The Taxpayer's Union Curia Poll released yesterday includes a gender breakdown. While we know more females than males vote Left, I didn't expect a gap this big.
50% of males would vote National/ACT with only 43.2 percent voting Labour/Greens.
Essentially women, collectively, are running the show.
What is it about Labour/Greens policies that women love?
The trend isn't confined to New Zealand. Here's one explanation from Europe:
"...social liberalism has been gaining ground. It appears to have a direct impact with women increasingly calling for the redistribution of wealth, and men insisting more often on personal responsibility in politics."
That'd explain the policy attraction of Labour and the Greens here. And of course there's the indispensible policy called 'Jacinda'.
What really worries me is the conclusion drawn. That ACT and National need to attract more support from women. True but they can't do it at the risk of losing support of men.
For integrity's sake parties should stick to policies based on their principles. ACT should stick to its traditional recourse to personal responsibility but endeavour to explain to female voters why.
For instance, a popular policy among women is taxpayer-funded Paid Parental Leave.
Wouldn't it be better to have lower income tax that would enable a new mother to stay home OR to use according to her own priority?
Some of the strongest support I received when campaigning against the DPB was from mothers angry at having to work to pay the taxes for others to stay home indefinitely (with no obvious social benefit to society).
ACT can gain more female support by convincing women that greater freedom and choice doesn't lie with greater government.
2 comments:
It's a phenomenon that has been known for decades - that women tend to be leftwing and more doctrinaire in their views. We've seen it in so many protest movements whether it is prohibition, the anti-nuclear movement or global warming. And, despite the "kindler, gentler" image, they are often in the vanguard of revolutionary violence - it is no surprise that Mao's Red Guards were mainly young women. But in my experience women are also the most ardent libertarians, so it cuts both ways.
Lindsay, from my time in Wellington in the 1970's living on the edge of the local anarchist scene, I witnessed a small cadre of women promulgate violence and urge their men to "stand and be counted."
I remember one Sunday afternoon at the back of an old house off Tasman Street experimenting with Molotov Cocktails. Attempts to mimic Napalm using polystyrene soaked in petrol proved fruitless. The ubiquitous crate of DB Draught was on hand to add to the party atmosphere.
While Wellington never ignited into violence, several of my associates decamped for England where they believed Anarchism was much more popular than here in NZ. And as they say, "the rest is history."
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