In 1975, campaigners for Britain to leave the European Economic Community – as it was then – hit upon a brilliant wheeze to put a woman at the centre of the debate. “In Coventry, they got a ‘new Lady Godiva’ to ride through the town on the basis that Lady Godiva was against food taxes,” says Robert Saunders of Queen Mary University in London, who is writing a book about the referendum vote in 1975. But the stunt was beset with problems: first, Godiva had to wear a bodystocking before the police would allow it. “She also had a hard time because she’d never ridden a horse before, and behind her was a man banging Jamaican drums,” adds Saunders. “The horse bolted.”
It was a campaign that now makes the 1970s seem very remote. The Daily Mirror hired Beverley Pilkington, a Page 3 model who later became the face of Big D Nuts, to front its coverage; newspapers showed girls in tight T-shirts reading: “Europe or bust”. A Swedish model called Siv posed in a bikini adorned with the flags of the member states to drum up interest in the subject. The Mirror called her a “curvy kind of flagpole who enjoys dressing up to the nines”.
The pro-European side set up a women’s office to counter this sexism, and under the guidance of Lady Kina Avebury and Anne Money-Coutts it worked with the Women’s Institute and Townswomen’s Guilds across the country to put out a female-focused message. Polling early in the year had indicated that women were more Eurosceptic than men, but they also said their allegiances were softer. In the end, the campaigning of the women’s office helped swing the referendum resoundingly in favour of continued membership.
Fast-forward four decades and no one is likely to dress up as Lady Godiva – although Boris Johnson does have the requisite flowing blond locks – but there are two significant echoes of 1975. Polling shows women are more likely to say they are undecided over the vote in June, and women’s voices are still under-represented in the debate over the EU.
So far, we have had rallies headlined by Nigel Farage and George Galloway; dreary press conferences held by M&S’s former chief executive, Stuart Rose; the media circus surrounding Boris Johnson’s weekend-long tease; the row over the sacking of the British Chambers of Commerce leader, John Longworth; the possibility of the London mayor and George Osborne going head to head in a televised debate. At times, it has all felt a bit... saloon bar.
The sheer number of self-important Eurosceptic male backbenchers huffing about sovereignty, migration or Project Fear has made even their own side concerned. One Leave advocate tells me he worries about the debate being dominated by the “men in green ties” – a reference to the Grassroots Out (Go!) campaign. Another confides: “If I see [conservative MP] Bill Cash coming down the corridor, my heart sinks.”
It did not help that the only woman to make the front pages in the first days after David Cameron concluded his renegotiation was the actor – sorry, “pro-EU luvvie” – Emma Thompson, being told to “shut yer cakehole” by the Sun for calling Britain a “cake-filled, misery-laden, grey old island”. (The paper even Photoshopped Thompson with a Victoria sponge in her open mouth to ram the point home.) We had to wait until 8 March for another prominent woman’s views on Europe to give the Sun a splash – the Queen, apparently backing Brexit.
This imbalance has not gone unnoticed. That said, if you were feeling waspish, you might conclude that women’s major contribution to the EU debate so far has been to say that more women should contribute to the EU debate. On 27 January, Caroline Lucas of the Greens called out the abundance of “men in grey suits”. On 1 February, Barbara Judge, chair of the Institute of Directors, asked if “women had been sidelined or have chosen to absent themselves from the debate”. On 1 March, Labour’s Mary Creagh warned we should not leave the decision to the “old boys’ club”.
There is a reason for all this angst. In January, research from the thinktank British Future found that women were much more likely to say they were undecided about how to vote in June than men. This mirrors previous votes such as the Scottish independence referendum. Then, says Rosie Campbell, professor of politics at Birkbeck University, women were a key group of swing voters and, in the end, they “broke” for No, the winning side.
That said, Ben Shimshon and Cordelia Hay at BritainThinks sound a note of caution about over-interpreting their data. Women might not be more indecisive or ignorant, but they are – to put it frankly – more likely to admit ignorance or indecision to pollsters. (In previous research, 15% of respondents claimed to have heard of a nonexistent government minister. Men were far more likely to bluff than women.)
However, in focus groups, women do report being turned off by aggressive, overconfident shouting matches. They often talk about wanting more nuance, more facts and more calm. “When I do telephone canvassing, men give you the benefit of their opinion at great length,” the Eurosceptic Labour MP Gisela Stuart tells me. “Whereas women say: I need to know more. There’s a reluctance to assert a view that comes from the gut.”
Stuart says her decision to campaign for Leave was driven by realising that the EU would never change. “In all my years of doing politics, I don’t think I’ve come across a debate which is, at heart, as ideological as this. It’s like a statement of faith. When people say, ‘I would like to stay in a reformed European Union’, I say, ‘So would I. But it seems incapable of reform.’”
Reluctance to get involved in such a fierce argument is common among the women – from all walks of life – who volunteered to speak to me about the EU referendum.
“As usual in politics, there are too many dicks on the dancefloor,” says Emily Hier, 24, a marketer from Blackheath, using a Flight of the Conchords reference that will resonate with many millennials, but few of those are involved in the EU campaigns. “So far I’ve just seen a load of men in suits sound off about immigration and I’m already bored of the entire thing.”
Jane Poole, 44, a Waitrose partner from Harpenden, says she is still undecided and the current debate is not helping her make up her mind. “I would like to know about the day-to-day workings of the EU and its impact on us – in business, the courts and Westminster,” she tells me. “What would replace the rules and regulations and layers of decision-making currently comprising the workings of the union? Also, would Brexit mean that everyone would follow suit?”
Nicola, 27, a doctor in Edinburgh, agrees: “I don’t mind the sausage fest per se, but what would sway me would be someone with a plan looking more than approximately five years ahead.”
For many, men’s domination of the debate is a symptom of a larger problem – that the conversation seems to be happening among an elite that is remote from the rest of the country. “I definitely feel the people making the argument do not represent Britain. I think the press need to get coverage of female spokespeople who have honest, real opinions,” says Shahlaa Tahira, 25, a DJ from south-east London. “What about someone who came to England as an immigrant and is now running a successful business, or a female farm owner, or someone who trades with partners in the EU?”
Or as Alison Cawley, 54, a former headhunter from Taunton, puts it: “I am tired of debates between man one and man two, both trotting out predigested ‘lines to take’ and sounding about as authentically engaged as a speak-your-weight machine... Given that politics and business are still dominated by white middle-aged men, it’s not surprising that theirs are the dominant voices here.”
Part of the problem is that the EU debate has become subsumed into a preview of the next Tory leadership contest. And with 100 Conservative MPs expected to vote against their own leader’s position, everyone is on high alert for interventions that could bolster a “Tory civil war” narrative. That means more men having a say, because the Conservative party has just 68 female MPs, and there are only seven women in the Cabinet.
There is also an ongoing tussle between broadcasters and the Leave and Remain campaigns over who is offered airtime to make their case. The campaigns complain that television and radio producers want the big hitters, who are predominantly male – Johnson, Osborne, Cameron – or mavericks like Farage or Galloway, who can be relied on to say something incendiary. The broadcasters counter by noting that several prominent women seem to be taking a back seat.
“The Out campaign do seem to have a number of strong women appearing in the media, such as Priti Patel, Gisela Stuart, Theresa Villiers,” one senior TV producer told me. “But where are the big hitters from Remain? It would be good to hear from Theresa May.”
Another problem is that whenever the SNP’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon enters the fray, the story tends to become about what a vote to leave would mean for Scotland’s continued membership of the UK. Under those circumstances, it’s hard for her to be an effective advocate for Remain.
Both Leave and Remain are aware there is a problem with the lack of women’s voices. And so International Women’s Day on 8 March saw the launch of both the Women For Britain and Women For In campaigns.
The first was held in the wood-panelled splendour of One Great George Street, just around the corner from the House of Commons. It featured Ukip’s Suzanne Evans as chair, and a panel of two Tory MPs (including the cabinet minister Priti Patel) and two business owners. The independent-minded Conservative backbencher Sarah Wollaston told me over tea and pastries that she found the “dogmatic” nature of the debate off-putting, and that she had agonised over her decision to back the Leave side. “The question is whether staying in the EU makes us safer,” she added. “I’m not convinced it does.”
Later, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, the Tory MP for Berwick-upon-Tweed, told the room that “women want to understand and cast a considered, thoughtful decision. I’m not a big fan of some of the fisticuffs.” She said she hoped to “empower women to ask stupid questions... and to vote”.
Unexpectedly, a recurring theme was equalities legislation – not something you often find a room full of Ukip and Tory supporters and small-business owners praising. Evans reassured the audience that leaving the EU would not mean junking employment protections and rights such as maternity leave. She also tried a joke: “We’ll turn round to the bureaucratic elite and say: We’re just not into EU.”
Priti Patel’s speech, given with one eye on the Tory leadership race, invoked a host of outspoken British women: Boudicca, Elizabeth I, Florence Nightingale, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, the codebreakers at Bletchley and the suffragette leader, Emmeline Pankhurst. “The suffragettes fought for our democratic freedom. Now we are the ones who must fight to protect it,” said Patel. The referendum was “one where women can decide the outcome. When women come out to vote, they come out to win.”
Later that day, the atmosphere at the Women for In launch was more relaxed – younger and more informal. Upstairs at the Hospital Club in Covent Garden, the TV presenter June Sarpong lauded the cross-party panel – Conservative cabinet minister Nicky Morgan; leader of the Green party, Natalie Bennett; Labour MP Stella Creasy; Catherine Mayer of the Women’s Equality party – and instructed them to hug. Sarpong had earlier told me she had been persuaded to become one of the faces of the Remain side because “as a mother, I’m really grateful for the rights the EU has allowed us to get”.
At the launch, the suffragettes won another shoutout, with Morgan proclaiming: “Let’s be clear what they were fighting for... it was real power, having a real voice.” Morgan declared, too, that gender equality was enshrined in the EU’s founding document, the Treaty of Rome. Bennett said that the campaign so far had been a “turn-off” because it was “a Tory leadership contest masquerading as an EU debate”. Having women involved was vital because “politics should be something you do, not something that’s done to you”. And Creasy responded directly to Patel’s attempt to claim the Pankhursts by declaring that “walking away isn’t the spirit of the suffragettes, it’s the spirit of surrendered wives... Women are going to decide it. There are more of us, and we’re undecided.”
Creasy told me afterwards: “We know that Europe made a difference on maternity rights, on workers’ rights, on tackling crime, on protecting the environment. The question is: what do we want it to do next?”
Morgan also told me that broadening the conversation was important, to stop the debate seeming too bureaucratic. “Let’s not just talk about business, but other things women are interested in,” she said.
On the need for women’s voices to be represented in the debate, then, there is widespread agreement. But the wider question – how to make an argument that appeals to undecided female voters – is harder. Kirsten Oswald of the SNP chuckled when I mentioned Patronising Better Together Lady, an ad during the Scottish referendum in which a harassed mother sat in her kitchen and complained that the debate was all going over her head. One Labour MP groaned when I brought up Harriet Harman’s Pink Bus tour during the May election campaign.
Justine Roberts of Mumsnet believes that far from being ignorant or uninterested, many women are simply unenthused by the partisan shouting. “Scotland’s referendum provoked incredibly intense debate on Mumsnet, and conversations about the EU referendum are following a similar pattern,” she says. “Those who say they could still change their mind – which is a considerable minority – are on the hunt for reliable, unbiased information from trustworthy sources, and seem to be finding it difficult to come by.”
Ben Shimshon and Cordelia Hay of BritainThinks say it’s important to remember that the idea of a big gender gap in Euroscepticism is not borne out by the figures. Other factors, such as age, location and educational background have far more impact. In fact, Shimshon tells me, there is one question that is better than any other in predicting how you will vote in the forthcoming referendum: did you go to university? Graduates lean towards Remain, while nongraduates skew heavily towards Leave. (He also points out this complicates the picture of older voters being more Eurosceptic: they are from a generation where only one in 10 Britons went to university.)
So perhaps there is no need to target women voters along gender-interest lines at all? Kate Hoey, another Labour Eurosceptic, tends to agree. “I don’t like too much emphasis on ‘this is a women’s issue’, because I think we’ve gone past that,” she says. “But they do feel the country has changed a lot, particularly older women, and they don’t have the influence they once did.” However, she cites the “tampon tax” – a campaign to scrap the VAT levied on sanitary products – as a feminist cause that is inextricably connected with the EU. “Even if we wanted to put [the VAT rate] down to nothing, we would have to go through the whole mechanism of getting the whole EU to agree to that,” she says.
In light of the potential to come across as patronising, the pitch to women as women on both Leave and Remain is very tightly focused: maternity rights (enabled by the EU or achieved without the EU’s help, depending on your persuasion); the broader equalities agenda; and the fundamental right to have your voice heard. As Creasy puts it, for women “the same arguments will appeal about equality, but they might appeal in a different way because it’s your lived experience of not being in the room and not being able to make decisions”.
There will be no repeat of the rhetoric of the 1975 referendum, where a government pamphlet declared that “the Common Agricultural policy (known as CAP) now works more flexibly to the benefit of both housewives and farmers in Britain”. Politicians are also now wary of conflating “women” and “mothers”, perhaps unsurprisingly, given that one in five British women now is childless by the age of 45.
Despite all this, the women’s campaigns allow networks to form, and help to uncover women from the worlds of business, science and other industries who will speak at meetings and in the media. They provide broadcasters seeking to diversify their pool of interviewees with an easy port of call. And they provide grassroots energy for campaigning around the country: Amina Lone, the north-west coordinator for Britain Stronger in Europe, sends me a photograph from a packed meeting in Newtown, Birmingham on 28 February. The majority of attendees are black and Asian, and pride of place at the front goes to two women in colourful hijabs – a very different image of the debate to the one you often see.
For all our sakes, let’s hope that some of that diversity filters back into the media “air war” and makes the debate seem more inclusive before 23 June. And let’s hope both sides give women what they want: facts. As Lucy Guy, a television scriptwriter from Hackney, tells me: “I will apparently die a bitter old lady before I get an answer as to how much of our laws are made by the EU and how much we have control over... I’ve got lots of questions and will be trying to hunt down answers over the next few months.” The last word goes to Jane Poole, who is even more withering in her assessment of the quality of debate so far: “I really do feel that referendums are not really for the people.”
Helen Lewis is the deputy editor of the New Statesman.
• This article was amended on 21 March 2016 to correct the spelling of Alison Cawley’s name.
