Theresa May rolled back women’s rights as prime minister, say campaigners

'The mistake or assumption people make is that any woman in power is automatically going to address gender equality and women’s rights'

Ms May who was the Minister for Women and Equalities between 2010 and 2012 is Britain’s second female PM after Margaret Thatcher (Reuters)

Campaigners have hit out at Theresa May’s track record on gender equality, arguing she has allowed the vast majority of the burden of austerity to fall on women, axed life-saving services, and rolled back women’s rights.

The prime minister announced her resignation on Friday morning – breaking down in tears as she named 7 June as the day she will step down as Conservative leader.

The Conservative MP for Maidenhead said it had been “the honour of my life” to serve as Britain’s second female prime minister as she announced her three-year premiership was over in a speech in Downing Street.

But Vivienne Hayes, chief executive of the Women’s Resource Centre, the leading national umbrella organisation for the women’s sector in the UK, criticised Ms May’s legacy.

She said: “Women’s rights are indeed rolling back in this country. She has done nothing to reverse the sexist austerity policy-making of the Conservative and coalition governments. We know from research carried out by the House of Commons that women are bearing 86 per cent of the burden of austerity.

“The mistake or assumption people make is that any woman in power is automatically going to address gender equality and women’s rights. What we actually need is a woman with a clear analysis of women’s discrimination and oppression at the centre of their world view, and for this to be what is driving them to be in politics in the first place. We cannot expect any women prime minister to actually change things without that.

“Austerity is in fact not only not saving the state money, but it’s also costing lives – we see it as an ideological position which can only be driven by greed and or ignorance. That our struggle as human rights defenders must continue in the UK in the 21st century is a travesty and a stain on this nation.”

Ms Hayes, who has worked in the women’s sector for over 30 years, said she did not see any evidence which suggested Ms May has a “grasp of any form of oppression” based on sex or race.

She added that it needs to be acknowledged that Ms May has made some commitments to women’s services but argued that they were “a drop in the ocean” when considered in the wider context of “impoverishing policy-making and deliberate creation of a hostile environment making this country unsafe for many people of colour”.

Ms May, who was minister for women and equalities between 2010 and 2012, is Britain’s second female PM after Margaret Thatcher.

Dawn Butler, the shadow women and equalities secretary, criticised Ms May’s record on women’s rights – saying her cuts have “fallen on the shoulders of women”.

She said: “Theresa May tinkered around the edges of the injustices faced by women. She has refused to run the women and equalities department properly, cutting the budget by over £1m. We have had four different secretaries of states for the department and it has been a part-time role. She has basically turned it into a PR department making announcements about making announcements.

“Black, Asian and minority ethnic women have suffered more any other women under Ms May’s leadership. She can call herself a feminist but unless she improves the rights of women of all of our intersectionalities then I would not say she was a very good feminist. I would not call her a progressive feminist. Her failure to address structural inequality means she has not achieved gender equality.”

The Labour politician noted some 54,000 women have lost their jobs due to maternity discrimination – adding that charges to employment tribunals had meant the number of women taking cases out about maternity discrimination had fallen by almost half.

The draft domestic abuse bill is too narrow, she also said, arguing that it fails to “guarantee women’s protection or high enough support”.

The legislation has also faced criticism from leading domestic violence charities for failing to protect migrant women, whose perpetrators use immigration status as a “weapon to abuse” them – as well for failing to offer protection for women in Northern Ireland.

Grainne Teggart, Amnesty’s Northern Ireland campaign manager who has repeatedly hit out the landmark bill for excluding Northern Ireland, attacked Ms May for her track record on abortion.

There had been plans for an amendment to the domestic abuse bill, with the aim of liberalising abortion laws in Northern Ireland, which has a ban on abortions in almost all cases – even rape or incest. However, the bill was published with provisions only for England and Wales.

“The government under Theresa May has failed women in Northern Ireland on abortion. They had the opportunity to decriminalise it but she has stayed silent,” she said. “We will never accept women’s rights and abortion rights being sacrificed for political expediency. Northern Ireland has one of the strictest abortion laws in the world.”

She added: “It is long overdue that the government stood by women in Northern Ireland and every day the law is not changed, the UK government is complicit in the harm and neglect of women there. Women here face potentially up to life in prison for having an abortion that is illegal and abortion remains illegal in almost every circumstance.”

Ms May’s allies in the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), on whom she relies for her Commons majority, are staunchly opposed to relaxing abortion laws.

Sam Smethers, the Fawcett Society’s chief executive, said it was important not to overlook some of Ms May’s achievements on women’s rights – noting that it was her who had co-founded Women2Win, a Tory group that supported David Cameron’s commitment to select elect more women to parliament.

“But it is a mixed bag,” she added. “Politicians always are. They have not done enough on domestic violence. Welfare reform and universal credit have been an absolute car crash – it has harmed some of the poorest families and women. But where she can, she has taken forward an agenda that has helped women’s rights. Having said that, Brexit is potentially very damaging to women’s rights. She has really made some big mistakes and we are all paying the price now. But she has been dealt the hardest hand of any post-war leader. The bandwidth for anything in government outside Brexit has been very small.”

Ms Smethers noted that the treatment Ms May has endured from her Conservative colleagues has been “overtly misogynistic” at times – saying that while they had “made her life” very difficult, she had also made her own life difficult.

Ms May, who has introduced protection orders for women at risk of domestic violence and FGM and made a new criminal offence of coercive and controlling behaviour, has also been previously criticised by Labour MP Yvette Cooper for allowing “the state-sanctioned abuse of women” in Yarl’s Wood immigration detention centre.