Dear Reader,
I’m going to start this letter by pointing out the obvious, which is that Brexit affects all of us – young or old, male or female – but seeing as this is a women’s magazine I’ve quite rightly decided to focus on them today and the impact that last week’s vote will have.
Although I’m unsure as to where to start. The remain campaign lost by just over a million votes. And around a million more women than men were eligible to vote. Safe to assume that quite a few women did, in fact, vote to leave the EU last Thursday.
This surprises me and yet it shouldn’t, for the campaigns – as with an awful lot of other aspects of politics – were being run by overgrown, male school children. The elite. People who are not in touch with the inner workings of Britain or the people who reside there. Men rule and decide, women step into line and follow. That’s how it is assumed the country will work. Men who are more concerned with an unnecessary ‘political out-doing’ of each other forget to think about the very people their pathetic arguing will affect.
Did you know how leaving or remaining in the EU was going to affect the tampon tax? Or equal pay? Or maternity rights? Or your guaranteed safety against sexual harassment in the workplace? Did any of things influence the way you voted last week? Because they should have even though these important issues were barely touched on in the lead up to the vote. Women’s issues once again slid to the bottom of the pile where the economy and immigration towered over them like Alice after she’d eaten the cake. No one in government since last Thursday has had their cake and eaten it too. They are all now like Alice, squished uncomfortably into a space they cannot get out of.
Throughout the campaigns there weren’t enough facts or nuance, and due to this women were unable to make informed decisions based on real projections of the implications of either vote. Because there were none. There was no five year plan. No bigger picture.No plan at all.
Maybe if the campaigns had discussed women’s rights in more depth and detail, then the outcome would’ve been different. It’s insulting that we, as a gender, have been underestimated and deemed not important enough to focus either of the campaign promises/lies on.
There were around a million more of us eligible to vote. A million more of us the campaigns could’ve targeted. A million who could’ve stopped the farce this country has become and the shambles it is now in.
A million of us who need to be taken more seriously.
Start listening.
Yours, Me x
Bristol Woman 