Talking about the budget on Russia Today
Here I am talking about the impact of the 2015 budget on gender equality.
Here I am talking about the impact of the 2015 budget on gender equality.
I was really delighted to be part of this book. I’ve written an essay on how care work makes the world go round and it’s part of this collection. We’re crowd funding for the £2k publishing costs to get it out as a free e-book… Read More »Resist! Against a precarious future
Last month I was delighted to be invited to present at Unison Women’s Conference in Southport on behalf of the Women’s Budget Group. Last year I also presented at the Local Government Conference and there was a lot of enthusiasm for my analysis of local… Read More »Adventures at Unison Women’s Conference
I was delighted to be invited to present at the Amiel and Melburn Trust weekend where campaigners, activists and thinkers were brought together to exam contemporary capitalism and the economic crisis. The Trust was founded in 1980 by Norman Melburn and named for his friend… Read More »Amiel and Melburn Trust Residential Weekend
Delighted to have my first by-line in The I. It was a comment piece on behalf of the Women’s Budget Group reacting to the news that unemployment for women over 50 has risen by 45%. You can read the full article here.
My article on behalf of the Women’s Budget Group for Society Central. First published here. Photo – hands with wedding rings by Greg Kendall-Ball shared under a creative commons license. ——————————————————————————————— On announcing the Transferable Tax Allowance, David Cameron said: “I believe in marriage, I believe marriage… Read More »The transferable tax allowance for married couples: another blow for women?
This blog first appeared on the TUC’s Touchstone Blog and is written on behalf of the Women’s Budget Group. This morning’s Autumn Statement felt rather too familiar. Not only because the headlines were leaked to the press in advance but also because, once again, women were… Read More »Women left behind in the Autumn Statement
Women’s Budget Group press release on the Autumn Financial Statement George Osborne claims Britain’s economy is on the up, but people are still struggling to cope with low wages, a rising cost of living, and a dramatic decrease in social security. Women are feeling the… Read More »Osborne’s recovery is an illusion, women still feel the pinch
This post was first published by the F-Word a contemporary UK feminist site which I was delighted to blog for.
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Though the Chancellor tried to make good headlines with his recent spending review announcement, it is clear that once again the budget has not been gender-proofed. Polly Trenow discusses the implications for women
On 26 June, George Osborne announced his spending review setting out the cuts and savings to be made between 2015 and 2016. With the general election due in 2015, there were few surprises in store: more cuts, more austerity and a couple of crowd-pleasers to keep the voting public on his side.
And like every good Treasury speech, Osborne ensured the bad news was sandwiched between his good news headlines: the NHS budget will be safe from cuts in that financial year and overseas development spending will remain at 0.7% of GDP. The Chancellor also told us that for every public sector job that has been lost, three private sector jobs have been created and announced a huge investment in physical infrastructure – roads, rail and nuclear power stations.
So not all bad then? Well not quite. Always the perfect politician, the Chancellor’s boasts of savings and spending hide a multitude of sins.
Despite decades of campaigning, the Treasury have continually failed to ‘gender-proof’ their budgets. The Equalities Impact Assessment for the spending review dedicated a whole seven sentences to the impact on women, all of which only highlight the benefits to women rather than exploring the possible negative consequences. Economic policies can have very different impacts on women and men, yet we rarely see any recognition of this during the budget-making process.
Local governments who have seen their budgets aggressively slashed in recent years face another year of austerity, with their spending reduced by a further 10%. Local authorities fund essential services for women and women’s organisations. Programmes like Sure Start Children’s Centres and the Supporting People programme which fund many sexual and domestic violence support services have already faced cuts of around 11% and now their future looks as uncertain as that of the women and children they support.
The Chancellor’s ring-fencing is too little, too late and makes no allowance for the fact that health service costs rise faster than inflation
Read More »Chancellor’s spending review is bad news for women
Today, the organisation I work for – the Women’s Budget Group released a briefing outlining how austerity in the UK is hitting women harder than men. Though there are signs of economic recovery they are not yet apparent in the lives of real women. The… Read More »Plan F – economic recovery for gender equality