The Bakery Called and the Today Programme answered....Hot press!

A couple of days ago I posted that I was finding it hard to get any current news about the government apparently ignoring the fact that the public sector cuts are going to hit women and poor people hardest (particularly poor women and their children). And today, on the ever wonderful Today (Radio 4, 6am to 9am daily except for the blessed Sunday) comes my answer! As part of their week long exploration of fairness in public sector cuts, the feature today was about the impact on women. I clutched my knitting (I am knitting my nephews and nieces a university to go to) and listened with bated breath.

First at 7.30ish, an examination of the claims with union officers and female public sector workers. You can hear this feature by clicking here.  The interviewee who currently works for London Ambulance part time pointed out she is able to afford child care and go out to work, fitting round her children's needs through flexible working and confident her children are well cared for when she is at work because of the provision of child care support, thus paying taxes, providing a role model for her children and still being a good mum (this is not a criticism of women who do not do paid work). She is now facing the end of this and an impossible choice about how to be a mum out of work.

Then at 8.19am Fawcett Society's Anna Bird was on the air (click here to go to the page for the entire programme, annoyingly there isn't a direct link for this feature but you can click on play the entire programme and then fast forward to 8.19am, two hours and 19 minutes into the programme), along with Louise Bagshawe, Tory MP.  I typed as I listened. Anna Bird reminded us of the following reasons why the cuts are likely to hit women hardest and therefore why the Fawcett Society has lodged a legal challenge asking the ConDems to do an Equalities Report, a legal obligation, and to take action if this report shows unfairness in the effects of the public spending cuts:

• Women make up 65% of the public sector workforce, more in the health and social care sectors
• Women are heavier users of public services than men –  we are more likely to live in poverty, we frequently get fecklessly pregnant, we need more care in old age as they live longer (there is a gender equality flaw in that last argument - what are we doing about men's shorter life expectancies? - but it doesn't undermine the overall validity)Women already shoulder the majority of unpaid caring duties and when the public sector cuts are felt it will be women who are expected to take up the slack, looking after elderly neighbours as well as family, doing child care on top of low paid work, we will be the Big Society because that's what we've always done.

Conservative MP Louise Bagshawe promptly flat out denied that the public sector cuts will have this effect. She criticised the Fawcett society for their concern about housing benefit cuts, child benefit cuts and cited the restoration of the link between earnings and pensions as a support for women and said that the majority of the public supported the ConDem cuts.


She also pointed out that the Labour Government didn’t do an Equalities Impact Statement on the abolition of the 10p tax band in 2008 (the year after the Gender Equality Duty became law) which is a good point, though please let’s notice that they did in the end reverse the decision.


Fawcett Society’s Anna Bird reiterated that the child benefit cuts and so on will hit women hardest, Today programme journalist asked “what about the argument that this is what women want”? Anna Bird said the government has LEGAL DUTY to look at the impact on equality and to take action to avoid discriminatory harm.


Louise Bagshawe said she knew that the Treasury is looking at this and has met with the Fawcett Society. She also said that the government is supporting small businesses, which are often a place for women to gain economically. Today programme asked if government would be happy to see more women forced to stay at home. Louise Bagshawe, after calling herself a feminist, trotted out the old clichés about choice and children doing better if women stay at home. It's curious that having denied that there was a gendered impact, she went on to defend the government by saying that they were looking at it. It is particularly odd seeing as the curiously positioned Theresa May, Home Secretary and minister for equalities has previously stated clearly to gorgeous George Osborne that she herself was worried that the government might, ahem, be breaking the law on equalities.


I have to ask, how will having less money, cutting their benefits if they find themselves unable to work for whatever reason, having to take on more unpaid work and having fewer opportunities to do paid work or get quality child care give women more choice? I also have to ask when someone will please teach Tory politicians, in fact, be fair, most politicians, to read or at least understand the summaries of the resaerch on which they claim to base their evidence based “what works” policies? Or just to notice their own ideological biases? Children do best when they are not poor. Children do best when their parents aren’t worried sick about how they are going to manage. Children do better when we all make a commitment to support them, whether or not we have our own – we will all need the current generation of children to look after us, pay for public services and bring us the odd pitcher of margaritas when we are old.


I do get (though politely have to disagree with) the argument many of my friends and many others are making about higher earning parents not needing Child Benefit. First criticism is the link between this and an inferred inevitability about having to make such huge public sector cuts and with such speed - a premise which greater brains than mine are rejecting. Look at the example of the austerity bugets of years gone by which resulted in the Great Depression and the converse of the post war public spending investment which resulted in growth in European and US economies. Government budgets are not the same as household ones, we rightly pool our resources and expect the state to invest on our behalf so that we all have good roads, transport, schools, health, water, refuse collection etc and then we can grow as an economy, pay more in taxes and require less in benefits, at which point public spending can fall as a proportion of GDP because we just need less of it.


Then there is the symbolic importance of valuing children from birth - the benefit is called CHILD benefit, not PARENT benefit, it's for children. And even if you argue in favour of cutting child benefit, the current plan is clearly, demonstrably unfair as it favours dual income families with individual salaries just below the cut off point over single income families with salary just above.

Finally, I feel strongly that the original argument made by our grandmothers and great grandmothers in the Labour and Co-op movements a century ago, about rewarding, even if only symbolically, the unpaid work of bringing up children, still stands. Even if you don't want children, you don't want other people's growing up poor, badly brought up, lacking in basic health care, even if only for the self preservation reasons I have already mentioned - we childless are going to need other people's children when we are old (actually I already do need other people's children and I am merely of a certain age).


If you want to make your own mind up – and please do – you can visit the latest from the Fawcett Society and go to the Today Programme website to hear the interview. For a previous Today programme interview with the same Anna Bird and the Institute of Fiscal Studies’ Mark Littlewood, broadcast on 25th August 2010 you can click here.