According to the Fawcett Society A "Women rely more on benefits and tax credits than men, in particular due to their caring responsibilities and their relative economic inequality and poverty. In fact, on average, one-fifth of women s income is made up of welfare payments and tax credits compared to one-tenth for men. Put another way, benefits make up twice as much of women's income than men's.
To date, a total of £14.9 billion worth of cuts per year have been made to benefits, tax credits, pay and pensions, with 74% of this taken from women's incomes. The 2012 Budget also announced that a further £10 billion of welfare cuts will be The situation they discuss remains true today. Incomes have fallen as a result of previous austerity measures but the gap between women and men persists. There has been a transformation of the welfare state in Britain first under the Coalition government (Tories and Liberal Democrats) and then the Tories. The welfare state made a real difference in to people's lives. As a universal system for those working as well as unemployed, it provided support to women earning lower wages, It helped to cover some childcare costs, provided income and the chance of independent living for disabled people (covering some extra costs associated with being disabled through the disability living allowance and providing income for family members serving as carers). Using the excuse of the high deficit/GDP ratio, cuts were instituted in both the state sector and welfare benefits. The shift from access due to personal situations towards mean-tested benefits started under Labour and has been intensified under the Tories. The welfare state no longer offers universal protection but only covers those on lower incomes. The British welfare state is becoming more like that in the US. Unemployment apparently results from a problem of labour supply (people are lazy) and is portrayed as a voluntary choice. In this context changes are put forward: Cuts to benefit levels are justified because those not in paid employment should be poorer than those in paid work.? New evaluation processes are introduced for disability benefits - carried out by private companies with no skills or expertise. Disabled people are given full payment, put in a work related activity group (WRAG) or put onto Job Seekers Allowance (JSA).3 Thousands of disabled people are terrorised by processes which say they are no longer entitled to benefits on which they rely. Death rates are rising Trying to force people into work by drawing them into unpaid labour where their income is their benefit working for free for employers. This is a modern version of the 1834 Poor Law Reform. What was in the Welfare Bill The Welfare Bill that was passed as part of the Summer Budget was another mileThe government justifies their policies 10: A higher pay, lower welfare society:
Despite progress during the last Parliament, the welfare bill remains stubbornly and disproportionately high.
The welfare system should ensure that people are incentivised and helped to find work which is fairly paid, and that the taxpayer does not subsidise low pay or foot the bill for an unfair system where too many people remain on 11: More people with a chance to work "There are still too many people for whom there are unfair or distorting barriers to work - including women and disabled people, whose high levels of skill are too often underused. The government has set out stretching ambitions to increase employment and halve the disability employment gap. To address this, they promised to double the free entitlement to childcare for working parents of 3 and 4 year olds ("incentivise" parents that get Universal Credit to begin to look for work when their child is 2, and to be working when the They reformed Employment and Support Allowance to incentivise disabled people thought capable of work; those assessed as capable of work will no longer receive the higher rate given to WRAG instead receiving the pittance as those on Jobseekers Allowance. They have also introduced a new "Youth Obligation" for 18-21 years old claiming Jobseekers Andrew Hood of the Institute for Fiscal Studies has analysed the distributional impact of these changes. Hood argues that the biggest changes are the cuts to work allowances; a large reduction in how much families can earn before tax credits/universal credit (UC) start to be withdrawn. Tax credits start to be withdrawn once family earnings are *Britain above £3,850 (compared to the current £6,420). Universal credit is also withdrawn completely from April 2016 non-disabled households without children - for other groups it is reduced • £12 billion benefit cuts by 2019-2020. • A four year freeze to working-age benefits (4.8% real cut given projected price rises) with 13 million families losing an average of £260 a year (7.14 million in work will lose on average £280 a year). This comes on top of the 1% increase in benefits since • Cuts to tax credits and universal credit. From 2017, these will be limited to only the first two children; subsequent children will not be covered. Hood points out, "currently 872,000 families are getting an average of £3,670 a year of support for third and subsequent children (548,000 in work)." • The family element of child tax credit, which provided extra money at the birth of the first child is abolished from April 2017. • The benefit cap is reduced from £26,000 (£18,200 for single adults without children) to £23,000 (£15,410) inside London and £20,000 (£13,400) outside London from April 2016. This is a "saving" of only £200m, but will cause a maximum loss of £6,000 for benefit recipients (£3000 in • Access to Housing Benefit for childless 18-21 year olds is eliminated for those out of work or not in an apprenticeship scheme. Those living at home will not be able to move out. Other young people will be forced to move back into the family This is unacceptable in any situation but particularly for LGBT young adults who often face rejection from their families and for young people who have fled the family home because of abuse. And as women are primary carers this creates additional hardship for women, especially single mothers and those with lower incomes. Damien Gayle argue that 6 changes in the welfare cap will impact strongly on single parents caring for children under 5; and 92% of single parents are women. Childcare costs are rising, forcing women out of work Moreover, there are insufficient childcare places and the 30 hours that the government has guaranteed cannot, at this time, be met according to childcare providers. The so-called Living wage of £7.20 (up to £9 by 2020) will not compensate this loss The refusal of the Labour Party to oppose the Welfare Bill led to 4 out of 5 Labour
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3 In the latest change in the Summer Budget they have eliminated the difference between WRAG and JSA; as such the amount received
4 The "youth obligation" has to do with being in employment, in an apprenticeship or work-related training (http://www.welfareweekly.
5 (http://www.ifs.org.uk/uploads/publications/budgets/Budgets%202015/Summer/Hood_distributional_analysis.pdf 8 https://kittysjones.wordpress.com/2015/07/18/a-brief-history-of-social-security-and-the-reintroduction-of-eugenics-by-stealth/ 9 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/women-who-have-been-raped-may-have-to-prove-assault-for-third-child-tax10 Buck vs Bell (1927); the Supreme Court ruled that compulsory sterilisation of the unfit did not violate the US constitution (https://
WELFARE BILL: AN ATTACK ON WOMEN MPs abstaining on a bill whose purpose was to destroy the universal welfare state and further lower working class incomes; though, 48 Labour MPs did oppose it.?
The fact that this happened under the temporary leadership of a woman, Harriet Harman demonstrates the failures of liberal feminism. Using the pretext that "we cannot oppose everything," she said that she supported restriction of child tax credits to a two child maximum. This was the last straw for many who then signed up to support Jeremy Corbyn in his successful campaign for the Labour leadership. Eugenics rears its head (yet again) An excellent piece by Kitty Jones& describes the welfare budget as "eugenics by stealth." I would argue that it is not eugenics by stealth but straight-forward eugenics - albeit through negative means. Tax credits and housing benefits are eliminated for families with more than two children. This limits women's choices as to how many children have. The number of children women choose to have is not independent of their income. All women with children will lose income but those with private wealth or higher incomes are less dependent upon child-tax credits. The bill controls women's reproductive choices especially those of working class women - employed and unemployed. The bill also had a tacked on clause saying that if you had a child as a result of rape you would get tax credits even if you go past your 2 child maximum.° This places women in the grotesque position of having to prove that their child was born out of a rape to get the benefits. Will a rape conviction be necessary, or will a rape report be sufficient? Should this be construed as a reward for not terminating the pregnancy?
Many women do not report rape for various reasons (bad experience with police, a sense of shame). Now to get benefit money they must do so. It is as if the reason for the child's existence is the business of government and they are trying to cover all bases. The bill does not call for sterilisation of women after the second child or demand that women that have two children must use birth control if they want to get benefits; as happened in the USA at various times in history against working class women, women of colour and disabled women. Forced sterilisation and proving you are using contraceptives to get benefits would probably have triggered outrage in Britain. And it would inevitably be ruled in violation of European Human Rights Law. So subtlety is in order, but subtlety is not stealth. This is a government telling women how many children they can have and limiting the amount of assistance made available. This comes on top of lower wages, lower pensions, cuts to domestic abuse and violence support, limited and expensive childcare and shortage of really affordable housing. This is negative eugenics attempting to discourage working class and poor women from having more than 2 children. The right to choose not to have children and to have access to contraceptives, abortion and voluntary sterilisation are essential parts of reproductive rights But so is the right of women to have hildren and to determine when and ho nany they have. This right has been mos *Britain often denied to working class women, disabled women and to women of colour.
Sterilisation abuse and forced usage of birth control against working class women, disabled women and women of colour is part of a long-term agenda of eugenics and neo-Malthusianism in the tradition of Francis Place (argued to be the founder of the birth control movement) who argued for of birth control for poor women to keep Women fought for the right to not have children - and wealthier white women said they should be able to choose when they had them and have sterilisation without their husbands' consent.
Eugenics laws that promoted the "betterment of the human race" by forcing wealthier white women to have children also led to laws that demanded use of birth control to access welfare benefits and forced sterilisation for working class women. These laws have been the tools of choice against working class, women of colour and disabled women trying to prevent their choosing to have children and to limit the numbers that they had.
In the US, to this day, eugenics laws are still on the books to be used against disabled women. This endorsement of negative eugenics has not been repealed and still stands as US law. 10 We support women's reproductive rights to give women control over their bodies. We recognise women's right to bodily autonomy; our bodies, our lives, our right to decide. We fight for access to education, health care, contraceptives, voluntary sterilisation and abortion. Women must have these rights without qualification not only as an issue of reproductive rights, but of reproductive justice. 1 http://www.fawcettsociety.org.uk/2013/02/benefits/ 2 Bentham's principle of less eligibility; http:// www.victorianweb.org/history/poorlaw/eligible.html decreasing overall due to categorisation of SA and WRAG. com/budget-2015-what-it-means-for-welfare-and-pensions/ 6 http://www.welfareweekly.com/benefits-cap-hits-single-parents-with-children-under-five-figures-show/ 7 (http://labourlist.org/2015/07/48-mps-break-whip-to-vote-against-welfare-bill-full-list/) credits-10382434.html. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_v._Bell