By Ahmed Abdelsalam
Chancellor John Healey has pledged £15 million over three years to a new misogyny prevention fund as part of his first Budget, aiming to address misogyny in schools, workplaces and communities.
Funding details
The money will support mentoring programmes for young people, workplace training and communications campaigns designed to improve the safety of women and girls. Healey said the fund would back "practical action to tackle misogyny head-on" and expressed hope it would attract additional contributions from businesses and philanthropists.
Taskforce leadership
The fund will support a national taskforce established last month and chaired by Women and Equalities Minister Bridget Phillipson. Phillipson said daily incidents of misogyny, including sexist slurs and workplace discrimination, have "no place in modern Britain" and described the funding as a critical step toward confining misogyny to history.
Conservative criticism
Conservative shadow women and equalities minister Joy Morrissey dismissed the announcement as a "total waste of public money" that would not make any woman or girl feel safer. She argued the government is not serious about tackling violence against women and girls and criticised the use of taxpayer money to fund projects targeting the "manosphere".
Official statistics
Office for National Statistics data published this month estimated that 12.8% of females aged 16 and over in England and Wales — around 3.2 million — experienced domestic abuse, sexual victimisation or stalking in the year to March 2026. The comparable figure for males was 8.9%, or about 2.1 million.
