Women and the cuts
Taxation and benefit changes will hit women disproportionately because:
- 72% of the cuts will be met from women’s income, 28% from men’s
- One fifth of women’s income is made up of benefits and tax credits compared to one tenth for men. eg a million more women claim housing benefit than men.
- Reductions in entitlement to Child Tax Credits;
- Linking the indexation of benefits, tax credit and public service pensions to the (lower) Consumer Prices Index rather than the Retail Price Index;
- Cuts and changes to Housing Benefit;
- Freezing Child Benefit for three years from April 2011
- Restricting eligibility to the Sure Start Maternity Grant.
90 per cent of lone parents are women
- When their youngest child reaches 5, lone parents will be required to look for work, will no longer be eligible for Income Support and will be transferred to Jobseekers Allowance
- Those on Job Seekers Allowance for over a year will have their housing benefit cut by £10%
The 490,000 job cuts forecast in the public sector will affect women disproportionately because
- 1 in 5 jobs in Devon are in the public sector, and women make up 65% of public sector workers,
- 75% of local government workers are women.
- 40% of all women in work are in the public sector.
- A two year pay freeze
- Many jobs in the private sector depend on public sector contracts, particularly with local authorities.
- Most jobs in childcare and social care are in the private sector. The majority of these workers are women.
- Cuts in local authority funding means that many of these women face either losing their jobs altogether or having their terms and conditions squeezed.
