Are government spending cuts having a disproportionate impact on women? The question has so rattled David Cameron that he is to appoint a senior female adviser to assess the impact of government policy on women. Yet while Westminster ponders women on boards and attacks on arranged marriages, some of the most serious cuts affect local authority services, which are being slashed across the board.
Trying to get a national picture from this plethora of small cuts has bedevilled campaigners for change, so on Wednesday the TUC is to launch a Women and the Cuts toolkit to help local campaigners, often working for the voluntary or community sector. The idea came from the first such study done by Coventry Women's Voices, a local umbrella group, in April. This concluded that the "spending cuts will increase inequality between women and men and may seriously damage the human rights of some women".
It highlighted seven key areas: employment; housing; incomes and poverty; education and training; violence against women; health, social care and other support services; and legal aid. It found, for example, that the combined impact of the spending cuts on women victims and survivors of rape or domestic violence poses a serious threat to their human rights. Earlier this month the Bristol Fawcett Society carried out its own research and came to similar conclusions in its local area.
The TUC toolkit, launched at the start of its equality deficit conference on Wednesday, is aimed at trade unions, voluntary organisations and community groups carrying out a similar exercise around the country. It adds services for children and young people, welfare reform and transport.
Scarlet Harris, the TUC women's officer who blogs on the issues here, says the toolkit is an attempt to "hold the hands" of local groups through a difficult process but that the end result could be a national database of information. Now that really could provide a service that one solitary adviser would find hard to match, wouldn't it?
