Reform UK have recently announced plans for a ‘Women and Motherhood Protection Act’ should they enter government, supposedly aiming to be “the most pro-woman, pro-mother, and pro-family government in modern British history.”
Reform will fight for Britain to be “the best place in the world for working mums,” said ex-Tory Home Secretary (and “proud working mum” herself) Suella Braverman, launching the proposal.
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Surely, it’s a coincidence that this announcement came after yet another case of a Reform candidate being found to have made numerous misogynistic comments, let alone the previous arrests for domestic abuse and harassment!
Daniel Taylor is one of several politicians that Reform have had to suspend, leading to questions about their vetting procedures
Via @willem_moore_uk https://t.co/wewGwDZjmq
— Canary (@TheCanaryUK) February 21, 2026
Naturally, details of the policy are purposefully vague, given that at root all a Reform government can offer any worker is more austerity and culture-war crap.
The key change the act would see is the scrapping of the Equality Act 2010 – earlier laws like the 1970 Equal Pay Act, Nigel Farage explained, “already offer” women protection at work and equal pay.
What this fails to acknowledge is that the Equal Pay Act 1970 was superseded by the Equality Act, so it no longer technically exists. Getting rid of the Equality Act therefore axes any legal protection for equal pay.
The other policy changes Reform are offering, such as breastfeeding rights, do nothing to address actual material inequality – and patronisingly insinuate that all women want is to be happy mothers and nothing more.
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‘Shameless and deceptive’
The TUC have come out all guns blazing against the announcement. In a statement, they called the plan “shameless and deceptive” – which it surely is. But they then praised Labour’s policies for women, such as lifting the two-child benefit cap and the latest Employment Rights Act!
This praise is entirely unfounded.
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Starmer only lifted the two-child benefit cap due to a brewing backbench rebellion, spurred on by MPs fearing for their seats. And the Employment Rights Act has been watered down to a real pauper’s broth of protections compared to even its initial tepid reforms.
Incoming party leader Andy Burnham is no better either, made clear by his backtracking on providing compensation for the WASPI women, who have lost thousands from their lifetime pensions due to the DWP’s ‘mismanagement’.
A Reform government would be the continuation of cuts that are already underway with Labour. To cast illusions in any bourgeois party to protect women and the working class blunts the struggle for liberation as a whole.
Rights are not given by kind-hearted politicians. They are fought for on the streets and in the workplaces.
It’s no surprise that it was in the wake of the October Revolution in 1917, which gave not only legal but economic and social equality to the women of Russia, that capitalist states across the globe began to flirt with women’s suffrage (but only for the rich women, of course).
In fact, it was the women who initially brought the men out in February 1917, that would begin the process that culminated in a socialist revolution. Meanwhile, across the world in the last two years, from Kenya to Kashmir, young women have fought side-by-side with men in the ‘Gen Z’ revolutions.
All the talk of ‘motherhood’ and being ‘pro-family’ coming from Reform is pandering to the party’s traditional, conservative base who would rather women be forced back into the home, away from public life.
But working women of the world have shown their ability to lead revolutionary movements time and again – the likes of Farage and Reform will be blown away like dust in their wake.
