All in this together? Austerity and the gender-age gap in the 2015 and 2017 British general elections
| DOI | 10.1177/1369148119864699 |
| Author | Anna Sanders,Rosalind Shorrocks |
| Published date | 01 November 2019 |
| Date | 01 November 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Original Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1369148119864699
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
2019, Vol. 21(4) 667 –688
© The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/1369148119864699
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All in this together? Austerity
and the gender-age gap in the
2015 and 2017 British general
elections
Anna Sanders and Rosalind Shorrocks
Abstract
The 2010–2015 Conservative-led Coalition’s austerity policies hit women financially harder than
men. However, contrary to expectations at the time, the Conservatives still gained more support
from women than men on average in the 2015 general election. We examine the impact of
austerity on vote choice in the 2015 and 2017 general elections through analysis of Labour and
Conservative economic policy in conjunction with data from the British Election Study’s face-to-
face post-election surveys. The expectation that women should be particularly anti-austerity and
thus less supportive of the Conservative Party does hold for younger women, who were especially
pessimistic relative to their male peers and older age groups about their living costs, household
finances, the economy, and the National Health Service in both elections. However, this does
not hold for older women, who were protected by the Coalition’s policies on pensions and were
more similar to men in their assessment of their economic situation.
Keywords
austerity, gender gaps, vote choice
Introduction
The 2010 general election in Britain saw a new Conservative-led Coalition take office.
Faced with ‘the worst global financial crisis for generations’ (HM Treasury, 2009), the
government sought to reduce the deficit through austerity measures that strongly relied on
cuts to public expenditure rather than tax increases. As a result, austerity measures have
hit women financially harder than men (Busby and James, 2016), since they are more
likely than men to receive government assistance and use public services (MacLeavy,
2011; Women’s Budget Group, 2016). In 2015, this led to expectations that the
Conservative Party would fail to garner enough support from women voters at the general
election (Annesley and Gains, 2014; Bryson, 2012; Campbell and Childs, 2015b).
The University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
Corresponding author:
Anna Sanders, The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, UK.
Email: anna.sanders@manchester.ac.uk
864699BPI0010.1177/1369148119864699The British Journal of Politics and International RelationsSanders and Shorrocks
research-article2019
Original Article
668 The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 21(4)
Contrary to these expectations, British Election Study (BES) (Fieldhouse et al., 2016)
data show that the Conservatives retained a modest lead among women voters compared
with male voters on average at the 2015 election.1 At first glance, then, it seems that aus-
terity policies had little negative effect on women’s Conservative support. However, we
argue in this article that the gendered impact of austerity differed by life-stage, and thus
focusing on the difference between all men and all women may underestimate gender
differences in vote choice.
Our research question is: Has the impact of austerity policies contributed towards gen-
der differences in voting behaviour in Britain? We seek to answer this question by exam-
ining Labour and Conservative economic policy proposals in 2015 and 2017, in
conjunction with data from the BES’s face-to-face post-election surveys for the same
elections. Both elections were fought against a backdrop of austerity, but with different
party leaders and centred on different issues. Our examination of economic policy
assesses the likely gendered impact of the policies being offered by the parties, while the
BES analysis tests whether gender differences in economic concerns were associated
with gender differences in vote choice. We argue that (anti-)austerity policies were par-
ticularly influential for Labour support among younger women, while older women were
comparatively protected from austerity through pension policies and thus were more
inclined to vote Conservative.
Our focus on the consequences of economic policy for gender vote gaps presents a
significant contribution to the literature on gender gaps and electoral behaviour. While a
wide body of research highlights the importance of economic policy on voting behaviour
(Downs, 1957; Fiorina, 1981; Hobolt and Karp, 2010; Key, 1966), little attention has
been devoted to the impact of policy on gender differences in vote choice. Studies of
gender vote gaps rarely, if ever, examine the role of party policy in creating gender gaps.
We argue that examining the electoral context and choices available to the electorate can
shed light on the presence or absence of gender differences in voting behaviour. We
examine the connection between party policy and gendered voting behaviour here in the
British case, but studies beyond Britain and comparatively should explore party policy
positions further as a source of gender differences in vote choice.
Moreover, we draw attention to the electoral consequences of austerity. In the European
context, the impact of austerity has been gendered (Karamessini and Rubery, 2013).
Reductions in women’s entitlements have been widespread; for instance, in Ireland and
Denmark, Child Benefit has been reduced, and in Romania and Macedonia, maternity
leave benefits have been cut (European Women’s Lobby, 2012: 9–10). Yet, little is known
about the impact of such policies on women’s party support. The importance of austerity
policies for voting behaviour has implications for party support at future elections and
raises the possibility of a backlash against such policies.
We begin below by discussing the extant literature on gendered voting behaviour, with
a focus on the context of austerity. Subsequently, we conduct a manifesto analysis for
Labour and the Conservatives in 2015 and 2017, generating expectations for gendered
vote choice patterns. We then test these expectations using the BES. Finally, we discuss
our main findings alongside the wider implications of our research.
Gender, austerity and vote choice
Existing literature on gender vote gaps in Western democracies largely emphasises socio-
economic factors. Scholars such as Inglehart and Norris (2000, 2003) argue that, as a
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