Media Round-Up: July 2023

The Guardian reported on our latest report ‘Gender Gaps in Access to Civil Legal Justice‘ that we published on 13 July, headlining “Legal aid cuts denying vulnerable women access to justice, says thinktank.” WBG’s deputy director and head of policy and research, Dr Sara Reis is being quoted:

“The report reveals a troubling reality: the legal aid changes introduced in 2012 have cut a critical lifeline for vulnerable women including survivors of domestic and sexual abuse and asylum-seeking women, leaving them without essential legal support in the face of discrimination, violence and housing insecurity.”

Other Coverage:

• Our Deputy Director Dr Sara Reis was on the Owen Jones Show, explaining why the two-child limit is an ineffective policy and should be abolished. She stressed that “People make decisions around fertility and how many children they have for all sorts of reasons. Plenty of evidence shows that it [two child limit] has had a minimal impact on fertility, it just means that the children who are born are thrown into poverty”. Watch the episode here.
• The Big Issue referenced our briefing on why the two-child limit is ineffective and makes no economic sense  in this piece.
• In a piece reporting on the worrying projected surge in the female prison population, the BBC quoted our work on the estimated cost of keeping a woman in prison for a year. In our work we argue that funding women’s centres instead of prisons for women makes more economic sense and improves outcomes.
• The piece “I just felt like I was drowning”: millennial women are falling into debt to try to make ends meet”  published in the Stylist examined how the current cost-of-living crisis is trapping young women in more and more debt, referencing our findings that austerity hits women, especially Black and ethnic minority women and disabled women, the hardest.