The Women's Equality Party: Sustainability, Longevity, and Impacts ...

This thesis investigates how the Women’s Equality Party (WEP) in the United Kingdom has struggled to utilise its standing as a political party to ensure that women’s interests are represented throughout the British political landscape. WEP emerged in 2015 out of a dissatisfaction with mainstream pol...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Vickers, Lisa Marie
Format: Thesis
Language:English
Published: Apollo - University of Cambridge Repository 2022
Subjects:
Online Access:https://dx.doi.org/10.17863/cam.99772
https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/353709
Description
Summary:This thesis investigates how the Women’s Equality Party (WEP) in the United Kingdom has struggled to utilise its standing as a political party to ensure that women’s interests are represented throughout the British political landscape. WEP emerged in 2015 out of a dissatisfaction with mainstream politics and a want to put women’s interests at the top of the political agenda. The party reasoned that if women’s equality could be accepted as a ‘vote winner’ by mainstream parties, it would no longer need to exist. WEP leaders boldly called upon mainstream parties to take on its policies and to ‘put it out of business’. This thesis looks at the difficulties WEP has faced in carrying out this rhetorical device in practice. Discourse analysis, interviews, and participatory action research – along with comparisons made with the Feminist Initiative in Sweden, as well as Women’s Alliance/List and Women’s Movement in Iceland – are used to interrogate this important concept. This thesis begins by analysing key aspects ...