women in london

Women’s equality in the new coalition – policy red line or expendable?

The Fawcett Society has released an initial response to the Conservative / Lib Dem coalition document.

Ceri Goddard, Fawcett’s Chief Executive said:

“Whilst some measures will benefit women, the overall package is one which could mean a backwards move on women’s equality.

“The proposals that will help women, such as increasing the tax allowance and restoring the link between earnings and pensions are likely to be cancelled out by an overall approach to cutting the deficit that will see women bear the brunt.

“If the new coalition was really serious about fairness and women’s equality, they would be making greater use of tax and not relying on public spending cuts that will disproportionately impact on women lives.

“The retention of the deeply dubious Conservative policy to give tax breaks to married couples, where one partner works and other stays at home, exposes their socially regressive streak and the willingness of the Lib Dems to turn the other cheek to discrimination.

” Perhaps most galling, but of little surprise given the all male make up of the negotiating teams, is the coalitions’ failure to even reference let alone commit to action on women’s woeful under representation in our political system.”

For more detailed analysis of the document, please see below. Fawcett will be producing more in-depth analysis in due course.

Deficit Reduction

The agreement that “the main burden of deficit reduction is to borne by reduced spending rather than increased taxes” is likely to increase women’s economic and wider inequality. This is because women make up a higher number of public workers (65%), public services users and the majority of those in receipt of tax credits and welfare payments are women (1). Also a reduction in key public services could mean increased burden on women to fill the vacuum e.g. cuts to social or child care mean more often women, who make up 89% of carers, are left filling the gap (often at the expense of their participation in the labour market).

If government were concerned with tackling women’s inequality it would take the approach of greater use of taxation as this can be applied in a fairer way – or to put it another way if a government wants to “hardwire fairness” into its programmes, placing the bulk of the deficit cutting burden on public spending in not the way to go (2).

Of course we accept that there must be some spending cuts but Fawcett has called for government to first assess proposed tax and spending measures in terms of their impact on gender equality. This will show which proposals will disproportionately impact on women and which provide a more equitable way to spread cuts. Under the gender equality duty government is legally bound to do this – including for emergency 50 day budget (2) – we look forward to seeing the results.

We will particularly be looking to Nick Clegg on this matter as during the general election campaign he personally pledged to “Work with Fawcett and others to ensure that both local and national deficit cutting proposals are assessed in terms of how they would impact on women – both regarding access to public services and women’s income’s”(3).

When David Cameron was asked to make the same pledge the response was “The conservatives have made it clear we are committed not to cut the deficit on the backs of the poorest in our society.”

Women already earn less and own less than men, but contribute over £87 billion a year of “free” care to the economy – the current deficit reduction approach (without, as a minimum, a gender impact assessment) would worsen this.

Any cuts to tax credits are likely will impact more women as women, especially working women with children, make up greater number of people claiming these (4).

Spending Review

We welcome protection of frontline NHS spending as women make up the majority of workers and users of these services.

We welcome the commitment to restore the link between earnings and the basic state pension as this will mean an important increase in incomes for pensioners on low income/ those in poverty – the majority of whom are women.

However it will not address the millions of women in, or heading towards, poverty who due to the fact they worked/undertaken care in the home as opposed to spending time in employment are outside the state pension systems – this needs urgent attention.

We welcome increased spending on disadvantaged pupils but not at expense of other front line public services – e.g. money should be found either from non-public services budgets or raised via increased tax.

As with the emergency and future budgets – the spending review should include a published gender equality impact element.

Tax Measures

We welcome the increase in the personal allowance for income tax for lower and middle earners which will improve women’s economic status as women make up the bulk of this earning group – especially the low paid.

We welcome the de-prioritising of inheritance tax in light of the above and other more progressive tax measures which are important in tackling women’s economic inequality.

We strongly oppose the proposed transferable marriage tax allowance for married couples as a retrograde step for women’s and equality. It is well rehearsed that this policy discriminates against widows/widowers, single parents and people who leave abusive relationships. But this policy also discriminates against married couples where both partners choose to or need to work – the reality for most people. From a Conservative party that advocates the small state, this is state-sponsored social engineering writ large.

We are hugely shocked and disappointed that the Liberal Democrats did not, as they have done with defence spending, reserved the right to speak against this policy particularly when Nick Clegg himself said of it “The proposal from the Conservatives for tax breaks for marriage are patronising drivel that belong in the Edwardian age. David Cameron clearly has no idea about modern life. Every family is different, and instead of creating rigid rules or special policies that help some families but not others, we need a new approach from government: one that is flexible and doesn’t dictate to families how they should live.”

Immigration

We welcome the ending of detention for children for immigration.

There is no commitment to reverse to the barbaric no recourse rule to public funds (NRPF) rule which means that women asylums seekers suffering domestic violence, including serious threat of death, are not able to utilise refuge services.

Political Reform

We welcome all of these reforming proposals but are utterly dismayed that there is not even a single reference to, or commitments on, tackling women’s chronic under-representation in politics.

We are also concerned that there is no commitment to implement the recent speaker’s conference recommendations on women’s representation in Parliament.

This election has been a very male affair and increasing the number of women in government and wider political representation should be an explicit and central part of this programme.

Fawcett, in partnership with many others women’s and democracy organisations will be putting major campaigning efforts into addressing this issue.

This shocking omission speaks volumes about where consideration of women’s representation is in the coalition parties’ political reform pecking order. Democracy means “of the people” but what we have is clearly of the white, male, middle class, people…..

Pensions and Welfare

We welcome the commitment that benefit conditionality on willingness to work will not apply to those unable to work.

We will be looking for a lot more policy detail in both the areas of pension and welfare as regards to women’s inequality.

We are concerned at how much Conservative rhetoric and analysis of late is characterising major issues, such as poverty, as mostly social not economic issues e.g. attributing poverty to family breakdown and not vice versa.

We are also concerned that the “big society” approach does not herald a major rowing back on state interventions to tackle women’s and wider inequality and social injustice.

Education

We are concerned that the lack of clear commitments to ensuring the cost of full-time and part-time higher education (of particularly importance to women) does not become prohibited to all but the most well off.

Access to quality and appropriate education is a key element of ensuring gender equality.

Like wider budget measures – new university funding systems should be gender proofed to ensure that it is not women that stand to lose out most.

European Union

We Welcome participation in the EU equality programme and hope that careful consideration is given to participation in groupings with homophobes, fascists, sexists etc.
We are concerned that there is NO reference to UN and on what role, if any, the government will take in the newly proposed UN gender entity.

Civil Liberties

We welcome all these steps though the narrow focus on civil liberties begs the questions ‘what about wider human rights issues?’, of which there has been no single reference.

We are concerned that there is no clear commitment to the Human Rights Act, which the Conservatives stated in their manifesto that would abolish, as opposed to the Liberal Democrats, who explicitly stated that in their manifesto that they would support it.

Notes

(1) Women working in the public sector – The Economic & Labour Market Review, published by the Office for National Statistics in 2007 (taken from http://www.train2grow.co.uk/images/pdf/Women_and_Work_Final.pdf).
Women as users of public services – NHS IC Trends in Consultation rates in General Practice 1995-2009 and DfT Public Transport Gender Audit http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/inclusion/women/ptgenderaudit?page=2

(2) The Equalities Act, ‘Duty to consider socio-economic inequalities,’ http://www.equalities.gov.uk/pdf/Equality%20Act%20Impact.pdf. Harriet Harman, the lead minister on the Equality Act, has said “The Equality Act will require government to do a gender audit of its decisions so that you can see the differential impact on men and women of decision about public spending and that gender audit about the decision would then obviously be public.” (Fawcett/LSE hustings, 22/04/10)

(3) Nick Clegg’s response to Fawcett’s questions sent to all parliamentary candidates. We asked if PPCs would:
* Support local and national action to tackle the gender pay gap?
* Increase support services for women victims of rape as well as address the low level of rapes that end in a conviction?
* Work with Fawcett and others to ensure that both local and national deficit cutting proposals are assessed in terms of how they would impact on women – both regarding access to public services and women’s income’s?
More details here: http://www.fawcettsociety.org.uk/index.asp?PageID=1133

(4) On average, benefits and tax credits comprise one fifth of women’s income and less than one tenth of men’s. (Who Benefits? A gender analysis of the UK benefits and tax credits system, Fawcett Society, April 2006.)