Spring Budget 2021: Housing, gender and Covid-19
A Pre Budget Briefing by the UK Women’s Budget Group on 'Housing, Gender, and Covid-19' - Spring 2021
UK Budget Assessment
This Gender Impact Assessment, examines the impact on women of the Coalition Spending Review 2010
Executive Summary
The WBG welcomes the emphasis that the Coalition has given in the Spending Review to fairness and social mobility. The extension of 15 hours free early education and care to all disadvantaged 2-3 year olds from 2012-13 is certainly to be applauded. However, the Coalition’s approach to fairness fails to acknowledge that men and women start from unequal positions, and that there are many barriers to social mobility other than lack of educational qualifications. Unequal employment opportunity and caring responsibilities are just two examples.
We also welcome the Treasury’s attempt to produce an Equalities Impact Assessment of its spending decisions, following its failure to comply with this legal requirement for the June Emergency Budget. But we find its Impact Assessment inadequate. The Treasury provides almost no quantitative data on how men and women will be affected by its decisions; and excludes most aspects of the Spending Review from its analysis, claiming either that there is no impact or that it is impossible to measure. The Treasury has massive resources and could have done better than this.
Since the Spending Review, the WBG has been conducting its own Gender Impact Assessment. We find that the record cuts to the public sector services and welfare budget announced in the Spending Review impact disproportionately on women’s incomes, jobs and 2 the public services they use. Viewed as a whole, together with the measures announced in the June 2010 Emergency Budget, 1 the cuts represent an immense reduction in the standard of living and financial independence of millions of women, and a reversal in progress made towards gender equality.
The WBG’s analysis shows that:
The WBG is concerned about role the Coalition foresees for women in the future. The Coalition’s stated intention is to simplify the welfare system, increase incentives to work, and reduce ‘dependency’ on the state. But its plans will have the opposite affect for many women, and do not address the barriers to women’s employment arising from their caring responsibilities.
Indeed, women’s caring responsibilities will increase as women are likely to be the ones to fill the gaps where public services have been cut. It seems the Coalition is happy to restore an outdated ‘male breadwinner, dependent female carer’ model of family life that fits neither with women’s aspirations nor today’s financial necessities. These plans reveal gendered assumptions based on women being available to work unpaid for the Coalition’s Big Society.
The WBG calls on the Coalition to:
A Pre Budget Briefing by the UK Women’s Budget Group on 'Housing, Gender, and Covid-19' - Spring 2021
In partnership with The Young Women’s Trust, this briefing sets out the situation of young women in the economy.
A pre-budget briefing from the UK Women’s Budget Group – October 2021
Ahead of the March 2020 Budget, the Women's Budget Group has made recommendations for investment.