By Tim Montgomerie
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For some time now the Conservative Party has been worried about its standing with women voters. The picture is complicated, however, with class and economic circumstances more likely to be driving changes in women's voting habits. At the last election, for example, Gavin Kelly told New Statesman readers that "women aged 25-34 were more likely to vote for Labour than the Conservatives (11-point lead) whereas C2 female voters (of all ages) were dramatically more likely to back the Conservatives than Labour (by a remarkable 17 points)". It does seem that younger women are particularly sceptical about the Tories and, now, the Liberal Democrats. Here are two more extracts from Kelly's New Statesman piece:
Today's Guardian has seen a leaked copy of a Tory strategy paper which sets out policy ideas for winning back women voters.
One headline idea is to frontload child benefit so that mothers get more benefit when their children are young and childcare costs are greatest. Paul Goodman used these pages yesterday to identify childcare costs as one of the greatest barriers to economic growth.
Other ideas in the strategy paper, apparently written by Steve Hilton, include:
It may be that some of these ideas will be discussed at the Tory Conference but they won't be discussed at a women-only session. Labour is holding a wimmin-only policy forum at its gathering in Liverpool although Ed Miliband is being allowed to speak.
The ideas in the Hilton paper look reasonable enough and will help on the margins but the principal reason for the decline in support from women is that they are more economically pessimistic than men. Creating jobs and putting a lid on inflation are the two most pro-women things the Coalition can do.