Letter: Women don't vote by gender Sex appeal won't buy votes
Your article "Tony and the women" (10 November) was a fascinating analysis of women's voting intentions broken down by age. It was also pointless. The whole premise and the tone of the argument was governed by an unstated assumption of maleness being the norm and femaleness being abnormal, unusual and therefore worthy of analysis in its own right. A similar article analysing the political attitudes of men in such a superficial and generalised way would rightly have been called irrelevant. I would be surprised if any woman bases her voting on her gender. Objective factors such as education, employment experience, geographical location, wealth and public services are more important. Equally insulting is the idea that some women will vote Labour because of Mr Blair's apparent sex appeal. This is worse than the arguments that say women only watch football because of the supposed sex-appeal of players.
I have never found an article suggesting that men voted for the Tories because of Margaret Thatcher's sex appeal.
Geraldine Curtis
London SW2
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