David Cameron spent 2011 swimming against a tide of bad news stories which seemed likely to alienate half the electorate. In January, Dominic Raab wrote an article calling feminists “obnoxious bigots” on the popular website PoliticsHome. April, universities minister David Willetts made headlines for claiming feminism holds back working men - and David Cameron was branded "sexist, insulting and patronising" by the Labour party, after repeatedly telling shadow chief secretary to the Treasury Angela Eagle to “calm down, dear” during Prime Minister’s Questions.
In May the Justice Secretary Ken Clarke infuriated men and women alike by distinguishing between “serious” and “proper” rape during an appearance on BBC Radio 5 Live.
August saw the publication of a Number 10 memo which admited: “there are a range of policies we have pursued as a government which are seen as having hit women, or their interests, disproportionately”. By December, the number of women out of work was at a 23 year high - and looks set to grow further in the new year as public sector jobs continue to vanish.
Is it any wonder people are asking if 2011 was the year women fell out of love with the Conservative party? We’ve seen a range of policy initiatives aimed at winning them back, including the prospect of a women’s adviser in Number 10.
For Professor Sarah Childs it’s not quite enough. Childs, the author of Sex, Gender and the Conservative Party - From Iron Lady to Kitten Heels, says it’s about getting together a more “gender aware” leadership team.
“The Party's problems will moreover unlikely be solved by dropping in a token policy or two...or by doughnutting women around Cameron in the Chamber.
“This is about the need for systematic gender-proofing across government. Why not
have a minister with responsibility for gender in each government department?
“And let's see the party making full use of its women MPs and Peers, there's plenty out there will lots of experience and a willingness to act for women.”
Not that every Tory agrees. Backbencher Jackie Doyle Pryce thinks it’s wrong to treat women “like a minority group”.
“I don't think we should be worrying about women. We need to get it right and the women will follow,” she told Huff Post UK.
“I don't think it's helpful to segment the electorate in such a way and draw conclusions on the basis that we're behind with women and ahead with men. I think it's more an issue of getting the whole programme right, the whole messaging right. I think often politics is about two men in a very combative arena and I think that turns women off.”
But is the whole thing just a moot point? Mark Gettleson, head of research at PoliticsHome.com says that the idea the Tories need female support to win an election is “decades out of date”. “The idea that Conservatives always need to win over more women voters than they do men to offset some supposed permanent underperformance among men is decades out of date. Of course they still need women, just not any more than they need men."
Downing Street, who in October spent £1.1bn on a concession to delay pension changes that would hurt women, don’t seem to agree.
For Dr Rosie Campbell, a Senior Lecturer in politics at Birkbeck University, the issue isn’t women falling out of love with the Conservative party, but women turning against the Tories after being hit by job losses.
“I don’t know if women have fallen out of love with David Cameron but he is certainly less popular. If they’re falling out of love now it’s not because they’re women, it’s because they’re more likely to be public sector workers. We see women responding in that way because they tend to be public sector workers.”
And Campbell thinks the trend will continue in 2012, particularly if the government’s “scattergun” approach to female-friendly policies does too: “If the economy continues as we think it will, it’s quite likely things will get worse. When the crisis first hit, it hit men in the private sector now it’s women who are being squeezed more. So I think the trend will continue.
“There are some policies that will make a difference, like extending paternity leave. But the slew of policies that they’ve brought out to try and make women like them seem incoherent.”