ABSTRACT
Since 2010, a Conservative–Liberal Democrat Coalition Government followed in 2015 by a Conservative-majority Government have implemented a vast austerity plan in the United Kingdom to deal with the budget deficit and rising public debt in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2007–08. The claim was that there was no alternative to this “Plan A”, which involved drastic spending cuts in social security and public services, to rebalance public finances and the economy. Low-income households and particularly lone parents and single pensioners – the vast majority of whom are women – have been found to have borne the brunt of the cumulative spending cuts in services and tax-benefit changes (see Reed in this volume (Ch.7); Reed and Portes 2014). Not only have the changes damaged women's economic security and employment opportunities but they have also disrupted the social infrastructure of the UK, with potential long-term negative consequences for the economy, while doing nothing to provide upwards convergence in both men's and women's economic positions.
