas to win women voters) this rush to stereotypical ‘female’ issues was also the primary instinct. The memo advised David Cameron to focus on childcare, shorter school holidays, the pay gap and women in business. Even though this memo is two years old, there has been very little progress on any of these issues. However, interestingly, it may be that the recent policy agenda had more impact with women, despite not focusing on these traditionally ‘female’ issues.

Whether by design or good fortune, two recent pieces of high-profile coalition legislation – the kind voters will remember and raise spontaneously in focus groups – are issues which raise particularly disproportionate support among women. First, on gay marriage, YouGov found almost two-thirds of women support gay marriage compared to just under half of all men (61 per cent and 47 per cent respectively).

Second, the gender gap is even more stark on the coalition’s announcement in the summer to force internet service providers to ensure customers have to opt in to remove filters in order to access internet pornography. YouGov polling shows that 59 per cent of men believe customers should have to opt in to a filter, compared to only 34 per cent of women, a gap of 25 points. Furthermore, while 85 per cent of women feel that children seeing pornography on the internet is damaging to them, only 63 per cent of men agree.

But perhaps the most interesting element of both of these polls is in the ‘don’t know’ column, where women are as likely as men or less likely (particularly on the pornography question) to say they do not know how they feel about the issue. The reason this is interesting is because generally across any type of polling – whether political, social or market research – women are more likely than men to say that they do not know the answers.

For many, this higher propensity among women to say ‘don’t know’ is an issue in and of itself – the assumption being that women actually do know less than men (rather than being less comfortable to adopt opinions on topics which are perhaps new or unfamiliar). This was the thesis of a recently published international study funded by the Economic and Social Research Council that found that ‘an unmistakable gender gap in political knowledge seems to be a global phenomenon’, which the researchers linked to media systems, newspaper readership and female representation among elected politicians.

This is not a phenomenon that applies solely to adult women. In recent BritainThinks polling on aspiration among 14-16-year-olds, we asked teenagers about where they see politics fitting into their futures. Even among this age group, where girls outperform boys academically, girls were 17 points more likely to say they do not know which political party understands their aspirations, and 21 points more likely not to know which party leader best understands them.

Whatever the reasons behind this, it is notable that gay marriage and internet pornography are two issues on which women are not only more supportive of the Conservative position than men, but also more comfortable expressing opinions. Neither issue is one which will determine how voters choose which party to support come 2015 – and on the big issues of the economy and immigration, gender attitudes are roughly equal. But these types of policies are less about the issues and more about valence factors. They indicate to voters (and, it seems, to women in particular) that leaders are in touch with the real concerns of ordinary voters – an area of weakness for Cameron in particular. The challenge for Ed Miliband is to look beyond the traditional electoral battlegrounds of the economy, health and immigration and find these types of issues through which he can really connect with all voters.

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Zoe Tyndall is research lead at BritainThinks. She will be addressing Progress’  Winning with Women conference on Saturday 7 September. To register visit archive.progressonline.org.uk/event/winningwithwomen

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Photo: catface3