Women’s voices have barely been heard during this General Election

In fact, women’s voices have barely been heard – according to real-time analysis by Loughborough University, only 23% of all sources quoted in election coverage have been women.

Media representation of women politicians has been even worse, at only 19% of all politicians quoted, and the inequality has been just as stark amongst representatives of businesses, trade unions, think tanks, academia, opinion poll companies, and celebrities.

Only as representatives of ordinary citizens, charities, and the media itself have women been featured with the same frequency as men.

So, it is perhaps unsurprising that issues impacting on women’s equality have taken a backseat during the campaign.

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Dr Jilly Kay, senior lecturer in communication and media at Loughborough University, has noted that, in this election, “women’s issues are being framed around the conflict around ‘gender ideology’”, and that “a potential interesting finding is how that focus might be crowding out other issues pertaining to women”.

This is a pretty dire state of affairs, considering that women have suffered disproportionately from many of the Tories’ policies, while Labour have failed to commit to ending some of the worst of those.

Feminist organisations have been working to highlight some of the important actions the next government can take to reduce gender inequality, but unfortunately these are hardly the hot topics of the election.

So, what should the UK Government be doing to help women?

The UK social security system is entrenching gender inequality, when it should be alleviating it. The Women’s Budget Group has found that, by 2027, the average income of women across the UK will have dropped by 7% as a result of social security cuts since 2010, compared to a drop in 3% for men.

This is because women are twice as likely to be entitled to social security due to inequalities in the workforce and in the home, with female-dominated sectors tending to be lower paid and undervalued, while women are more likely to be in part-time work because of caring responsibilities.

Women also commonly bear the brunt of the impacts of poverty within households to make sure their children’s needs are met. These facts did not deter the Tories from slashing benefits and pushing many low-income women to the brink.

We’ve all heard about the two-child limit in benefits which has plunged families with three or more children into poverty. Less has been said about the fact that this is an explicitly anti-choice policy, seeking to control women’s reproductive choices with the threat of financial hardship.

The “rape clause” linked to this is so disgusting precisely because it implies that a woman should have to justify her decision to have a child by disclosing trauma. There is no version of this policy which isn’t anti-feminist. As Engender puts it: “the two-child limit systematically discriminates against women.”

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Even the way the Universal Credit system is set up, making one household payment into one bank account, is bad for women. It undermines financial independence, which is counterproductive to fostering equal relationships between men and women, it heightens the risk of financial abuse, and it closes off options to women seeking to escape from abuse. Women’s organisations have been raising this problem since before the system was even introduced, and the UK Government ignored them.

Alongside this, improving workers’ rights is essential to creating a more equal society for women, and the next UK government has the power to make a huge difference in this area.

The charity One Parent Families Scotland has called for a requirement on employers to consider flexible working requests at the point of recruitment, to promote the fair and equal treatment of workers with childcare or other caring responsibilities.

A right to flexible working has the potential to have a significant impact on women’s equality in work, because data shows that women in couples are still doing around two-thirds of the childcare, around six in 10 unpaid carers are women, and more than nine in 10 single parents are women. At present, there is still far too much leeway for employers to discriminate against people with caring responsibilities, thereby putting women at a disadvantage.

Even the Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP) that employers are required to pay is so inadequate that the Scottish Women’s Budget Group describe it as “driving households into debt, eroding savings and causing stress for families”.

After the first six weeks, SMP (which can be paid for up to 39 weeks) drops to well below the minimum wage – a sad reflection of how little our society values the care of its youngest citizens.

Although, if there is one group that has been valued less than any other in the eyes of the UK Government, it’s migrants. Our increasingly hostile immigration system retraumatises migrants who have fled from violence and oppression, places vulnerable women into unsupportive, inhospitable detention centres, and cuts off routes to independence and vital supports through the cruel “no resource to public funds” rule.

That women with insecure immigration status experiencing abuse in the UK can be prevented from accessing benefits, women’s refuges, or other safe accommodation illustrates an inexcusable disregard for women’s rights, safety and dignity.

And yet where is the Labour Party on these issues? Where are the commentators, anxiously debating the state of women’s rights because of this bleak picture? Where are the journalists, asking political leaders – again and again and again – what they plan to do about it?

The fact that these issues, or their gendered impact, are so often overlooked speaks volumes about how highly women are prioritised in our political and media landscape – especially women who are faced with multiple inequalities.

This is why the work of organisations like Engender to push for greater – and more diverse – representation of women in politics, and in the media, is so important.

As it stands, only one in three of Scotland’s MPs are women, roughly the same as the UK figure, and this is projected to be lower still after the election. Engender recommends parliamentary gender quotas, which are used in at least 86 countries around the world, to help address the problem.

Perhaps if more women were doing the talking, instead of being talked about, the concerns of more than 50% of our population would not feel so much like a fringe issue.

And maybe, just maybe, if more time and attention were afforded to the range of substantive actions needed to advance gender equality, discussions about women’s rights would feel less like a political football and more like a meaningful commitment.