Media Round-up: March 2019

Sheffield Telegraph
Glass ceiling even thicker for black, aisan and minority ethnic women
by Nigel Booth

Research from the Women’s Budget Group and the Runnymede Trust suggests that minority ethnic women have been hit hardest by austerity.

International Monetary Fund
Do the Math: Include Women in Government Budgets
by Zohra Khan and Lisa Kolovich

The United Kingdom’s Women’s Budget Group started in the 1980s and conducts a thorough annual, gender-sensitive analysis of the budget.

Local Gov
Austerity is gutting services ‘vital’ to women’s lives, report reveals
by William Eichler

The Women’s Budget Group has today launched a report, entitled Triple Whammy and authored by Heather Wakefield, the former head of local government at Unison, which looks at the impact of local government cuts on women.

Palatinate
Mind the gender austerity gap
by Lydia Edwards

The UK Women’s Budget Group has recognised how the shift in the pension age has left a further 23% of single female pensioners in poverty. Simultaneously, lone parents, the majority of whom are women, have been impacted drastically by freezes in child tax credit, alongside the two-child limit. Austerity has also affected women’s medical care access.

Coutts
Supporting women and girls who experience poverty and violence
7th March 2019

A report released last year by the Women’s Budget Group – a network of academics, policy experts and campaigners – found that households with only female adults are more likely to be poor, with single parents and single female pensioners particularly at risk of poverty.

The study – The Female Face of Poverty – notes that almost half (48%) of all single-parent households are living in poverty, compared to a quarter (24%) of households with couples. And the vast majority (86%) of single parents are women.

Ekklesia
New report shows ‘triple whammy’ for women as local funding cut by half
7th March 2019

Cuts to funding for local government have created a crisis, which has hit women hardest according to a new report launched by the Women’s Budget Group on 7 March 2019.

Liverpool Echo
Women ‘hit hardest’ by cruel Tory cuts to social care, youth and children’s services
by Jenny Kirkham

The report from the Women’s Budget Group, Triple Whammy, found that central government funding to local authorities was affecting women the most.

Labour List
Women’s EPLP: Leaving the EU would make gender equality harder to achieve
8th March 2019

The Women’s Budget Group has shown that one million women’s jobs are at risk from May’s Brexit deal, let alone a no deal scenario. 

The New Arab
Ain’t I a woman? Fighting the patriarchy means fighting racism, too
by Malia Bouattia

‘As the Women’s Budget group points out, by next year, women will have experienced an effective average pay cut of £1003, and men just £555.’

Cheshire Live
Cheshire council leaders on the gender pay gap, representation in politics and International Women’s Day
by Lauren Wise

“Only yesterday, the Women’s Budget Group released a new report ‘Triple whammy – the impact of local government cuts on Women’.

UK in a Changing Europe
Brexit Breakdown podcast with Mary-Ann Stephenson, Director, Women’s Budget Group
8th March 2019

Dr Mary-Ann Stephenson discusses how Brexit may affect women, the role women played during the EU referendum in 2016 and how the fall in GDP could impact on the fringe of women’s rights. She was joined by senior fellow at The UK in a Changing Europe Professor Catherine Barnard and podcaster James Millar.

Coventry Live
Coventry’s women’s organisations call for funding system change
by Tom Davis

Organisations in Coventry have come together to call for a change in the way the women’s sector is funded. Five voluntary groups took part in the launch of the Women’s Budget Report at Coventry City Council on Friday (March 8) – the day of International Women’s Day.

Holyrood, ‘Progress report: some way to go on women’s rights in Scotland’ by Jenni Davidson

‘Exploring the Economic Impact of Brexit on Women’, a report by the Women’s Budget Group in March 2018, warned that women could be impacted in a number of ways.

Red Pepper, ‘Feminist Futures: issue intro’ by Amy Hall

Years of austerity have had a devastating impact on women. A new report from the Women’s Budget Group shows that local government cuts have meant a ‘triple whammy’ for women – cuts to services we use, increasing unpaid care work to fill in the gaps and being harder hit by job cuts in the public sector. Just one startling statistic: more than 75 per cent of England’s local authorities reduced their spending on refuges for survivors of domestic violence by nearly a quarter between 2010 and 2017.

The New York Times, ‘A Pledge to End Austerity, After Brexit’, by Ceylan Yeginsu

“The repeated promise that austerity is coming to an end will ring hollow for the millions of low wage, disabled and unemployed people who will see their social security and tax credits frozen for another year from April,” Dr. Mary-Ann Stephenson, the director of the Women’s Budget Group, said on Wednesday

The Mirror, ‘Free sanitary products will be available in schools from this September’ by Mikey Smith & Dan Bloom

Dr Mary-Ann Stephenson, the Director of the Women’s Budget Group said: Schemes to tackle period poverty are addressing symptom not the cause.

“The Government should be taking action to tackle the underlying issue of poverty, which is the reason so many women and girls (who are more likely to be poor than men) cannot afford sanitary products. The Chancellor said nothing about the benefit freeze, which is set to continue for another year, and is has been the single biggest driver of the increase in poverty in the UK.”

Public Finance, ‘Squeezing local government finance will hit women hardest’ by Dr Mary-Ann Stephenson

Local government services most likely to suffer from reductions in central government funding are mainly used by women, the director of the Women’s Budget Group Mary-Ann Stephenson says. 

World Economic Forum, ‘How governments can use gender budgeting to improve equality’ by Lisa Kolovich and Zohra Khan

The United Kingdom’s Women’s Budget Group started in the 1980s and conducts a thorough annual, gender-sensitive analysis of the budget.

I news, ‘Hyper-masculinity in Brexit is stopping us from finding another way forward’ by Roberta Guerrina

As much of the work conducted by the Fawcett Society and the Women’s Budget Group demonstrates, these kinds of political games produce “winners” and “losers”.

Common Space,‘Gender pay gap campaigners demand action as firms drag feet on inequality reporting’,  by David Jamieson

On 8 March, after intensive lobbying by feminist and women’s rights groups including CtG, Engender and the Scottish Women’s Budget Group, the Scottish Government launched an action plan to tackle the gap and its tributaries across a range of social factors including societal expectations of women and education.

BBC News, ‘Interview with Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu’, 29th March 2019

If you look at some of the groudbreaking report from organisations such as the Women’s Budget Group, Fawcett Society and RunnyMede Trust, there has been no real discussion on the impact of Brexit and No Deal Brexit for women.