UK: Spending cuts hit women worse, says report

Submitted by Mastodon on Sat, 2013-09-21 22:47

Article here. Excerpt:

'Economists are calling on the government to produce a "Plan F" to tackle the disproportionate burden being placed on women by spending cuts. Female-friendly tax and welfare policies are desperately needed to redress the balance, say experts from the independent Women's Budget Group (WBG), who have produced a report looking at the impact of austerity policies on different types of family groups in England.

It finds that women, particularly single parents and single pensioners, have lost much more than men from cuts to benefits and public services imposed by the government since it came to power in May 2010.'

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Comments

... is that one can have a kid w/out any kind of partner and sign up for welfare to get money because of it. We have the same problem in the US.

Originally, "welfare" was meant to help such ppl as single mothers at a time when abortion wasn't an option and neither was pre-conceptive birth control readily available. Today, it's a lot different. Community organizations give away condoms and as for hormone-based birth control, there are organizations that happily distribute these at a discount or subsidize them (think Planned Parenthood). Generally, low-income single women these days are having kids w/out partners because they want to. If they didn't, they'd be using birth control. Having a baby's the shortcut to getting on the dole.

I understand the job market is rough all over the western world. But to start crying woe-is-me because across-the-board welfare cuts are hurting you while minimizing their impact on other groups is like two people floating in the ocean during a storm after a shipwreck and one complaining that the other had 5 minutes more on the ship than she did. You're both still stranded at sea, floating around in a storm, right?

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Submitted by Matt on Sun, 2013-09-22 01:18

I'm going out on a limb and presuming the UK is a lot like the US: women are the primary recipients of welfare benefits. Men receive very few welfare benefits. In the US, 90% of welfare recipients are single mothers. Women never complain about that. Ah, but start cutting those benefits and they'll complain women and children are getting hurt more than men. Even after the cuts, I bet women are still receiving more than men--but again they're not complaining about that.

And men are more likely to pay a higher tax bill than women in order to pay for those benefits. And die sooner as a result. Again, the womyn folk ain't complaining about any of this. But cut their entitlements and they start crying.

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Submitted by el cid on Sun, 2013-09-22 12:57