Women
on the frontline
With just 20% of the
planned cuts to public services implemented, the government’s austerity
programme has already had a devastating impact on working-class
communities. A mass of evidence shows that women have been
disproportionately hit by the decline in public services, cuts in
welfare benefits and job losses as the economy enters a triple dip. JANE
JAMES looks at what this means for the social gains achieved by women
over the past 60 years.
A STAGGERING ONE in five
women in the UK lives in poverty. The idea that we are all in this
recession together is not accepted by the majority of workers. They can
see the bankers and billionaires increase their wealth at a sickening
rate while vital services are starved of funds, the benefits of the poor
and vulnerable are cut and the number of working poor increases.
Low-paid, part-time and temporary jobs are replacing better-paid and
more secure full-time employment.
The government is making sure
that ordinary people are paying for the mess that capitalism is in,
while ensuring that the rich do not suffer. The cabinet of millionaires
may deny that it has any strategy to undermine the status and rights of
women acquired over the last few decades, but its austerity programme
could not have been better designed to push women back into domestic
servitude. The creation of the welfare state and the expansion of the
public sector following the second world war underpinned the huge social
advance for women in terms of jobs, greater income equality, and
assistance with women’s ‘traditional role’ of caring for family members.
The autumn financial
statement is set to add misery to the four years of hardship experienced
by workers since the onset of the financial crisis in 2008.
Working-class women are bearing the brunt of measures targeted at the
poor, the vulnerable and workers struggling to make ends meet in the
worst economic crisis for 80 years. Attacks on benefits, cuts in public
services, and increases in unemployment and underemployment have been
felt most harshly by women workers, and threaten to drive them back into
the home.
Benefit cuts
THE WOMEN’S BUDGET Group (WBG)
described chancellor George Osborne’s financial statement as another
blow to women’s rights and gender equality. Given that benefits make up
one-fifth of women’s income, compared to a tenth of men’s, Osborne’s
refusal to mitigate the adverse impact on gender equality commits
millions of women to increasing hardship. Already, according to research
by the Fawcett Society, of the £14.9 billion of cuts made to benefits,
tax credits, pay and pensions since 2010, 74% has been taken from
women’s incomes.
The recent announcement by
Osborne that most working-age benefits and tax credits will be up-rated
by just 1% over the next three years from April 2013 means, with
inflation running at 2.7%, an effective cut in income for the poorest
sections of society. This cruel measure does not only hit the
mislabelled ‘shirkers’, the vast majority of unemployed people
desperately struggling to find work, or those with disabilities at the
mercy of companies like Atos Healthcare, which the government has
contracted to get half-a-million people off disability benefits. It also
affects millions who toil long hours for poverty pay making them
increasingly reliant on tax credits and housing and council tax benefits
to survive. Most of these low-paid workers are women providing care for
children and grandchildren, and for elderly and disabled relatives.
Scandalously, the 1% cap on
benefit increases includes statutory maternity pay and maternity
allowance. Maternity payments should not even be treated as social
security benefits. Legal rights to maternity leave and pay were enacted
as part of health and safety law to protect pregnant women and to ensure
that new mothers were not financially dis-incentivised into taking
sufficient time off away from work to recover from the birth, to be able
to breastfeed and bond with their baby.
The Fawcett Society has
correctly pointed out that the Con-Dems’ treatment of maternity pay
could deter millions of working-class women from taking their full
maternity leave. With many families already struggling financially this
latest attack could see many women being forced to return to work
earlier than they would like, with potentially serious health
implications for them and their babies. Just as worrying, despite
discrimination law, about 30,000 women lose their jobs each year after
informing their employer of their pregnancy.
This latest effective cut to
maternity pay comes on top of the scrapping of the health in pregnancy
grant in January 2011. This had provided a one-off payment of £190 to
all pregnant women. The Sure Start maternity grant was also axed in
April 2011. This was designed to assist out-of-work families with the
cost of maternity and baby items.
Going in reverse
ACCORDING TO ESTIMATES made
by the House of Commons library, women will pay about two-thirds of the
money raised by the latest austerity measures, compared to a third from
men. When changes to income tax are also taken into account, women will
be hit four times harder than men.
Cumulatively, women are
paying over three-quarters of the cost to household income from net
direct tax, benefit cuts, and pay and pension changes introduced since
June 2010. The painfully slow progress over the last four decades in
increasing women’s income to close the pay gap between men and women –
women still earn on average 14.9% less than men – is set to go into
reverse.
In an attempt to sweeten a
very bitter pill, Osborne has stated that the cuts to working-age
benefits will raise revenue to fund two tax giveaways: the cancellation
of the fuel duty increase and a further rise in personal allowance on
income tax. Research by the WBG reveals that such measures favour more
men than women. For example, women are less likely to drive cars than
men, and are more likely than men to be in part-time or low-paid
employment. Among those who do not earn enough to benefit from the
increase in personal allowance, 67% are women.
The WBG criticises the
government’s strategy to reduce Britain’s debt by cutting spending on
benefits and services, which impact more on women, rather than
increasing tax revenue, which the WBG claims would be more evenly
distributed. As socialists we would not support tax increases for
workers. Even on a capitalist basis the financial resources exist to
wipe out the country’s debts. The Sunday Times 2012 rich list revealed
that the combined wealth of the richest 1,000 people in Britain
increased to £414 billion last year. This was a 5% rise for the class of
people who lecture workers on the need to hold down wages – which rose
last year, on average, by just 1.7%. Meanwhile, major British companies
have £750 billion of cash reserves sitting idle in their bank accounts.
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The vital public sector
THE AUSTERITY AXE is falling
hardest on the public sector, and therefore women, who make up 65% of
the workforce. In local government, at three quarters, their proportion
in the workforce is even higher. The impact of job cuts on women has
been devastating. Currently at 7.7%, women’s unemployment is at its
highest level since 1994. Those women lucky to find alternative
employment experience low-paid, part-time or temporary jobs, or pseudo
self-employment.
After decades of work many
women face the prospect of a raw deal when they retire. The extension of
so-called equality in retirement has resulted in the perversion of the
retirement age for women being gradually increased from 60 to 65 by
November 2018. In retirement, women are more likely to suffer poverty as
time out of work due to caring responsibilities means it is more
difficult for women to accrue a decent occupational pension. Women
retiring this year face an annual retirement income one-third lower than
their male counterparts.
All the evidence shows that
women rely most on public services in terms of care for children, the
disabled and the elderly, roles traditionally done by women. In
addition, specific services for women have been targeted for closure.
For example, women desperate to flee violent partners are confronted
with nowhere to go. The organisation Refuge, which helps women to leave
their violent partners, confirms that every one of its services could
close leading to women dying. Statistics show that, already, two women a
week are killed as a result of domestic violence.
Obtaining legal assistance
for cases of domestic violence will be more difficult. The legal aid
budget is being cut by £350 million a year. With 57% of recipients of
legal aid being women, thousands will find themselves without the means
to get representation. It has been estimated that 54% of women suffering
from domestic violence would not qualify for legal aid.
Rising unemployment and
underemployment, cuts in public services and real reductions in the
value of benefits have created fertile ground for Cameron’s madcap ‘big
society’ idea. Indeed, it is flourishing in the guise of a massive
expansion in food banks, with three new outlets opening every week, as
charity rapidly replaces state support for the poorest sections of
society. Food banks have fed more than 180,000 people since April 2012,
including many low-paid workers. Ninety per cent of the food provided
comes from public donations.
Research shows that most
people, particularly men, are ashamed to go to food banks. It is mainly
women who swallow their pride and go, to ensure their children get fed.
Some mothers have admitted to rummaging for food in bins. Increasing
numbers of women are facing criminal prosecutions for stealing food from
supermarkets for their children. Inevitably, both mothers and fathers go
without food so their children can be fed.
Government offensive
THE COALITION GOVERNMENT’S
attack on the so-called dependency culture is a euphemism for smashing
the welfare state and privatising the remaining parts of the public
sector. This with the aim of replacing the collective provision of
essential services with private services geared to making profits for
the already obscenely wealthy.
During the second world war,
women had been drafted into the factories as millions of men were
conscripted to the battlefields. Once the war ended, most women returned
to the home and childcare. However, over the following decades, the
development of the welfare state and the expansion of the public sector
opened up huge job opportunities for women. At the same time, public
services provided assistance with care for children and the elderly, a
responsibility that traditionally fell to women.
The current assault on the
public sector and welfare state threatens to reverse all the social
gains made by workers over the last 65 years. For women, though, this
does not merely mean the loss of jobs and vital services. It potentially
presages the erosion or removal of the social basis of all the
concomitant progressive measures that have freed women from the drudgery
of the home and allowed them to play a fuller role in the workplace and
wider society. With sexism, prejudice and oppression still widespread,
capitalism was never going to be capable of achieving full equality for
women. But, unless combatted, the current ideologically driven austerity
agenda could set back women’s rights for a generation.
The growing anger of working
people towards the Con-Dem coalition government is palpable. Women will
come to the fore in the struggle to defend the hard-won gains of the
past. That struggle will inevitably pose the question of how best to
achieve this. A new generation of workers, women and men, will discover
the socialist aspirations of the generation that fought for the creation
of the welfare state. This time, however, the whole economy will need to
be taken into public ownership in order to plan society’s resources for
the benefit of all.
Fighting against rape and murder in India
Last December, Jyoti Singh
Pandey, a 23-year-old woman, was gang-raped and murdered on a bus in
Delhi. This murderous sexual attack was no isolated incident. The UN’s
human-rights chief has called rape in India a ‘national problem’. This
attack sparked massive, furious demonstrations, protesting against
violence against women, the ineffectiveness and corruption of the
police, and the rottenness of the whole political system. The
authorities responded with tear gas and repression. Five men and a youth
have been charged with rape and are on trial.
New Socialist
Alternative (CWI India) produced the following leaflet. Among other
demands, NSA calls for immediate action against the perpetrators of
violent crimes against women, and an independent investigation into the
response of the police and state administration to sexual violence,
involving the trade unions, women, student and other progressive
organisations.
THE UNPRECEDENTED anger of
the youth of Delhi and many other cities against the gang-rape of a
23-year-old para-medical student was an expression of the seething
discontent that has been building against the system for a long time.
The fear of the ‘power of the streets’ resulted in suppression of these
protests. In contrast to the spontaneous empathy and demand for justice
by young women and men, the administration ham-handedly brutalised the
protests through vicious crack down.
It is a fact that violence
against women in India is particularly rampant among the marginalised
communities, such as Daliths, Adivasis, women in unorganised industries,
sexuality minorities, sex workers, etc, for which conviction rate is
abysmally low. Most incidents of rape and sexual assaults go unreported
as feudal values dominate Indian culture and society. Custodial torture
and rape, and the sexual crimes committed by the state agencies, do not
evoke much indignation.
Sexual violence affects women
of all backgrounds and ethnicities. It is perpetrated by a minority of
men from all backgrounds and identities. It is widespread and embedded
in capitalist society. Working-class women suffer sexism in addition to
the oppression that all working-class people face.
In India, a rape occurs every
20 minutes: a relentless, silent war against women is waged in various
ways. From killing them in their mother’s womb, punishing women for
giving birth to girls, to persecuting women for challenging traditional
male bastions. Sexuality is distorted by pornography which is more and
more accessible, and at younger ages. Male and female sexual stereotypes
are foisted on us from birth, and women’s bodies are objectified and
used everywhere to ‘entertain’ and sell products.
Men who are sexually violent
need to take responsibility for the role they play as perpetrators. But
we can’t, however, get rid of sexual violence just by punishing
individuals. It is a product of capitalist society where people are
conditioned to see women as inferior and their bodies as commodities or
objects and separate from their humanity.
Sexism aids the capitalist
system. The family provides a base for the reproduction and bringing up
of future workers, and the servicing and care of current (and
unemployed) workers and retired workers. This work in the home is
usually carried out by unpaid women (who may also work outside the home)
and saves capitalism millions of rupees, increasing the profits of a
few.
Portrayed as ‘ironic’, sexist
jokes can actually normalise sexism, making cat-calling, sexual
harassment of women and lewd jokes somehow acceptable. It can further
perpetuate the bullying of women – calling people who complain ‘prudes’
and lacking a sense of humour. How can a woman feel safe walking home at
night if she fears that the men she passes laugh about raping women?
The perpetrators of such
crimes must definitely be punished, but the solution does not lie in
reverting back to medieval practices, such as death penalty or
castration, nor does the solution lie in increasing surveillance by
police. This will only end up empowering the government with
unprecedented powers, acting with impunity against the working people.
For so widespread a crime, band-aid solutions are not the answer!
By no stretch of imagination
can we absolve the system and the ruling classes from this malady, as
they have thoroughly failed in developing and taking forward society
from feudal and medieval values and practices. Violence against women is
a product of a diseased system called capitalism where people are
conditioned to see women as inferior and to see women’s bodies as
commodities or objects meant for pleasure.
A campaign against rape in
isolation from all other aspects of women’s oppression will not serve
the purpose. Rape, like domestic violence and sexual harassment, is a
symptom of a deeply unequal class-based society that leads some men to
think that they can control women, including sexually. This is
reinforced by women’s material inequality and lower status in society.
We must challenge sexism and through the process of struggle will see
millions of people questioning the brutal, sexist and exploitative
capitalist society in which we live, and to look for an alternative
beyond capitalism.