Condoms and Thameside boat battles are funny at best, in poor taste at worst. But while policy issues such as economic regulation and immigration have been at the forefront of the headlines, women's rights have been shoved to the back-burner. A Loughborough University report found that only one in ten commentators who appeared in the press talking about Brexit were women. But the lack of female voices speaking up over the Brexit took a truly shocking turn on June 16 when outspoken Remain campaigner and Labour MP Jo Cox was shot and killed by a man who was reported to have shouted "Britain First" during the attack—the name of far-right organization ardently opposed to the EU and immigration.People were asking, 'Where are the women, where the people of color?' This really did look like it was the old boys' club.
Jean Lambert is a London-based Member of the European Parliament, the directly elected legislative body of the EU. She says that she's disappointed with how the referendum has been depicted in the press. "People were asking, 'Where are the women, where the people of color?'" she told Broadly. "This really did look like it was the old boys' club. For a lot of people that's really alienating."It goes without saying that the female vote counts, but both campaigns have alienated a demographic that makes up 50.9 percent of the British population. The Fawcett Foundation, the UK's largest women's rights organization, recently published an independent report showing women are twice as likely to be undecided in comparison to their male counterparts, meaning that women are the all-important swing vote."[However] it is important to note, when referring to statistics showing women as more likely than men to be undecided, that research has shown there is no gender difference in actual turnout," said Kymberly Loeb, a senior research executive at Britain Thinks, an independent strategy consultancy. "Neither side of the debate has really been able to land the individual impact of the referendum in terms of household finances, job security, and public serves—the local issues that we have found in our research often matter more to women."Read more: A Comprehensive Guide to British Reality TV
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Flowers laid outside Parliament for murdered pro-EU MP Jo Cox. Photo via Flickr user garryknight
Former UKIP spokesperson and Leave campaigner Suzanne Evans doesn't believe that will happen. "The first Equal Pay Act in Britain was signed three years before we even joined the EU," she wrote in the Express. "[They] had already passed the Abortion Act and the Divorce Reform Act and made the contraceptive pill free on the NHS."Get Britain Out director Jayne Adye agrees. "Women as well as men would have a greater say over the laws impacting them following Brexit. Their laws will be created by 650 MPs in Westminster, not by 28 unelected EU commissioners," she told Broadly.While Evans is technically right that some legislation was passed, it took a legally-binding 1982 ruling from the European Court of Justice for Britain to ensure that "women's work" was judged equally as "men's work" of a similar level of skill, effort, or responsibility—and paid equally, too.**Read more: Steal From Women, Give to Women: The *UK's* Bloody Stupid Tampon Tax**
If the UK did leave the EU, "the interpretation of legislation would not necessarily have to follow the interpretation given by the European Court of Justice," explained Kenneth Armstrong, a professor of European law at the University of Cambridge. While Leave campaigners argue that laws on women's rights would be tougher if incubated in the cosy Westminster bubble, "the UK courts did not interpret sex discrimination as including discrimination on grounds of pregnancy until the European Court of Justice made that clear," he added. It's also thanks to EU legislation that part-time workers have the right to equal pay of full-time workers—a state of affairs that disproportionately affects women, as 42 percent of them are in part-time work compared to 12 percent of men.But with four days to go before the referendum, it turns out that good old apathy may have triumphed like a soggy drizzle on an British summer's day. "Interestingly," said Loeb, "when we asked people directly what they think will be the personal impact, they predict that life will continue exactly as before, expressing relief that they can 'now get on with things that really matter.'"The UK courts did not interpret sex discrimination as including discrimination on grounds of pregnancy until the European Court of Justice made that clear.