Reader’s Response: We don’t vote based on “pink”

[dropcap]I[/dropcap] recently read Beth Hurst’s article entitled “Don’t vote based on gender” which discusses election voting trends. I find this article troubling for more than a few reasons.

Firstly, because it’s largely invalid. I don’t know of anyone who actually votes for candidates on the basis of their gender. You’d expect, at least at a university level of education, that people would have the common sense to vote for candidates on the basis of their policies.

I don’t know of anyone who actually votes for candidates on the basis of their gender.

The general presumption that characteristics like gender (or by extension, possibly even race), ensure that someone is going to belong to a certain cultural background, and therefore vote or form policies in a certain way is reductionist and worryingly far-reaching.

Whilst there is undeniably a correlation between a voter’s gender and the way they vote, the implication that women are needed only so that they can be framed within a certain set of issues to deal with and vote on is concerning. Beth’s implication that female campaigners have to sell themselves on the basis of these issues or even just their gender says they are good to do little else.

Whilst there is undeniably a correlation between a voter’s gender and the way they vote

(redacted) It simply feeds in to societal expectations of femininity and it just isn’t helpful.

This article, however, is even more worrying in assuming that female campaigners using pink is due to their gender. The unquestioning linking of pink to the female gender simply re-enforces this age-old gender binary.

The unquestioning linking of pink to the female gender simply re-enforces this age-old gender binary.

It isn’t the way that the people vote, as suggested in the article, but it is more the lack of nominations for students that don’t self-define as male that creates a sabbatical team of entirely men. If self-defining female nominations don’t exist, then they can’t be elected into the role; it is as simple as that. The idea that women are having to sell themselves or gender or that people their femaleness is what people will vote for is simply false – and more than a bit offensive.