UK Poverty Post

FRED’s having a hard time, and so is FREDa

Yesterday we launched FRED – our character representing poor women and men in the UK hit hard by the recession. Today, I’m concentrating on women – FREDas, if you will.

Things didn’t start well – even before the recession, women were poorer than men. They already had a lower income and smaller pension, if they had one at all. And they already had a smaller nest-egg, if they had one at all.

Now they are becoming the shock-absorbers of the recession for their families, eating less so their kids can have more. They are more likely to be vulnerable workers, in low-paid and part time work.

So everything we say about FRED is true about FREDa – only more so. But in many ways we know much less about her situation. Why? You don’t see her clearly in the unemployment figures, because she probably doesn’t register as unemployed. She has too much else to do, unpaid. “Economically inactive” no way describes her life – but that’s how she’s officially labelled.

Even if she has a job, she’s more likely to be low-paid, part time or on a temporary contract, so she won’t even get redundancy. She’s more likely to be a vulnerable worker on the margins of the labour market, and so no-one’s collecting statistics about her.

And the final killer is that she may not get fair shares in the household, and government isn’t looking at that at all. It’s seen as a private matter.

So what’s to be done?

What’s good for FRED is also fair for FREDa. More rights at work; freedom from exploitation; enough benefits to live on; protection from exorbitant interest rates on doorstep loans; equal opportunities; affordable childcare.

An extra for FREDA would be a better picture; better statistics of what’s going on inside her house, looking at whether she is getting fair shares at home, as a way of protecting her from scraping FRED’s barrel.