The Conservative Party and Women Voters, 1945–75

Abstract

This period began with the Conservatives’ surprise election defeat in 1945 and ended with the selection of a woman party leader for the first time in British history. These thirty years saw amazing changes in Britain as it developed from postwar austerity towards the ‘affluent society’ only to return to serious economic problems in the 1970s. It was also the only period of twentieth-century history when the alternation between the Conservatives and Labour in power was fairly equal. For the first time the gender gap, although long suspected, was proven to exist, since polls now introduced a certain scientific element into political campaigns. Women were shown to be slightly more favourable to the Conservatives than were men. For this reason, the party targeted them in particular and made special efforts to attract their votes. To a large extent, though, they focused on issues which agreed with the traditional vision of women in their role of wife and mother and tended to spend less time addressing more controversial questions like equal pay. In this, there was little difference between the Conservatives and Labour. The welfare state that Labour instituted worked to the benefit of women, obviously, but it was based on the fundamentally sexist view of women as dependants.