UK Poverty Post

The invisible crisis: Can’t see or won’t see?

The economy continues to dominate voters’ concerns and politicians’ in trays. Recession has further blighted life for millions of people, already on low incomes for many years. Groups that suffered before the recession are now suffering more. This is often partly because their problems are harder for decision makers to spot. Recession has spread economic difficulties to a wider range of people, making the problem of poverty more obvious, creating new impetus on policy makers to solve poverty. Yet there is poverty that remains relatively obscured. As attention focuses on an anemic recovery politicians might need to pretend that the situation is improving to enhance their own record. They may become less inclined to consider invisible poverty. In particular, Oxfam knows that women face a special set of challenges in Britain and elsewhere in achieving economic empowerment. So what is the gendered impact of the recession? How does it affect women and men differently?

Oxfam and the European Women’s Lobby have just reported on the impact of recession on women across Europe, based on research carried out in winter 2009-10. There is an invisible, long-term crisis where women are hard-hit, and the impact is invisible.

The results are shocking. Women in the labour market are doing badly – with growing discrimination in the labour market, including sackings of pregnant women, more precarious working conditions; increasing, and a shift to informal work. But those not in paid work are not protected either. They are dealing with rising housing, energy and living costs, higher levels of debt and difficulty with repayments. Women are eating less, and poorer quality food. Cuts in public services including hospitals and schools are having a particularly devastating impact on women, who still form the majority of carers in every European country. Most shocking of all, it reports rising levels of domestic violence in every country in the study.

So what’s to be done? Oxfam and the European Women’s Lobby have ambitious and specific recommendations (see below). But the biggest problem is the failure of politicians to speak out loud and clear about women’s continued poverty.

Oxfam and the European Women’s Lobby are calling for:

• Governments to compile data on complaints of sex discrimination filed in the recession
• Greater employment rights for migrant women so they aren’t stuck in part-time and insecure work
• Systematic monitoring of progress in relation to violence against women.
• Gender-sensitive universal social protection standards across Europe
• Assessment of the gender impact of expenditure cuts in health care and education
• New childcare targets which recognise not only numbers and costs, but also the quality of care.

For more details about Oxfam’s support to poor women in Europe click HERE.

To find out more about the British electorate’s real views on women’s poverty, see the Fawcett Society’s campaign “What about women”.