 Good afternoon everyone and welcome to this IAA webinar. My name is Emma Richardson, I'm the UK researcher here at the Institute of International Affairs and we're delighted to be joined today by Dr. Anna Sanders, assistant professor in British politics at the University of York. We're really looking forward to hearing from Anna today as she'll be sharing her presentation on gender and voting behavior in the lead up to the UK general election 2024. Anna will speak to us for about 20 to 25 minutes or so and then we will go to Q&A with our audience here today. Just some quick housekeeping rules. This is an online event so you'll be able to join the discussion using the Q&A function on Zoom which you shall see on your screen now. So please feel free to send in your questions as you think of them throughout the session and then we will come to them at the end of the presentation. Please be sure to say your name and your any affiliation with your question so when I'm reading them out we know who we're speaking to. And just a quick reminder that today's presentation and Q&A will both be on the record and please be sure to join the discussion on X using the handle at IEEA and tag us in any posts that you share about the event on social media. So I'm now just going to give a brief introduction for Anna and then I will hand over to you for your presentation. So Anna Sanders is an assistant professor in British politics at the University of York. Her research brings together the areas of gender, policies and voting behavior with a core interest in how policy offers shape gender gaps in both choice. She has published on these themes in the Journal of European Public Policy, the Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties and the British Journal of Politics and International Relations. She is currently working on a monograph winning women's votes, gendered policies and campaigns in Britain. Over to you Anna. Thank you very much Emma for the introduction and for chairing the session today. And before I get started I'd just like to say thank you to the IEEA and in particular Dr. Barry Coldworth for the invitation to present at this webinar. It's a pleasure to be here speaking to you today. So I have some slides for my presentation which I'm just going to load up. You can see those. I'm delighted to be speaking today on gender and voting behavior in the lead up to the UK general election 2024. A topic that I think is interesting because we've seen trends emerge in recent elections that have important implications for political parties. And I should preface this by saying that I've actually framed this talk around the presumption that the election will be taking place in 2024. This might be a bit of a hostage to fortune as the general election is yet to be called. It might be that the general election takes place in January 2025 but I thought that the general election is 2024 slash 2025 had a bit of a less of a ring to it. So to date my research has focused on gender and elections in the UK with a specific focus on how policies shape gender gaps in voting behavior. So today I'm going to be presenting some of my research on this including some forthcoming research which I've been working on with co-authors. And at the end of this talk I'm going to bring all of this together and pull out some key takeaways that I think parties can perhaps learn from this ahead of the next general election. So I'm looking forward to sharing this today and look forward to any questions that you might have. So I mentioned a few moments ago that it's an interesting time to be researching gender and voting in the UK. And this is because of recent developments that we've seen in gender differences in voting behavior. So this graph shows the British gender gap at every British election from 1945 to 2015. The blue bars represent a greater proportion of women voting conservative than men. And what we can see is that traditionally women have been more likely than men to vote for the conservative party. Men have been more likely to vote labor. And this traditional gender gap was partly because women tended to be more religious than men and they were also traditionally more likely to stay at home with children which tended to be associated with conservative values and voting conservatives. And at the same time, men were more likely to be in the labor market largely in unionized jobs which tended to be associated with voting labor. And this gender gap, it wasn't just unique to the British context. We also saw a similar gender gap emerge across most Western European countries where women were to the right of men in their vote choice. But as more women enter the labor market and higher education and as religiosity declines, we start to see the traditional gender gap decline over time in Britain. And what's interesting is that in other countries, we start to see a reversal in this gender gap where women start to lean to the left of men in their vote choice, what we would call a modern gender gap. But that doesn't happen in Britain. And although the gender gap declines over time, women still actually remain on average more supportive than men at the conservatives while men remain more supportive of labor. And until 2017, when we see a modern gender gap appear at the aggregate level for the first time. So in other words, for the first time, women become more likely than men to vote labor and less likely to vote conservative. And what's interesting is that this modern gender gap appears to hold in 2019. And some research that I conducted with Rosie Shorrocks at the University of Manchester, we looked at the 2017 election, which we thought was a really interesting case. It was an election that was held after a decade of austerity measures. And we found that the gender gap in 2017 was driven particularly by younger women who were more supportive of labor and they were more pessimistic about their economic and financial situation. And we found that their economic and financial pessimism appeared to be driving their higher relative support for the Labour Party. I'm going to talk a little bit more about this research at the end of this presentation. And then in 2019, research by Rosie Campbell at King's College London and Rosie Shorrocks finds that the story very much becomes about Brexit. So in 2019, this was an election that was very much focused around the issue of Brexit. And they find that labor support appears to be driven by younger women who were much more likely than men or older women to support remain. And so what this suggests is that the context of elections is really important and this can influence voting behaviour. But we might think that given the unique context of the 2017 and 2019 elections, that this is perhaps a temporary blip where we might expect the gender gap to revert back to the way that it was. But what's interesting is that when we look at current voting intention, this modern gap, gender gap, it does appear to hold. So this shows Ipsos Maori data from February this year where they asked respondents how they would vote if a general election were held tomorrow. So the data shows around a 10 percentage point gap in which women are more supportive than men of labor. Men are more supportive of the conservatives than women but this gender difference is much smaller. And what's also notable is that men are also more supportive than women of reform UK with a difference of six percentage points. So taken together, the traditional gender gap has narrowed over time with women much less likely to vote conservatives. And this is meant that women's votes are now up for grabs. Women also make up the majority of the electorate. So they comprise 51% of the population because they tend to outlive men at the older ages. So in other words, the average voter is actually a woman. And because they make up the majority of the electorate, this means that their votes are particularly crucial, especially in tight elections. And since the 1980s and the 1990s, women within parties, so activists and MPs, they started to make the case that parties really need to be paying particular attention to secure women's votes and that there are electoral incentives to appeal to women voters. And therefore we've started to see parties increasingly reach out to women voters. So in the 2015 election, we saw the Labour Party launch their pink battle bus which aimed to speak to women voters up and down the country and try and win their votes. In 2010, we saw all mainstream parties launch manifestos that tried to appeal to working with us. And in 2024, we've seen a lot of discussion around women voters. In particular, we've seen the Labour Party strategists identify a key voter for the upcoming election, the Stephenage woman, who they claim is essential for the party to win the election. They identify the Stephenage woman as a younger woman living in a suburban area that's struggling with the cost of living crisis who voted Conservative in 2019, but has shifted towards supporting Labour. We've also seen recently the emergence of the Whitby woman based on a key group of older voters who are frustrated about the government, worried about the cost of living and the NHS, but that undecided in their voting intention. And this targeting of fictional women voters, it's not new. We've seen it before. We've seen it in previous elections where we've had the Worcester woman, we've had Schoolgate mums and even the Take a Break woman as well. But what makes the 2024 election different from previous elections is that as well as seeing an even greater focus on women voters, we've also seen debates within political parties about gender aiming to explicitly define what it is to be a woman. So this politicisation of gender makes it a slightly different case. So in some recent research that we conducted, my colleague Francesca Gaines at the University of Manchester and I examined the context of the upcoming election further. And given the increasing attention paid to by political parties to women in particular, we took a focus on women voters. So we undertook research, examining their policy priorities and actually where the political parties are addressing their concerns or not. So we started by exploring women's policy priorities. We examined the latest wave of the British election study internet panel from May 2023, which asks respondents what they considered to be the most important issue facing the country at the current time. And what we can see is that for both men and women, the economy comes out as the most important issue. And in many ways, this is perhaps unsurprising given the current cost of living crisis that the UK is facing. And this has felt more acutely after the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and also against the long-term impact of Brexit, which we know has had a negative impact on GDP. But it's women, especially who are likely to select the economy with around two thirds of women saying that the economy is the most important issue facing the country compared to 58% of men. So there's a gender gap of around seven percentage points on this issue. So this represents quite a significant gender difference. And there's a really interesting research by Professor Rosie Campbell. He finds that as an issue reaches the top of the agenda during elections, gender differences become more pronounced. And this appears to hold here. What's interesting is that traditionally, men have been more likely to prioritize the economy, more likely than women, but this gender gap has actually reversed in recent years. And there are several reasons for this. So firstly, women are more reliant on the public sector for state services such as childcare and social care. They're also more reliant on the state for welfare payments. And this is partly because they're more likely to undertake unpaid care and because they tend to be poorer than men on average. Women also make up two thirds of the public sector workforce. So what this means, taken together, is that if the economy goes into recession and the government cuts public spending, then it's women who are more likely to bear the brunt of this through their employment, use of services and also access to welfare. Men are more likely than women to prioritize every other issue. The only exceptions are inequality and health and these are areas that have historically prioritized by women. We know that women and men also vary across intersectional lines and when we break this down by age group, we find that it's older women who are especially likely to prioritize health, which we might expect they tend to be having a use of healthcare. And in particular, it's women in the youngest age group who are more likely to say that the economy is a most important issue. And when we look at attitudes towards the economy, we find that respondents are generally very pessimistic, but it's women who are especially pessimistic. So the graph on the left shows that around 90% of women think that the national economy has got worse over the last 12 months, compared to 84% of men. Men are more likely to think that the national economy has improved. The graph on the right shows that respondents are slightly less pessimistic about the future, but they're still a gender gap with around 70% of women thinking that the national economy will improve over the next 12 months, compared to 62% of men. As well as the national economy, women are also more pessimistic about their personal financial situation. So the graph on the left shows that around 65% of women think that their household financial situation has got worse over the last 12 months, compared to 60% of men. And we can see on the graph on the right that women are more likely than men to think that their financial situation will get worse. So these economic concerns are coming out clearly. So after examining women's policy priorities, we then looked at what political parties are pledging. And because the election is yet to be called, we've yet to see party manifestos released. We examined speeches at party conferences made by ministers and shadow ministers at the end of 2023. And although speeches at party conferences, they're not as detailed as manifestos, they do set the overall strategy and the overall direction of policy. And we focus here on speeches made by the Conservative Party and the Labour Party, because that's where traditionally the source of the gender gap has been. And also because of the UK's majoritarian electoral system, it's likely that either of these parties will end up in government. So we examined 12 speeches in total and analysed policy pledges that address gendered economic inequality and those that address gender discrimination. So I'm just going to draw on a couple of our main findings due to time, but I'm happy to say a little bit more about what we find in the Q&A. So firstly, we find that childcare is emerging as a key battleground. So both the Conservatives and the Labour Party appear to be competing on this issue. The UK has one of the most expensive childcare systems actually of any OECD country. And we know that this issue disproportionately affects women as they're more likely to be undertaking unpaid care. And so a lack of flexibility and an affordability of childcare can impact women's re-entrance to or progression within the labour market. And some recent research conducted by the Forces Society, they found that around three quarters of women said that affordable childcare is important to them when they're considering who to vote for, which again, this highlights the importance of economic concerns more widely. And so from the Conservatives, the main pledge is really about this introduction of 30 hours of free childcare for working parents of children age nine months up to three years in England, which they pledged to roll out this year. So while the party is currently still in government. Now under the previous system, working parents were entitled to 30 hours of free childcare for children. But from the age of three, this meant that the childcare system had left a large gap between parental leave and subsidised childcare provision. And whilst the budget does mark a significant expansion of free childcare and it has largely been welcomed by some feminist organisations, it has attracted some criticism on the grounds that firstly, it's only available to working parents. So parents have to be working at least 16 hours a week to qualify. And there are also questions over shortfalls in funding. So the proposed 30 hours, it sits against a backdrop of reductions to local authority funding for early years since 2010. And we know that early years providers have also faced significant financial challenges that were exacerbated by the COVID pandemic. So we've seen over 5,000 early years providers close between 2021 and 2022, just in England alone. So whilst this pledge could be perhaps particularly appealing to women, there are limitations notably around eligibility and shortfalls in funding. And at the same time, Labour's childcare pledges include launching a review into the earliest sector and most notably, a pledge to fund universal breakfast clubs for all primary schools in England. And that's been described by children's charities as quite cost effective because of the policies provision of food as well as wraparound childcare. But what's notable is that Labour stopped short of offering universal childcare which is a pledge that they made in the 2017 and 2019 elections. And this perhaps reflects their aim to restore economic credibility among voters. We've seen, for example, some comments from the leader of the Labour Party, Kia Stama, talking about how a Labour government won't turn on the spending taps, for example. The other theme that emerges from our analysis is that in nearly all of the speeches we analysed from the Conservatives, there was a clear attack on wokery, in particular the issue of gender self-identification and how women should be defined. And it's here that the issue of sex and gender comes out most clearly. And within party speeches, we find appeals to common sense politics. So for example, a Conservative Party leader, Rishi Sunak, talks about a man as a man, a woman as a woman, that's just common sense. We also see the party emphasising conservative values in relation to issues of equality and diversity and inclusion. So for example, there's opposition from the Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, to collecting diversity data. So, taken together, we find that the Conservatives and Labour, they are competing on some gendered economic issues, particularly childcare. But neither party currently addresses women's demands. And on top of this, the Conservatives appear to be placing a greater emphasis not on economic issues, but on what we would call status or cultural issues relating to trans rights, which again, don't appear to be responding to women's economic concerns. But overlooking women's economic concerns can have significant electoral implications. So research I conducted with Rosie Shorrocks at the University of Manchester, finds that economic attitudes can shape gender gaps, gender-age gaps. We examined voting behaviour by gender and age at the 2015 and 2017 elections. And in both of these elections, women under 35 were more likely to vote Labour. And crucially, we find that women under 35 were especially pessimistic about their financial and economic situation, more so their male counterparts or older women. And both of these elections, they were held in a context of austerity. So quite unusual elections. And what we saw was that Labour, in particular, were campaigning on an anti-austerity platform. And we find that in 2015, after we control for economic and financial pessimism, the gender gap becomes insignificant, but only among those aged under 35. This also happens again in 2017, but only among Labour support, again at the younger ages. And so, in other words, in both elections, younger women's economic and financial pessimism appeared to be driving the higher likelihood of voting for Labour. But there is an important group of voters who can determine election outcomes that I haven't really spoken about very much. And that is undecided voters who are more often than not women. And one of the most consistent gender gaps in public opinion data is that women are more likely than men to be undecided in their voting intention. So the graph on the left is based on panel data between 2014 and 2022. And it shows the proportion of respondents answering, don't know when they're asked which party they would vote for if a general election were held tomorrow. We can see that women's propensity to say that they don't know who they will vote for, it's much higher than men's. But women do still turn out to vote at the same rates as men, as there aren't any significant gender differences in turnout. So what this suggests is that women tend to make their minds up on who they will vote for much later than men. So campaign periods are particularly important and policies might be especially crucial when it comes to influencing this key group of undecided voters. And this also varies by age. So the graph on the right shows the proportion of women and men saying that they don't know who they will vote for at the next election, with the black line representing men and the blue line representing women. This data is from 2019. And this gender gap in don't know responses, it appears to be widest at the middle ages, but it then narrows among those aged under 50. And my colleague Rosie Shorex and I undertook some research into why it is that women are more undecided than men in their voting intention. And we find that it's partly because women tend to have lower rates of political engagement. And that also less likely to feel represented by any political party on issues that matter most to them. We also find that women and men tend to associate politics with conflict. But what's interesting is that for women, this appears to put them off politics. But for men, they appear to enjoy this conflating politics. So there are a number of conclusions that political parties can draw from this. Firstly, the economy is the most important issue, but especially among women. Aggregate level data shows that women are especially concerned about the national economic situation and their own financial situation. And this is likely to be important in the upcoming election, because economic and financial attitudes can influence voting behaviour. But despite having economic concerns, it doesn't appear that either of the two largest Westminster parties and the Conservatives or Labour are fully addressing women's economic concerns. On gendered economic issues, we've seen that parties compete most fiercely over the issue of childcare, which is emerged as the key battleground. There are some questions that remain. So for example, we don't know yet what Labour's full childcare offer will be. We've also seen the Conservative Party place a greater emphasis on social issues, such as rights rather than the economy as a whole. But we don't know whether this will actually have any electoral purchase with women voters. And although the Labour Party are currently leading in the polls, undecided voters will be key to the election outcome. And this means that the election campaign and party policies released over the next few months will be especially important at swinging undecided voters, the majority of whom are women. So although women are currently more supportive of Labour, there are still many women who have yet to decide their vote choice. So although we've seen a modern gender gap emerge over the last two elections that has so far advantaged Labour, Labour shouldn't be complacent when it comes to women's votes. So I'll leave it there and open up questions. Thank you very much.