Aphra Brandreth MP recently argued the Conservative Party should become “the party of businesswomen.” It’s a well-intentioned remark — no one disputes that women ought to flourish in professional life. But it points to a deeper problem on the Right: a chronic narrowing of vision about what women actually want, need, and contribute to our society.
Too often, when Conservatives speak about “women’s empowerment,” it is with a singular focus on paid employment. Rhetoric across the political spectrum celebrates women climbing the corporate ladder, but whispers, if anything, about those who focus on shaping family life at home. We idealise the “boss babe” while ignoring the backbone of society: mothers.
This isn’t to disparage working women. Of course, women can, and do, lead in business, politics, and public life. But let’s be honest: a great many women don’t have careers in the Westminster sense. They have jobs. And for many, those jobs are a means to an end — not an end in themselves. A significant number of women find their deepest purpose not in quarterly reviews or KPIs, but in raising the next generation. This is neither regressive nor outdated. It’s human.
For generations, women have found meaning, dignity, and fulfillment in motherhood and family life. Yet in today’s policy debates, these women are all but invisible.
If the Conservative Party is to live up to its name, it must stop mimicking the left’s gender politics and rediscover the value of the family as a fundamental unit of national life. The 2024 Tory manifesto promised “a future where family is always supported,” yet in practice, the party’s record tells a different story. The current tax system, which they presided over for 14 years, actively penalises families where one parent stays home. A single-earner household on £50,000pays more tax than a dual-income couple earning £25,000 each. That’s not just economically incoherent. It’s unjust.
We should learn from our European neighbours. Countries like France and Germany use family-based taxation to recognise the contribution of stay-at-home parents. If we truly believe in fairness and subsidiarity, why are we discouraging one of the most socially valuable roles in society?
Instead, billions are funneled into ever-expanding childcare subsidies — often for children under the age of one. The implicit message? That a mother’s time is better spent contributing to GDP than nurturing her own baby. Many parents, however, would rather have the freedom to choose how to care for their children — whether that means paying a relative, adjusting their own hours, or staying home altogether. Let’s stop assuming the only good parent is the one who clocks in somewhere else.
The deeper question here is cultural. Why do we treat unpaid caregiving as if it were wasted potential? This mindset reveals the true poverty of modern feminism. Raising children is not “opting out” — it is pouring yourself into something greater than yourself. The fact that it doesn’t show up on a payslip does not make it any less vital to the common good.
Conservatives must stop chasing progressive illusions of empowerment, where equality is mistaken for sameness. Women do not need to mirror men to be considered successful. True choice includes the freedom not to outsource your children’s upbringing.
This distortion of maternal value has reached its tragic extreme in recent debates on abortion. Last month, several Conservative MPs voted in favour of a Labour amendment to decriminalise abortion up to birth — a policy so extreme it places Britain among the most permissive regimes in the developed world. Aphra Brandreth herself abstained, rather than stand up for common sense for mums and their babies. To support full-term abortion is not progressive. It is barbaric. Most of our European neighbours only permit abortion up to 12-15 weeks’ pregnancy.
The recent abortion vote also reveals a wider philosophical drift: one that treats pregnancy as a pathology and motherhood as a burden. If the party that once stood for life and liberty cannot muster the courage to defend unborn babies at term – or the women who carry them — then it is no longer fit to speak the language of conservatism.
If Britain is to have a future at all, we must re-centre our politics around the family
We are told we need more policies that help women “have it all.” The implicit suggestion in recent years is that having it all requires sacrificing children — either by eschewing fertility, or aborting babies that could damage one’s place on the career ladder. That’s not having it all — that’s losing a great deal.
If Britain is to have a future at all, we must re-centre our politics around the family. That begins by affirming a simple truth: motherhood is not the failure of ambition. It is the fulfillment of it.
