Detailed audit shows women to shoulder three-quarters of cuts
The coalition's financial plans are the "worst for women since the creation of the welfare state" according to an analysis of last month's emergency budget.
As the government warned some departments to prepare for cuts of up to 40%, a study by the House of Commons library on behalf of the shadow welfare secretary, Yvette Cooper, revealed that women will shoulder nearly three-quarters of the burden.
Cooper accused the coalition government of sanctioning a budget whose impact fell disproportionately on women. The gender audit of the budget – structured by Cooper but conducted by the Commons library – showed that more than 70% of the revenue raised from direct tax and benefit changes is to come from female taxpayers.
Of the nearly £8bn net revenue to be raised by the financial year 2014-15, nearly £6bn will be from women and just over £2bn from men. Cooper said the proposed cuts of up to 40% in some departments' budgets, floated by the government at the weekend, would also be likely to disproportionately hit women, who make up a large section of the public sector workforce.
She told the Guardian: "Women are bearing nearly three-quarters of the Tory/ Liberal plans, while men are bearing just a quarter. This is despite the fact that men's income and wealth is still considerably higher than women's.
"Even more significant, this doesn't include the impact of public spending cuts. As women make up more of the public sector workforce they will be more heavily hit by the public sector pay freeze and the projected 600,000 net public sector job losses".
Cooper said that the coalition had failed even on its own criteria, decreasing support for families.
"David Cameron promised the most family-friendly government ever. Yet they have just launched the fiercest attack on family support in the history of the welfare state," she said. "This budget seems to be reaching back to a prewar approach to families. They've cut support for children more savagely than anything else so far, with billions of pounds being cut from child benefit, child tax credits, maternity support and child trust funds".
She said her research showed that women would suffer disproportionately, even beyond the cuts to family benefits.
"Even if you put aside cuts in support for children, women are still more heavily hit," she said. "Women are more affected by the cuts in things like housing benefit, cuts in upratings to the additional pension, public sector pensions or attendance allowances, and they benefit less than men from the increases in the income tax allowances. Even putting children aside, they are hitting women hardest".
After looking at other budgets, she believes only Nigel Lawson's 1988 budget – which abolished top rates of tax and froze child benefit and pensions – comes close in its effect on women.
The analysis looks at a net total of £8bn raised by 2014-15 through direct tax and benefit measures. It includes the effects of raising the personal tax allowance, the increase in capital gains tax, the freezing of benefits and the changes to pensions. A typical assumption in the analysis is: "94% of child benefit recipients are women, so of the £975m saving from child benefit, it follows that 94% (£913m) is coming from women and the rest from men. However, on capital gains tax around 27% of receipts currently come from women, so of the £925m additional revenue, 27% (£249m) is coming from women and 73% (£676m) is coming from men." The analysis also includes the impact of changing to using the consumer price index for calculating benefits and tax credits. The Commons library comes up with a weighted average in order to take account of the different impact of each of these on women and men. Men will pay £2.2bn while women will pay £5.8bn.
The figures do not include the impact of measures such as the £640m council tax freeze or the abolition of the child trust fund. Nor do they include indirect taxes such as VAT. They do include the effect of cutting the health in pregnancy grant and the Sure Start maternity grant. The largest cost comes from changes to public sector pensions (a £3.85bn cost to women and a £2bn cost to men).
