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General election 2017: What is each party promising women?

Theresa May, Jeremy Corbyn, Tim Farron, Sophie Walker - Getty
Theresa May, Jeremy Corbyn, Tim Farron, Sophie Walker - Getty

With just a day to go until the election, we take a look at the political manifestos and the promises they are making to women, from improving maternity leave, childcare and the protection of carers to abortion rights and tackling sexual violence.

Here is a breakdown of what each party is offering women:

Conservatives

  • Introduce 30 hours of free childcare for three and four year-olds for working parents and institute a capital fund to help primary schools develop nurseries if they do not have the current facilities to provide one.

  • Improve take-up of shared parental leave by helping companies provide more flexible work environments so mothers and fathers are able to share parenting

  • Introduce a statutory right to a year's unpaid leave to care for a relative.

  • Make it easier to return to work after parental leave, or caring for an elderly relative, by supporting companies to take on parents and carers who are returning to work after long periods of absence. 

  • Require companies with more than 250 employees to publish data on the pay gap and between men and women and between  black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) employees, and continue to work for parity in the number of public appointments going to women and push for an increase in the number of women sitting on boards of companies. 

  • Make the civil service recruitment as diverse as possible, from the perspective of gender, race and social class, and provide funding for schemes to help those returning to the workplace having cared for children and relatives. 

  • Strengthen the entitlement, within the NHS, to flexible working. 

  • Continue to lead a global campaign for the education of women and girls. 

  • Expand global efforts to combat the perpetration of violence against people because of their faith, gender or sexuality, and work to end the subjugation and mutilation of women and tackle sexual violence in conflict

  • Create a domestic violence and abuse commissioner in law, to stand up for victims and survivors, monitor the response to domestic violence and abuse and to hold the police and criminal justice system to account. 

  • Support victims of domestic violence to leave abusive partners by reviewing funding for refuges and ensuring victims who have lifetime tenancies and flee violence are able to secure new lifetimes tenancy automatically. 

  • Ensure that child victims and victims of sexual violence are able to be cross-examined before their trial without the distress of having to appear in court.

  • Introduce dedicated provision for women offenders.

Key articles | General Election 2017
Key articles | General Election 2017

Labour

  • Improve the childcare system as well as extend the 30 free hours of free childcare to include all two year-olds, and move towards making some childcare available for one year olds.

  • Improve parental leave by extending maternity pay to 12 months and strengthen protection for women against unfair redundancy. Also double paid paternity leave to four weeks and increase paternity pay.

  • Extend the period to apply for maternity discrimination to the employment tribunal from three to six months.

  • The two-child limit on child benefit would be scrapped, and the 'rape clause' for receiving child benefit removed.

  • The carer's allowance would be increased by an extra £10 a week - a 17 per cent increase.

  • Focus on women’s safety by appointing a commissioner to set new standards for tackling domestic and sexual violence, and enforce measures to prevent all forms of abuse, including female genital mutilation, and prohibit the cross examination of victims of domestic violence by their abuser in certain circumstances.

  • Ensure a woman’s right to a safe, legal abortion - including working with the Assembly to extend that right to women in Northern Ireland.

  • Provide stable central funding for women’s refuges and rape crisis centres.

  • Ensure broad representation of women, BAME, LGBT and people with disabilities in all kinds of apprenticeships.

General election candidates gender ratios - party breakdown
General election candidates gender ratios - party breakdown

Liberal Democrats

  • Transform mental health support for pregnant women, new mothers and those who have experienced miscarriage or stillbirth, and help them get early care when needed.

  • Prioritise support, protection and equal rights for women and girls and aim to end female genital mutilation worldwide within a generation.

  • Expand shared parental leave and introduce an additional month's paid parental leave for fathers.

  • Provide 15 hours a week of free childcare for all two-year-olds and then prioritise 15 hours free childcare for all working parents with children aged between nine months and two years, with a long-term goal of 30 hours free childcare a week for all children aged from two to four years, and for all working parents from the end of paid parental leave to two years.  

  • Abandon the two-child policy on family benefits and abolish the ‘rape clause’ for receiving child benefit.

  • Raise the amount people can earn before losing Carer’s Allowance from £110 to £150 a week, and reduce the number of hours’ care per week required to qualify.

  • Encourage employers to provide more flexible working.

  • Make parliament more family friendly, and establish a review to pave the way for MP job-sharing arrangements.

  • Continue the drive for diversity in business leadership, pushing for at least 40 per cent of board members being women in FTSE 350 companies.

  • Extend the Equality Act to all large companies with more than 250 employees, requiring them to monitor and publish data on gender, BAME, and LGBT+ employment levels and pay gaps.

  • Work with the Apprenticeship Advisory Group to increase the number of apprentices from BAME backgrounds, ensure gender balance across industry sectors and encourage under-represented groups to apply.

  • Extend the use of name-blind recruitment processes.

  • Challenge gender stereotyping and early sexualisation, working with schools to promote positive body image and break down outdated perceptions of gender appropriateness of particular academic subjects, also include teaching about sexual consent, LGBT+ relationships, and issues surrounding explicit images and content.

  • Address period poverty by providing free sanitary products to girls at school.

  • Decriminalise the sale and purchase of sex, and the management of sex work – reducing harm, defending sex workers’ human rights, and focusing police time and resources on those groomed, forced or trafficked into the sex industry. Also provide support for those wishing to leave sex work.

  • Review the investigation, prosecution, procedures and rules of evidence in cases of sexual and domestic violence.

It took a long time for female representation to take off in Parliament
It took a long time for female representation to take off in Parliament

Green Party

  • Provide free NHS maternity care and protect the right to return to work from maternity leave - providing statutory rights to breastfeed infants upon return, making sure practical provisions are provided to enable this.

  • Make returning to work easier, by introducing tax incentives for employers who provide support facilities such as childcare, job sharing and flexible working, and empower parents to tackle discrimination.

  • Improve parental leave by making sure pay is at least the Living Wage, including for the self-employed, and guarantee parental leave rights, regardless of gender.

  • Decriminalise abortion procedures across the entire UK.

  • Guarantee free universal early education and childcare for all children.

  • Scrap the ‘rape clause’ for receiving child benefit.

  • Increase Carer’s Allowance until everyone is given a basic income to support themselves.

  • Ensure fair pensions for women.

  • End criminalisation of the purchase and sale of sex - allowing sex workers to screen and select their clients for safety, and remove sex work prosecutions from existing criminal records.

  • Implement a UK-wide strategy to tackle domestic violence and FGM, HBV (honour based violence) and forced marriage as well as providing safe and secure housing for those who cannot otherwise escape from abuse, and restore legal aid to prevent victims having to represent themselves against their abusers in court.

  • Develop clear student-led policies to combat sexual abuse and harassment in higher and further educational establishments.

  • Provide free sanitary products in schools to those who cannot afford them.

  • Increase diversity in the workplace by creating Green jobs for more women in STEM in renewables and sustainability and form a “50/50 Parliament” through measures such as enabling MPs as well as other “full-time” politicians to job-share, and push for public disclosure of race, gender and pay bands in businesses bigger than 50 employees.

  • Bring an end to immigration detention, leading to the closing of Yarl's Wood, and make sure pregnant asylum seekers and those who have experienced rape, sexual violence and forms of torture won’t be detained. In the short-term no male staff will be employed in roles where they come into contact with female detainees.

Record level of female candidates in the 2017 general election
Record level of female candidates in the 2017 general election

Plaid Cymru

  • Fight against the ‘rape clause’.

  • Offer free full-time nursery places for all three year-olds.

  • Bring forward new laws to protect victims of crimes such as rape and domestic abuse so that they can give evidence in court without being intimidated.

  • Block the development of the Port Talbot super prison and instead provide much-needed prison spaces for women and youth offenders in Wales.

UK Gender Gap
UK Gender Gap

Women’s Equality Party

  • End zero-hour contracts and move towards living wage for all care workers.

  • Invest in universal childcare so that all parents have access to good quality, free care for their children from the end of shared parental leave and make pre- and after-school clubs available and affordable on school premises from 8am to 6pm.

  • Implement a fully equal system of nine months parental leave at 90 per cent of pay, including the self-employed.

  • Improve maternity care by advocating continuity of midwifery care for all women and free choice of birthplace, including home birth.  

  • Require the criteria that protects women from being made redundant while on maternity leave to be extended to pregnant women before they start maternity leave, and give new parents a longer grace period of nine months for cases involving maternity discrimination or parental leave discrimination.

  • Protect the rights of working women, including rights to annual leave, overtime pay, rest breaks, return to work after parental leave, rights of pregnant workers on night shifts, protections against long hours and more.

  • Introduce a right to 5–10 days paid care leave in the workplace and ensure that carers who take time off work are entitled to return to their jobs, and introduce a right to paid leave for carers.

  • Overturn the Family Cap and the ‘rape clause’ that forces women to choose to relive the trauma of rape or suffer economic difficulty.

  • Ensure women who need to flee their homes because of abusive partners can find shelter and are supported with housing.

  • Retain the European Protection Order, to ensure victims and survivors of male violence who have been granted protection from their perpetrators will get similar protection when they travel or move to other EU countries.

  • End the detention of pregnant women and shut down Yarl’s Wood detention centre and ensure migrant mothers and expectant mothers are treated with care and respect and pregnant women who are seeking asylum or have an uncertain immigration status are given free access to NHS prenatal, birth and postnatal care.

  • Recognise transnational marriage abandonment – where men who are citizens or residents of the UK deliberately abandon their foreign national wives in their country of origin – as domestic violence.  

  • Make gendered analysis an integrated part of the UK’s international development policy and ensure a gender-sensitive approach to asylum applications, including recognition that gender based violence against women, especially in conflict, can be a form of persecution.

  • Ensure victims of violence against women who are in need of protection will never be returned to a country where their life would be at risk and that victims of domestic abuse, forced marriage and other forms of violence against women are always entitled to the autonomous right to stay in the UK in the event of a divorce or a relationship breakdown.

  • Extend the recent requirement for gender pay reporting for businesses, organisations and public bodies with more than 250 employees to smaller businesses of 50 employees or more and increase the capacity of public authorities to undertake an equal pay audit review and publish the results, along with an action plan to close the gender pay gap.

  • Remove barriers to justice for those who have suffered workplace discrimination by lowering the fee for issuing an employment claim from the current £250 to £50, and scrapping the hearing fee of £950 altogether.

  • Require employers to provide time for, and a place where, women can breastfeed or express milk in the workplace and require baby-changing facilities to be available to all genders in all public buildings.

  • Ensure that single parents are able to nominate a second caregiver of their choice for the shared parental leave entitlement.

  • Encourage more girls to take subjects that will lead to careers in STEM and encourage more boys into care work and other professions where men are underrepresented.

  • Support more women into leadership positions in schools and invest in the support structures women need to take the leap as entrepreneurs.

  • Require all universities, colleges, schools and apprenticeship providers to have a formal sexual harassment policy and invest in public awareness campaigns on the nature of sexual consent.

  • Require all schools to have free sanitary products on offer.

  • Make gender equality a stand-alone criterion for the inspection of schools and ensure it is included in the guidelines that set out what under-fives should learn.

  • Support the global campaign to end FGM.

  • Decriminalise those who sell sex.

  • Ensure women who have been victims of sex trafficking in the UK are entitled to a legal right to remain in the country.

  • Encourage political parties to increase diversity so that at least 66 per cent of candidates replacing retiring MPs, and 66 per cent of other candidates, are women for the next two Parliamentary terms or until gender parity has been achieved.

  • Not allow all-male companies, those with all-male boards, or those without a gender diversity policy in place to supply government at any level.

  • Fully decriminalise abortion and protect the rights of women in Northern Ireland by offering them free reproductive health services in England, Scotland or Wales.

  • Challenge any reporting of sexual violence that minimises its importance or blames victims.

  • Update Advertising Standards Authority guidelines on airbrushing to require disclaimers notifying the audience that a person’s image has been altered, and require a warning notice to be included on any images of models with a very low unhealthy body weight.

  • Work with sports broadcasters, asking them to pledge to double their coverage of all women’s sport in the next five years, and double it again in the five following.