Women already in poverty to suffer for capitalism's crisis.

New figures have been revealed showing that women will bear the brunt of the ConDem coalition’s budget cuts.

As Tory Minister Bob Neill said a few weeks ago, ‘Those in greatest need ultimately bear the burden of paying off the debt.’

Shadow Welfare Secretary Yvette Cooper said:

“Women are bearing nearly three-quarters of the Tory-Liberal plans, while men are bearing just a quarter. This is despite the fact that women’s income and wealth is still considerably lower than men’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… 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.”

A gender audit of the budget showed that more than 70% of the revenue raised from direct tax and benefit changes is to come from female taxpayers. 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. Of the income to be raised by the recent budget, men will pay £2.2bn while women will pay £5.8bn.

It is well known in Britain that women are already more affected by poverty than men – government statistics show that almost half of all women have total individual incomes of less than £100 a week, compared with less than a fifth of men.

Instead of millionaire families like the Camerons, the Cleggs, and indeed Cooper and her husband Ed Balls – it’s going to be poor families and single mothers that are going to pay for the crisis in capitalism.

It’s also important to note, though, that this study hasn’t come out of a sudden commitment to women’s rights or fighting poverty by Cooper and the Labour Party, but it is an opportunistic move to make the Tories and Lib Dems look bad, and to trick us all into thinking that things would be better if only we had a Labour government – which, of course, they wouldn’t. Labour were just as committed to making cuts, and ANY cuts will always impact those at the bottom of society first – and that means disproportionately affecting women. If Yvette Cooper really gave a shit about women in poverty, she wouldn’t be in the Labour party.