- Conference
- 2011 National Women's Conference
- Date
- 21 October 2010
- Decision
- Carried as Amended
The coalition government’s emergency budget claimed to be fair, but cuts in jobs and wages, and changes to benefits and taxes, will impact hardest on women – particularly low paid women and their families:
1)Sixty five per cent of public sector workers are women, and almost a quarter of working women are in public sector jobs. Job cuts, contractual changes and pay freezes in the public sector will therefore inevitably impact more on women than men, and past evidence has shown that where services are contracted out, women have suffered disproportionately as their terms and conditions have been cut;
2)working mothers will be directly affected by cuts in child benefit, the health in pregnancy grant, Sure Start and child tax credit changes. Further it is estimated that 30,000 women lost their jobs in 2009 as a result of being pregnant and that pregnant women are often unfairly selected for redundancy, despite laws to protect them;
3)the Labour Party’s gender audit of the budget demonstrated that two-thirds of the revenue raised will come from women as fewer women than men will benefit from the increase in the personal tax allowance; housing benefit restrictions will impact on hard working households; and changes to state and public sector pensions will disproportionately affect women – who already make up two thirds of the UK’s poorest pensioners
Added to these individual losses, cuts in services and increased charges for services used primarily by women to meet the unequal burden of caring responsibilities – services such as daycare, libraries, leisure centres and out of hours school clubs – will mean that the hidden cost is even greater.
Additionally the women’s voluntary sector and community projects supporting women will be particularly vulnerable to cuts, including women’s advice centres and refuges – the majority of which are also staffed by women – at a time when poverty will inevitably increase the number of women and children experiencing domestic violence.
Conference notes that proposed cuts to the community and voluntary sector would decimate dedicated services, such as for those for lesbian, bisexual and transgender (LBT) women. These services have been hard fought for and only exist because mainstream services fail to meet the needs of all service users. They are a lifeline for the women who use them but don’t win popularity contests.
Conference therefore calls upon the national women’s committee to work with regional women’s committees to ensure that all women members engage in UNISON’s million voices and public works campaigns by :
a)talking to friends, family and neighbours about these campaigns
b)raising the issues with employers, local media, and politicians at all levels
c)taking the campaign to workplace and community meetings emphasising the equality angle and the disproportionate risk to, for example, services for LBT women
d)talking to co-workers and recruiting non-members into UNISON