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

The statistical war over ‘Broken Britain’

The election battle over crime took another twist today. Chris Grayling has reiterated his assertion that violent crime has gone up since 1997. Weeks ago he was reprimanded by the Chair of the UK Statistics Authority Sir Michael Scholar for quoting these statistics on recorded crime.

The reason these figures are of dubious value is because in 2002 the way violent crime was recorded by the police was changed – leading to an artificial inflation of the figures. By contrast the British Crime Survey, which most criminologists and international observers regard as more reliable, shows that violent crime has fallen by 41% in the last 12 years.

Today the Conservatives have released new figures again claiming that violent crime has risen. They asked the House of Commons Library’s statisticians to work out what how much the 2002 change in reporting standards had inflated the figures. They concluded that even if you take that factor out of the equation, recorded violent crime would still be higher today than in 1997.

The reason all of this is so important is that demonstrating that violent crime has risen is central to the Conservatives wider political claim that ‘Britain is broken’. I have just returned from a speech by Alan Johnson in which he claimed that this was an attempt to paint a picture of a ‘Darling Buds of May past’ contrasting with ‘an Orwellian future’.

The problem for the Conservatives is that the UK Statistics Authority continues to believe, as do most independent observers, that recorded crime statistics are less reliable at measuring crime trends than the British Crime Survey. This is not just because the way police recorded crime is collected has changed – but also because not all crime is reported to the police.

The British Crime Survey is far more reliable because it asks a large sample of the public whether or not they have been a victim of a crime in the last 12 months – and these statistics show unequivocally that there has been a significant fall in violent crime since 1997. We are still internationally speaking a relatively high crime society – but one in which all types of crime have fallen over the last 15 years. Broken in some ways, perhaps – but getting mended?

Rick Muir, senior research fellow, ippr