As always, poor and vulnerable women bear the brunt of austerity
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Version 0 of 1. That “austerity is a feminist issue” is now a well-used idiom does not mean it’s any less true. Look at the latest gender breakdown of cuts released this month and what’s striking is that nothing’s changing. According to Sarah Champion, the shadow equalities minister, 86% of the burden of austerity has fallen on women since 2010 – a figure that remains entirely static from last year. Inequality is business as usual: by 2020, a decade on from when austerity first began, men will still have borne just 14% of the total burden of “welfare” cuts. This unequal impact isn’t just contained within the benefit system, but rather spreads to many of the choices the Conservatives are making. NHS and local government cuts of course affect men as well, but as women are a vast chunk of the public sector workforce, they are hurt most when public services are squeezed. Similarly, although it’s rarely talked about in such terms, the crisis in social care is in many ways gendered: it’s largely women who make up home care and agency staff – insecure, low-paid work – while it’s also women who are the bulk of family carers for disabled children and elderly parents. When a council cuts a care package, it’s largely wives, mothers, and daughters doing the unpaid labour to plug the gap. As a new wave of child poverty approaches, it’s working-class mums who will be queuing in food banks It isn’t irrelevant to talk about this, or feminist point-scoring in a “worst-hit” race that no one wants to win. Recognising and understanding what’s happening is the only way to tackle it, which is why calls for the government to run an impact assessment of its budget are vital. Last weekend thousands marched through central London campaigning for an end to violence against women (“Women pay for cuts with their lives”, as the chief executive of Women’s Aid puts it), while Women of the World met to dissect the obstacles affecting women and girls. And they did it knowing that any fightback begins by naming the problems. Crucially, in the push to acknowledge what’s being done to women in an era of cuts, we have to highlight how race, class, and disability fit into this. By 2020 Asian women in some of the poorest families will be £2,247 worse off. That goes up to £3,996 for black single mothers. White men in some of the richest households, by contrast, are set to lose only £410. Disabled and chronically ill women – many of whom are carers themselves – face huge and continuing cuts to disability support, from fit-for-work tests to the latest changes to personal independence payments. By definition, vast cuts to the social security system are going to hurt not the middle classes, but low-income families already struggling. Yet next month’s new round of benefit measures take this even further, in essence targeting poor mothers and their children. The “rape test” for benefits coming into force in April – part of a crackdown on child tax credit claims for more than two children – is reflective of how low the government has sunk, yet it is part of a string of upcoming policies that independent bodies warn will cost families thousands. The charity Gingerbread says universal credit changes alone will see working single parents lose £800 a year on average by 2020 (90% of single parents are women). As a new wave of child poverty approaches, it’s working class mums – scraping by on zero-hours contracts, agency work and benefits – who will be queuing in food banks and opening eviction notices. Changing Lives, a charity that has worked with vulnerable families in the north-east for nearly 50 years, told me this week that the impact of “welfare” changes is now so severe that the charity’s sex work outreach teams are coming across women who – having had their benefits cut or sanctioned – have “taken to the streets in desperation”. This isn’t some sort of dystopia, but the reality of the state abandoning the people who need it. As the next stage of austerity begins, the Conservatives are not simply watching the burden of their cuts hit women hardest. They are watching it fall on the women least able to take it. |