Safe Through Financial Freedom

This section of the OBRUK campaign covers the impact of changes to women’s income on their personal safety.

Campaigns on this theme:

Red Alert: Don’t let Universal Credit bypass Women!!

Economic Abuse: Educate to end it

In the midst of a recession, the cuts to government spending have led to a loss of public sector jobs, public sector cuts and pay freezes. Whilst these changes are impacting individuals across the country, there is growing evidence to suggest that they are having a disproportionate effect on women. Furthermore, it is clear that this has implications on their personal financial freedom. As the Women’s Budget Group state, there has been “an immense reduction in the standard of living and financial independence of millions of women, and a reversal in progress made towards gender equality”.

Did you know?

• Over the last 30 years women’s employment has significantly increased, while men’s has experienced an overall reduction. Unemployment rates also show significant variation by gender. In the last recession the rate of female unemployment was much lower than the male rate. (TUC 2009)
• But while women are now more likely to be in paid work, they remain far more likely than men to be in low-paid jobs – around 16.1% of men in work are low paid, compared with 29% of women workers – with those women who work part-time the most likely to be in low-paid employment-(TUC 2009)
• 64% of the lowest paid workers are women and on average, Women in the UK earn 14.9% less than men-( Fawcett Society 2012)
• In the UK around 12,658,000 working age women are in paid formal employment – around 40% of whom work part-time (compared to around 11 per cent of working men). (TUC 2009)
• Women are making a greater financial contribution than ever before to family incomes, and lone parents – 90 per cent of whom are women – now make up a quarter of all families. More women than ever are therefore supporting families on their wages. (TUC 2009)
• Women will lose more in cuts to benefits- of the £8 billion net revenue to be raised by the financial year 2014–15, nearly £6 billion will be from women, in contrast with just over £2 billion n from men- (Gender Audit-Yvette Cooper 2010)
• In the last 12 months, 4.5 %of the female workforce has experienced redundancy compared with just 3 % of men- (Fawcett Society 2012)
• The number of men claiming unemployment benefit has risen 88,000 over the past year whilst the number of female recipients has increased to 162,000- (ONS March 2012)
• By 2014/15 the average household will lose public services worth 6.8 per cent of their income with female single pensioners losing 11.7 %and lone mothers 18.5 %- (Women’s Budget Group 2011)
• Cuts to housing benefit are likely to have a disproportionate impact on women- Single women make up 46 % of LHA claimants, compared to 30 % who are single men. (DWP 2010)
• As a survey conducted by Netmums earlier this year shows, families are experiencing the dual problems of incomes in decline (66 %reported their incomes had gone down) and at the same time, the cost of living going up (93 %reporting they had noticed the increase in cost of groceries for example.
• This is an issue particularly affecting women in the capital. According to an IPSOS MORI poll commissioned by London Councils, half of the women surveyed say the economic downturn has had a big impact on the way they and their households live over the last three years (compared with 39% of men). They are also more interested in receiving advice on how to reduce the cost of living (45% compared to 32 %of men are interested in this help) and support with childcare (26% compared to 18%).