Leaders’ wives or readers' wives?

A lively debate at a Women’s Question Time earlier this week (organised by Eaves in association with Stylist magazine) provoked heated discussion. But perhaps the most incendiary topic of all was the growing sexual objectification of women and girls in our society.

A debate on this subject was timely: the Lib Dems are under fire for appointing Anna Arrowsmith, a pornographic film-maker, as their parliamentary candidate for Gravesham in Kent; earlier this week The Sun led with a front page splash on a 14 year old girl who was discovered working as a lap dancer; and a recent Home Office report, by Dr Linda Papadopoulos, established a clear link between sexual imagery and violence against women.

Theresa May outlined the Conservatives’ plans to make the teaching of consent compulsory in the sex education curriculum and she stressed that more needs to be done to increase women’s confidence and self-esteem. But when rape conviction rates are at an all-time low, rape crisis centres are suffering from funding cuts and the Council of Europe estimates that 1 in 4 women suffer from domestic violence in their lifetime, these proposals, while important, fall far short of the action required to tackle the root causes of discrimination against women.

The mainstreaming of the porn and sex industries, be it through advertising, lad mags or lap dancing clubs, is widely acknowledged by human rights treaties and by research as promoting attitudes associated with discrimination and violence against women. Unless this connection is recognised and acted on by our politicians, equality between men and women will remain elusive, and violence against women will continue.

These issues are important for women voters – there is a real appetite for serious discussion of gender in the election campaign. Labour and Conservative efforts to woo female voters so far seem to be focused on promoting the wives of their party leaders and discussing biscuits on Mumsnet. But if they are really committed to tackling the underlying issues of discrimination that affect women, the political parties need to commit to taking urgent action to tackle the sexual objectification of women. We would see more action on these issues if the most prominent women in the election campaign were female politicians and party leaders, rather than leaders' wives.

Alice Sachrajda, researcher, ippr