More on KentOnline
More on KentOnline
Voters in Kent are nearly twice as likely to be putting a cross against a male candidate than a female at next month's General Election, an analysis of nominations for the county's 17 constituencies shows.
Of the 89 candidates standing, 31 are women and 58 men.
Labour is fielding the highest number of women candidates - nine - followed by the Green Party with eight, and the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats with seven each.
Labour is fielding women in the two Kent seats that are in its top 100 targets: South Thanet, where Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt is the candidate and Dover, where Charlotte Cornell is standing.
And it is virtually certain that whoever wins Canterbury, the key Kent battleground seat, will be represented by a woman.
However, in one seat which has the second largest number of nominations, Gillingham and Rainham, all seven parliamentary hopefuls are men.
Across the county, the Conservatives could return a total of six female MPs, two more than it currently does.
Sevenoaks, where Sir Michael Fallon is retiring, has selected Laura Trott as its election hopeful and in Dover and Deal, where Charlie Elphicke is standing down, he has been replaced by his wife, Natalie Elphicke.
There are four female independent candidates, including the Women’s Equality Party where Eljai Morais is standing in Dover and Deal.
A record number of women, 208 in total, were elected to Parliament in 2017, up from 191 in 2015.
However, they still only make up 32% of the total number of 650 MPs.
And there are around 20 women MPs who have decided to stand aside, many citing the abusive environment and trolling on social media as reasons for their decisions.
