Reform’s WOMAN PROBLEM: New poll shows Farage’s party is out of touch with most Brits
Farage is mistaken if he thinks women’s rights are simply more wokeism to be dismissed: across Britain, millions of hard-working women juggle jobs, families, and communities and they deserve fairness
For a party that claims to speak for “ordinary people”, new polling suggests Reform UK is out of tune with the mainstream mood of Britain when it comes to the experiences of half the nation: women.
A new survey by YouGov reveals a country that broadly believes the job of achieving gender equality is unfinished and that is willing to back practical measures to address it. Yet among Reform voters, opinion appears to be moving in the opposite direction.
The national mood on women’s rights
The headline finding is striking. Roughly half of Britons (50%) believe more still needs to be done to achieve gender equality, compared with just 19% who think equality has already been achieved and 22% who believe efforts have gone too far.
Dig into specific issues and the sense that progress remains incomplete becomes even clearer.
Nearly three-quarters of the public (72%) think more action is required to address sexual misconduct, while 63% believe schools should do more to tackle sexism and misogyny. Meanwhile 59% say Britain still has work to do to close the gender pay gap, with majorities also supporting stronger action on women’s workplace health and equal representation at work.
In short, the broad public mood is hardly one of complacency.
Even more revealing is the willingness of Britons to support specific reforms. The most popular proposal—ensuring employees doing the same job receive equal pay—commands overwhelming backing from 86% of the public.
Other measures also attract strong majorities: 67% support equal prize money for men and women in sport, 65% back “blind hiring” processes to remove bias in recruitment, and 64% would support mandatory classes for boys on misogyny in schools.
And this is not just abstract support for legislation. The survey also finds most Britons say they would personally challenge sexist language among friends or family, with around three quarters saying they would feel comfortable doing so.
Reform out of touch
Yet Reform voters stand out as clear outliers.
According to the same polling, fewer than one in five Reform supporters (19%) think more needs to be done on gender equality. Nearly half instead believe the push for equality has already gone too far.
That is a dramatic divergence from the wider electorate, where most Labour, Liberal Democrat and Green voters—between 63% and 81%—say more action is needed. Even Conservative voters are split, with 34% saying more should be done and 32% saying efforts have gone too far.
On policy, the gap is even more stark.
Reform supporters overwhelmingly oppose several measures that enjoy broader public support including paid leave for period pain, classes in schools tackling misogyny, and targets to increase women’s representation in senior leadership.
The fish rots from the head
No doubt Reform supporters are taking a cue from Reform leadership, where numerous headlines have emerged recently of Farage’s dismissive attitude toward women, as well as weird comments from other party leaders about their reproductive rights.
Farage is mistaken if he thinks he can bundle women’s rights in with some “woke” agenda that is easy to dismiss with so-called “common sense”. If the majority of Britons believe gender equality still requires action—and are prepared to support concrete policies to advance it—then Reform appears to be marching to a rather different drum.
For a movement that prides itself on tapping into the “real” views of the nation, that is an awkward place to be.
Because if this survey is anything to go by, the British public may be far more comfortable with further progress on equality than Reform UK would like to admit.