Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society 2011, 4, 355–367
doi:10.1093/cjres/rsr023
Advance Access publication 16 September 2011
A ‘new politics’ of austerity, workfare and gender? The
UK coalition government’s welfare reform proposals
Julie MacLeavy
School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol, University Road, Bristol BS8 1SS, UK,
[email protected]
Received on January 6, 2011; accepted on July 4, 2011
This paper considers the UK coalition government’s austerity drive, which attempts to
garner public support for the reduction or withdrawal of welfare entitlements through
appeals to frugality, self-sufficiency and fiscal prudence. In particular, the paper considers
the recasting of the former Labour government’s work incentives and welfare disincentives
amidst mounting pressures on public expenditure. The reorientation of state assistance
towards work, coupled with the proposed simplification of working-age benefits and tax
credits, is argued to present a particular challenge to the financial security and autonomy
of women, signalling the end of the process of modernizing the welfare system that was
forged around the single earner family model in the period of post-war austerity.
Keywords: austerity, gender, UK, welfare reform
JEL Classifications: B54, I38, J16
Introduction
This paper considers the UK coalition government’s austerity drive, which—invoking the ‘spirit’
of the wartime period (Hinton and Redclift,
2009)—attempts to garner public support for the
reduction or withdrawal of welfare entitlements
through appeals to frugality, self-sufficiency and
fiscal prudence. In the context of severe economic
recession (OECD, 2010), the paper considers the
recasting of the former Labour government’s policies of ‘activation’ and employment incentives
designed to make ‘work pay’ for low-income families, alongside new proposals to simplify the
administration of benefits and tax credit payments
through the introduction of a single welfare
payment per household. At a time of low economic
growth, high unemployment and rising poverty, the
introduction of more stringent conditionality in
welfare entitlements poses a particular challenge
for the sections of the population that are most frequently subject to the ‘new social risks’ emergent
from the socio-economic transformations that have
brought post-industrial societies into existence
(Hogarth et al, 2009; TUC, 2009; see also EspingAndersen, 1999, 2002). This includes younger people with low or obsolete skill sets, families with
small children and/or elderly dependents trying to
reconcile work and caring responsibilities and
working women occupying the labour market very
differently from the standard male workers of the
trente glorieuses— ‘the glorious thirty’, which
Ó The Author 2011. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Cambridge Political Economy Society. All rights reserved.
For permissions, please email: [email protected]
MacLeavy
refers to the 30 years following the end of the Second World War when there was an economic boom
in Europe—with periods of part-time work and
portfolio careers (Bonoli, 2005). For these sectors
of the population, the tertiarization of employment
and the massive entry of women into the labour
force have brought new difficulties and dilemmas
in formal labour market participation precipitating
the emergence of policies catering for new social
risks.
Recent government’s efforts to contain the
related growth in social expenditure have impacted
these welfare measures, particularly with regard to
the reconciliation of work and family life. In
middle-income households, support for both working and non-working parents has been withdrawn as
provisioning for care and paid employment is transferred from the state to the family unit (DWP,
2010). As a result, working or not working becomes
a choice that is made on the basis of household
requirements and resources, which in the context
of a contracting labour market privileges a more
traditional single earner model in middle-income
families. This is because in dual earner families
with a median income, the primary carer’s status
as a ‘secondary earner’ in the household calculation
of Working Tax Credit means they are subject to
a high marginal tax on their contribution to the
household finances. Only in lone parent families
or instances of single earner unemployment in
two parent families are women assuming a primary
carer and/or secondary earner role incentivized to
work by the tax credit system, which confers payments to households in receipt of low rates of
remuneration for formal labour market participation. In contrast, adults in low-income households
are expected to assume dual roles in reproductive
care and paid work in order to meet the stricter
conditions for financial support (Oxfam, 2010).
By framing responsibility for childrearing and familial care as a private household concern, government cost saving produces different outcomes for
low- and middle-income families (although one
might argue that the wider impacts of austerity economics level the field by pushing middle-income
women into paid employment) (Rubery, 2010). It
356
also risks progress towards labour market equality
and the reduction of the gender pay gap as individuals within jobless households are likely to accept
time- and skills-related underemployment in order
to meet the stricter conditions for financial support
(Fawcett Society, 2009; TUC, 2009).
The paper provides an analysis of the main
components of the coalition government’s welfare
reform proposals—austerity and workfare—and analyzes the potential impacts on gender and equality. It
starts by outlining the broader economic context of
the coalition government’s twin focus on encouraging paid employment and achieving cost reduction in the social security system through the
design of an integrated benefits and tax credits
system. It then outlines the parallels between contemporary and post-war discourses of austerity
and self-sufficiency that have been used to garner
public support for the proposals to reform the current system of welfare as outlined in the coalition
government’s consultation document, 21st Century
Welfare (DWP, 2010). Although appeals to frugality and fiscal prudence in both these periods have
originated from crises relating to the availability of
financial resources, there are important distinctions to be made between the era of post-war austerity and the present moment which cast doubt
over the ability of a contemporary politics of austerity to address the problems of the current recession without a resultant increase in gender and
class inequality. Over the past 35 years, the shift
towards a post-industrial economy has combined
with changes in family structures to challenge the
assumption of a male breadwinner upon which the
post-war welfare state was first founded. With increasing numbers of women now participating in
the formal labour market, there has been a necessary expansion of social insurance and protection
(for example around maternity and childrearing)
and public service provision (particularly collective care services) (Bonoli, 2005; Esping-Andersen, 2002). This recognizes that income protection
for wage earners is not as successful as it used to
be in protecting all citizens against poverty and
that further support is necessary to guarantee social cohesion and respond to the aspirations of
UK coalition government’s welfare reform proposals
citizens in the contemporary period. Against this
background, I provide a gender assessment of the
potential impact of the coalition government’s welfare reform proposals, particularly on women living
in poverty and in receipt of benefits/tax credits. Identifying women as the primary beneficiaries of welfare state modernization, I argue that in order to
alleviate the impact of the global recession and its
spatially and socially divisive outcomes, it is important not to undermine the financial security and autonomy of women and to support their dual roles in
reproductive care and paid work.
Austerity and UK Economic Policy
‘Austerity’ has now become shorthand for an increasing focus on frugality, self-sufficiency and
fiscal prudence in contemporary economic and political life. In the wake of the global financial crisis
of 2007–2008 which saw national governments act
to guarantee the private banking sector—under
threat of collapse from excessive lending, particularly on house purchases—austerity has been used
as a motif for the array of cuts and retrenchments
in public spending deemed necessary to recoup the
debts incurred by states in order to finance banking
bailouts and fiscal stimulus packages (Summers,
2009; Taylor-Gooby, 2009). For the British public, the cultural resonance of this allusion to the
period of enforced austerity between 1940 and the
end of rationing 15 years later is particularly
marked (see Kynaston, 2007). The severe hardship
that was experienced during the post-war austerity
regime is remembered—and even celebrated—for
the ‘blitz spirit’ that was cultivated at this time
(Calder, 1969, 1992). Given the current need for
stringency in budgets, it is perhaps unsurprising to
find nostalgic sentiments about being ‘in this together’ used to mobilize the public around the
need for strenuous action to protect government
solvency and to gain political support for the public expenditure cuts and tax raises necessary to
address the growing national debt (the UK government borrowed £163.4 billion in the financial year
2009–2010) (Gilmore, 2010). From being first
linked to the Conservative Party’s projection of
an era of ‘responsible politics’ during their time
in opposition, austerity is now being used to usher
in the ‘Big Society’ policies of the Conservative–
Liberal Democrat coalition (Wheeler, 2010).
Yet the ability of the coalition government’s austerity paradigm to address the contemporary problems of an unstable economic system is open to
question. The recession brought on by the financial
crisis was driven by a collapse in confidence and
consumer demand (Convery, 2009). Following a period of general optimism about the economy in the
UK in which the escalation of house prices served
to discourage saving and increase consumption, the
2008–09 downturn saw the Bank of England cut
interest rates to a historic low and move to support
credit markets. Whereas previous recessions prompted measures to balance budgets in the face of
a sinking economy, the former Labour government
responded to the recession by instead allowing deficits to rise. This novel approach was quickly
claimed a success with the Office of National Statistics declaring the end of recession in the last three
months of 2009 (Seager, 2010). Since then, however, the rapid return to hard money and balancedbudget orthodoxy under the newly established coalition government is argued to risk not only the end
economy recovery but also a relapse. With the legacy of the initial slump manifest in high levels of
unemployment in which women and young people
suffer disproportionately (Stewart, 2011), the Comprehensive Spending Review of October 2010
which outlined plans to raise taxes and cut spending
as a means of expanding the economy and improving business confidence is in danger of pushing the
UK into a deflationary trap. As Krugman (2010)
posits, short-run fiscal austerity in the face of a depressed economy does not reassure investors (indeed the recent experience of Greece, Ireland, and
Portugal suggests otherwise). Thus, what is needed,
according to this perspective, is not belt-tightening,
but further spending.
The need for active demand management at times
of recession has long been advocated (following
Keynes, 1936) as a means of enhancing social cohesion and providing economic stability for citizens.
Indeed, government intervention and stimulation of
357
MacLeavy
the economy was a central part of the model of economic growth in the post-war period (Clarke, 2010).
As the Great Depression of the 1930s showed, capitalism is an imperfectly instituted system—prone to
failure if left wholly unregulated. Hence the creation
of the welfare state and the post-war planned economy was intended to fight unemployment and improve household income levels as a means of
instituting a series of virtuous circuits of output, productivity, consumption and economic growth. This
post-war consensus was based on the principles of
full (male) employment, the maintenance and extension of a raft of social security measures, extensive
industrial and labour market intervention, social
and spatial redistribution and demand-side macroeconomic management, all of which evolved under
conditions of complex mutual dependence with the
dynamics of the Fordist economic expansion (Tickell
and Peck, 2003). As an approach, it was successful in
laying the foundations of an era of relative prosperity
in the 1950s and 1960s in which most of the British
public were claimed to have ‘never had it so good’
(cf. Macmillan, 1957).
The pursuit of a Keynesian response to the present economic situation (where the risk of depression
has become manifest from the lowering of interest
rates to almost zero, removing the traction of conventional monetary policy to stimulate the private
sector) runs counter to the neoliberal theory that has
dominated economic policy over the past 30 years.
Framed as a series of short-term emergency measures, the government consensus is that there will be
a return to the neoliberal, free-market, privatized
world as soon as possible (Peck et al., 2009). Certainly, there appears no prospect of reassembling
the state architecture in order to mobilize and allocate social resources to achieving public goods such
as reducing gender and class inequality resulting
from unemployment, time- and skills-related underemployment and a lack of economic autonomy for
carers, or making the transition to a green economy
(Catney and Doyle, 2011; Epstein, 2010; Fawcett
Society, 2009). This is arguably because the global
financial crisis has been understood—politically at
least—as a crisis of the debt and credit system as
opposed to a crisis that pertains to the neoliberal
358
state architecture underpinning contemporary patterns of living and working and which has the
effect of eroding community and solidarity bonds
(Harvey, 2009).
Neoliberalism as a form of social, political and
economic regulation was (unevenly) developed
under the Thatcher and Major governments of the
1980s and 90s and later triangulated with social democratic principles in the ‘Third Way’ approach of
New Labour (in power from 1997 to 2010) (see
Giddens, 1998). Under the Conservative watch, the
orientation of state power towards the extension and
reproduction of market(-like) rule was used to support a general shift in ideology towards greater individual responsibility and a reduction in universal
welfare provision (Tickell and Peck, 2003). This continued under New Labour as the social welfarist principles of taxation, public spending and government
borrowing and redistribution were displaced by individualist policy discourse. Labour’s political strategy promoted economic growth through the creation
of stable macro-economic conditions—in particular,
the establishment of non-inflationary (slow) growth,
a low taxation/low public-spending posture, resistance to deficit spending and government borrowing.
It also employed supply-side social interventions to
enhance individual opportunity and social justice.
Although in rhetoric a break with the former Conservative governments was emphasized, the Labour
government crucially continued its predecessor’s approach to inflation control as a means of ensuring
higher growth and prosperity. Indeed, interest rate
policy and inflation targeting became the central
means for regulating the economy under New Labour
(Hobson and Mabbett, 2009).
In the wake of the financial crisis of 2007–08, the
limitations of monetary policy instruments were
revealed. The propensity of monetarism to create
trade in products or assets with inflated values
(resulting in an economic bubble) resulted in the
first run on a British bank since the 1866 and a near
collapse of the banking system a year later (Hobson
and Mabbett, 2009). Triggered by a liquidity shortfall in the USA, the financial crisis saw a sharp reduction in the general availability of loans and the
tightening of eligibility criteria for borrowers. This
UK coalition government’s welfare reform proposals
contributed to the failure of many businesses and
a significant decline in economic activity. It also
halted the model of rising consumption that had
been fuelled by increased levels of personal indebtedness (often achieved through borrowing against
rapidly growing housing equity) since the mid1990s. Because the ‘credit crunch’ fundamentally
altered the relationship between credit availability
and interest rates, the Bank of England was required
to implement an emergency programme of quantitative easing to avoid the risk of a deflationary spiral
(in which lower wages and higher unemployment
lead to a self-reinforcing decline in consumption). It
bought gilts from financial institutions, along with
a smaller amount of relatively high-quality debt
issued by private companies, which it used to offset
the reduction in private finance. This intervention
brought down the cost of borrowing, making it easier
and cheaper for companies to raise capital. It also
induced investors to switch to other investments,
such as shares, boosting their price and creating the
illusion of increasing wealth in the economy. In spite
of a massive investment of public money and the
assumption of a bigger role in organizing financial
institutions and markets than at any time in since the
middle of the 20th century, this enabled the UK
government to plot a rapid return to the status quo
ante of a hands-off public policy approach to the
financial sector (Epstein, 2010).
In the wake of these developments, the coalition
government’s austerity programme is being implemented. Augmenting long-standing intellectual arguments about the need to manage national affairs
(including social spending) with the object of enhancing competitiveness in a global market economy, it risks new and more intense forms of
segregation as it seeks to reduce the state mediation
of labour market outcomes. This is because the process of economic restructuring sees the downwards
homogenization of the quantity and remuneration of
male employment, inducing a rise in the number of
families claiming working tax credit on the basis of
a female sole or joint earner (Rubery, 2010). Indeed,
whilst the lack of access to benefits plus household
means testing accounted for women’s (voluntary)
withdrawal from the labour market and the growth
of workless households in the previous recession of
the 1980s (see Rubery, 1988), the working tax credit
system now places a premium on female employment in instances of male job loss. Reducing the
threshold and amount of working tax credit at a time
of downgrading public sector work where the majority of women are employed not only exacerbates the
effects of labour market (particularly public sector)
reconstruction but also creates a potential ‘double
whammy’ for families already hit by recessionary
layoffs in traditional male sectors of the economy, which has wider implications for reinforcing the long-standing North–South divide in the
UK (Hogarth et al, 2009; Stewart, 2011; see
Boushey, 2009 for a US comparison).1
Although the Big Society is coterminous with
extensive cuts, it does not represent a straightforward return to earlier Thatcherite policy. Instead,
the coalition’s emphasis on social action develops
the Third Way approach of New Labour but uses
a provocative critique of inequality and poverty in
Britain (both of which remained unchanged under
the former government) to garner support (Lister
and Bennett, 2010). The fact is that situations typical of a post-industrial labour market and changing
family structures are generally not well covered by
the activation policies in which a myth of voluntary
unemployment prevails. Yet emphasis is placed on
the need for the British public to fill the void created
by a now retreating state, rather than on the state to
develop new policies in response to the emergence
of new social risks. Prime Minister David Cameron
in his speeches calls for a revival of civil society as
a counterweight to the outcomes of laissez-faire economics, which became manifest first in the credit
crunch and then in the global recession (Cameron,
2007, 2008, 2009). In this, big government is
deemed to be a cause of problems such as poverty
because it undermines the personal and social responsibilities of citizens, leading to individualism.
There is little recognition of the possibility for austerity measures to undermine recent support for successful integration of paid work and everyday social
reproduction in which women continue to assume
the majority burden or the apparent incongruence
between the removal of assistance for new risk
359
MacLeavy
groups and the fact that these groups are now
expected to deliver improvements in living conditions under the coalition government’s plans.
Thus, the financial crisis represents a moment in
which the neoliberal preference for social policy
engendering self-reliance and market solutions,
which was progressed through intervention in the
field of active labour market policy and childcare
under New Labour, is being rearticulated through
the envisaged expansion of the civil society sector,
which is in many respects flawed (see also Castree,
2009; Peck et al., 2009).
Welfare Austerity: An End to
Modernization?
The UK coalition government’s conception of austerity is particularly significant in terms of its implications for the recent beneficiaries of welfare state
modernization. This includes younger people,
women and those with low skills who do not belong
to the traditional clientele of the post-war welfare
state but have benefitted from recent activation measures and financial incentives designed to make work
pay (Pascall and Lewis, 2004). Though ‘atypical’
patterns of labour market participation make them
vulnerable to a loss of welfare, these groups face
qualitatively different challenges as a result of welfare
reform, which inhibits their political mobilization.
Middle-class parents struggling to reconcile work
and family life will suffer a loss of income from lower
limits for tax credits, whilst unemployed single
parents face heightened expectations to participate
rather than withdraw from the paid labour market
whilst performing care. Yet middle-class women in
paid work are unlikely to join forces with lower class
women on welfare owing to a perception of unfairness in state provisions; namely that welfare recipients are getting time with their children, which
middle-class women performing paid labour market
roles are not (Jansson, 1997). Exacerbating the
gender and class effects of policy implementation,
those most at risk—the young, women and those with
low skills—tend to have reduced political influence
in terms of political participation, presence in political
bodies and government organizations or in labour
360
movements, which renders them less active in political campaigns than other social groups, or by historical comparison the working class would-bebeneficiaries of the welfare state in its formative years
(Bonoli, 2005).
In political discourse, the contemporary politics
of austerity alludes to the success of post-war governance in encouraging self-sufficiency at the same
time as securing improvements in material conditions for at risk groups (see Hinton and Redclift,
2009, for a discussion). The coalition’s case for
a revival of social action upholds the need to foster
autonomy rather than welfare dependency in order
to redress ‘spiralling’ state costs—including waste
from unproductive administration, inefficient targeting of programmes and poor service delivery
(DWP, 2010). It does so by ascribing a duty of care
to civil society and the voluntary sector. As the
proposed reductions in state spending will have
a disproportionate impact on those experiencing
new social risks and the organizations in which they
typically work in both paid and voluntary capacities, the possibility of growing social action in this
manner is far from certain. At the very least, it will
be a struggle to build networks of support when
civil society and voluntary sector organizations
are at their lowest ebb. The increased complexity
of people’s lives means that fewer citizens can meet
the time demands of volunteering for community
organizations (de Graaf, 2003). Moreover, government funding cuts mean redundancies for paid staff
in many organizations. Efforts to build solidarity
bonds must therefore countenance the privatization
of people’s lives and do this at a time of economic
hardship, when research indicates that people volunteer less (Scott, 2010). As a consequence, the
coalition government has been charged with reifying ‘‘community above and beyond state agency,
all the while forgetting the irony of a government
making demands of a stressed and fractured social
bios to reform and change itself’’ (ibid: 135).
In contrast to the coalition’s proposals, the wartime imposition and success of rationing and
self-sufficiency goals was facilitated by the state injunction to prevent the exploitation of the weakest
members of an unequal society: the working class.
UK coalition government’s welfare reform proposals
Having experienced the deprivations of war, the British public expected the resources of the state to be
used to redress gross inequality by ensuring the fair
distribution of scarce goods. Whereas pre-war efforts
to relieve poverty were based on ‘charitable mentalities’, a new notion of citizenship entitlement was
developed that for the first time saw redistribution
on the grounds of need (Hartman, 2005). The era
of rationing that began with the enforced austerity
of Churchill’s coalition government and continued
through the pronouncements of the Beveridge report
up to the end of the post-war shortages was thus
antecedent to the development of the welfare state
around the male breadwinner. Although problematic
in terms of increasing women’s economic dependence on their partner and reinforcing the gender
roles forged around the single earner family model,
this helped to reduce class and geographical inequality in the period 1945–1975.
Facilitated by new class allegiances, the desire for
government interventions to improve equity in consumption following the World War II paved the way
for the individual consumer-based policy discourses
that, in turn, disrupted the traditional relationships
between citizen aspirations and the value schemes
of broad social groups. The legacy of rationing was
a model of rising consumption in which goods such
as clothing and furniture were for the first time framed
as market opportunities (Hinton and Redclift, 2009).
As increasing disposable income allowed for enhanced personal consumption rather than saving,
the injunction to spend incrementally secured a
platform of support for neoliberal policy instruments.
The rise of personal ‘lifestyle’ agendas of economic
and social interests meant that, for many, the sources
of identity and the concerns of politics originated at
home, far removed from the national and collective
concerns. As labour market changes and family
developments brought an end to the period of full
male employment and sustained economic growth,
the principles on which the welfare state was founded
came under scrutiny. With increasing numbers of
middle-class females entering the paid labour market
the expectation for all women to work outside the
home became, at the very least, more tenable.
Coinciding with and corroborating the feminization
of large parts of the labour force, a new set of arrangements for the transfer of state resources was proposed
in which all claimants identified as capable of work
were expected to work or prepare for employment
(Driver and Martell, 2002). Under New Labour, this
saw the removal of the right to care from workingclass mothers on the basis that such work is not as
socially productive as waged labour, even if this takes
the form of caring or domestic employment that is
completed outside the home (McDowell 2001, 2005).
The current age of welfare austerity continues
and extends the trajectory of welfare reform instigated by New Labour. Former Prime Minister Tony
Blair introduced a series of workfare-style reforms
to remodel the post-war system of universal benefits
following the election to power of his Party. Notably, Blair sought to make state support conditional
on a labour market input (DWP, 2002, 2004, 2006,
2008). New rules for benefit claimants were aimed
at tackling ‘worklessness’ and comprised two key
components: ‘welfare-to-work’ and a series of
measures aimed at making work pay. Welfare-towork began during Labour’s first term with the
introduction of the suite of ‘New Deals’ for the
Unemployed. The New Deals require welfare recipients to undertake education, training or work experience in return for the payment of Jobseeker’s
Allowance (see DWP, 2004, for a full description).
The New Deals were gender sensitive to the extent
that they were designed to address rising levels of
unemployment amongst young males, linked to the
crisis of masculinity and male-normed employment
in the era of post-industrialization (McDowell,
2003). As a result, women’s issues were given short
shrift because the feminized labour market with its
flexible work patterns, low pay and low status employment was perceived to be readily accessible
(and acceptable) to women (MacLeavy, 2007). In
Labour’s second term, the condition to work in
exchange for benefits was further extended from
jobseekers to the economically inactive through
the Pathways to Work programme, which targeted
new claimants of Incapacity Benefit. Pathways to
Work was less prescriptive than the New Deals in
that it required participants to attend work focused
interviews but did not mandate participants to apply
361
MacLeavy
for or accept specific jobs. The Employment and
Support Allowance, which replaced Pathways to
Work in 2008, also includes this condition. Alongside welfare-to-work, the introduction of a National
Minimum Wage and the Working Family Tax
Credit (now Working Tax Credit) were brought in
to bolster the supply-side reforms. In seeking to
guarantee the income returns of employment were
at least equivalent to the state welfare payments
made to claimants actively seeking work, they buttressed the low-wage labour market.
In labour market and welfare policy pronouncements made ahead of the 2010 General Election, the
opposition Conservative Party subscribed to the
anti-welfarism of New Labour. Indeed, Party Leader
David Cameron decreed that worklessness is in part
a supply side problem with individual cultural roots
(Crisp et al., 2009). Reiterating the notion that entitlement to benefits is not automatic but confers responsibilities to look for work, the Conservatives proposed
tougher sanctions for welfare claimants that refused to
accept a reasonable job, with a third refusal leading to
a 3-year ban on entitlement to out-of-work benefits
(Conservative Party, 2010). This was more punitive
than the existent measures to address unemployment,
as well as the Labour Party’s election pledge to withdraw benefits for 4 weeks or mandate participation in
workfare activities in response to repeated job refusals
(Labour Party, 2010). But in spite of minor differences in emphasis, the general election campaigns
served to demonstrate that the project of welfare reform had gained considerable cross-party momentum.
The coalition government’s welfare reform proposals are largely informed by the pre-election pronouncements of the Conservatives and represent
political continuity rather than change. Nevertheless, important distinctions in the role of welfare
austerity in supporting families may be observed.
While the Labour Party did not ascribe the state
with a central role in promoting marriage, the coalition government’s diagnostic analysis of poverty
manifests a concern for the relationship between
family breakdown and economic dependence.
Extending the Labour position that unemployment
is a cultural phenomenon best tackled through activation and employment incentives, Prime Minis362
ter David Cameron has built a case for welfare
reform as a means of reversing a rise in family
breakdown and lone parenthood, as well as ‘poor’
parenting (Lister and Bennett, 2010). Helping more
people into work, he argues, will lead to a reduction
in material poverty, which will ease the financial
pressures on families that can lead to relationship
break-ups (Cameron, 2010). Added to this, the increased numbers of working-class women in employment will reduce the numbers of children
receiving home care that is not as socially or educationally beneficial as ‘professional’ nursery care.
The implication here is that activation policies such
as the New Deals are both economically and socially beneficial. As the strain of managing poverty
is lifted through the receipt of employment income,
family tensions are eased and parental capacity may
be improved. In addition, should the uptake of employment require professional childcare, then the
children of poor (that is inadequate) parents may
benefit from the additional superior care and support provided by minders or nursery staff whilst
their parents undertake paid work outside the home.
The allotment of state resources to encouraging
work through these programmes serves to discipline citizens in politically and economically expedient ways. By attributing the poverty that yields
family breakdown, lone parenthood and poor parenting to individual behaviour, David Cameron
downplays the impact socio-economic structural
factors have on personal and familial well-being,
as well as the propensity for austerity measures to
increase pressure on groups most vulnerable to new
social risks. This sidesteps the low rewards for
many low-skilled and part-time workers, as well
as the ongoing difficulties for women in balancing
work and care, which leads working-class women
to retreat from the labour market and claim state assistance and also contributes to high levels of work–
life conflict for working single parents and dual earner
households. Though arguments about welfare dependency infer that eventually all forms of state assistance
will be rescinded, the successful implementation of
workfare requires an active role for the state in underwriting the economy and creating the conditions
appropriate for its redevelopment. Austerity, in this
UK coalition government’s welfare reform proposals
sense, provides a means of legitimating the coalition
government’s arrangements to expand programmes to
orientate state assistance towards work, which
increases levels of state control over welfare recipients’ lives, at the same time as dampening public
expectations regarding citizenship entitlements.
Austerity: A Feminist Critique
Women as a group are particularly reliant on benefits and tax credits as key social protection. This is
a legacy of government reforms emergent in the
period of post-war austerity, in which provisions
for social security were developed in line with an
assumption of male breadwinner full employment.
In the trente glorieuses, much child and eldercare
was provided within the family and the issue of
whether the established gender roles promoted a fair
distribution of opportunities was low on the political agenda. Indeed, for several years, the widow’s
pension remained the only important programme that
was either explicitly or de facto directed towards
women in the UK (Bonoli, 2005). While the post1975 transformation of the welfare state in response
to the demands of emerging groups—particularly
women’s rights—was successful in establishing a dual
worker model, it failed to fully resolve the horizontal
and vertical segregation of the labour market or invoke a rebalancing of labour performed within the
home. The expansion of maternity provisions and
collective care services facilitated greater entry to
the labour market for women, but did not resolve
all barriers to their employment or the unequal
rewards from paid work. As a result, women remain
over-represented in low-paying occupations and continue to fulfil the majority of part-time employment
posts (Scott et al., 2010).
The disadvantaged labour market position of
women gives rise to a norm of primary (male) fulltime employment, supported by a secondary (female)
wage, which is evident in the priority afforded to
male employment in UK welfare-to-work programmes and tax credit provisions. It also forms
the basis of coalition government’s plans to introduce
a single welfare payment with only one allowed
earnings disregard per household (termed ‘universal
credit’). The lack of a separate earnings disregard for
a ‘secondary earner’ arguably removes the incentive
for women in particular to remain in, or find, paid
work, which is the stated goal of welfare reform
(Oxfam, 2010). The disregard for the contribution
of female earnings to household income has its origin
in the marginality of female employment in the labour market and the lower rates of remuneration for
what has come to be considered ‘women’s work’. In
the latter part of the 20th century, a gradual ‘feminization’ of the large parts of the economy occurred as
the introduction of new technology led to the abolition or export of many of the jobs on which the core
working class had relied for security and good living
standards. As this produced new trends in earnings
inequality and labour market instability, it weakened
the (male) working class who were the mainstay of
the welfare state at its inception. The insecure nature
and quality of work that had pertained primarily to
female employment up to this point spread to other
sections of the economy that were the mainstay of
white males, resulting in employment fluctuations
that caused a dramatic rise in the cost of income
protection borne by the Keynesian welfare state.
New state programmes directed at cost-efficiency
and responsiveness were introduced manifesting
a concern to encourage active labour market participation both through welfare-to-work restrictions on
unemployment and early retirement entitlements, and
through support from advisers, training and makework-pay wage subsidy (Lødomel and Trickey,
2001). These were targeted in the first instance at
out-of-work men, particularly young men struggling
to find work in an economy suffering job cuts in areas
of traditionally high male employment such as
manufacturing (McDowell, 2005). The associated
impacts of economic restructuring such as the expansion of low status of work for women in the collective
care services were not seen to warrant the same level
of political intervention even though they acted to
limit availability (of mothers in particular) for paid
work. Consequently, when such programmes reorientating state assistance towards work were rolled out to
other groups including lone parents, their provisions
failed to recognize women’s unequal starting points in
the labour market, their concentration in certain
363
MacLeavy
low-paid industries, or their typically higher levels of
responsibility for care and domestic tasks (MacLeavy,
2007). These all serve as barriers to female employment and further inhibit the rewards of paid employment for women.
In an age of welfare austerity, the need to recognize and consider the articulations between gender,
the tax and benefit system, and the provisions of
employment, childcare and eldercare policy is
especially important. Whilst the Big Society discourse makes frequent reference to the virtues of
a (feminized) conception of care, affording priority
to paid work can only be effective in creating a more
gender equal society and reducing poverty if
additional measures are put in place to overcome
the barriers to women’s entry to, and progression in,
the labour market. Indeed, the likely consequence
of the drive for self-sufficiency through employment is a return to the informal labour market for
many women. With increased numbers of women
now affected by redundancy brought about by cuts
in public spending, securing paid work outside the
home will be not only difficult but less financially
rewarding (a position which may be further underlined by the imposition of limits to child benefit and
the reduction of childcare subsidies). Rather than
accept low-grade jobs, in periods of hardship,
women have in the past been more likely to register
not as unemployed but as economic inactive
(Evans, 1998). This is in part because women’s
continued performance of an unequal amount of
labour in the home prompts a mental offsetting of
their (potential) earnings against the cost of ‘buying
in’ child and elder care, as well as work pertaining
to routine household chores (Oxfam, 2010). In such
instances, they suffer from an immediate loss of
economic autonomy, the diminished ability on labour market re-entry to negotiate rates for work that
are commensurate with their abilities and experience (as childrearing and housewifery are not economically valued), and as a direct result of both
these factors a low pension at retirement (Grant
et al., 2005). Though the tax credit system incentivizes female employment in instances of male redundancy in a manner that the benefit system of the
1980s did not (Rubery, 2010), the current recession
364
has in contrast to previous economic downturns hit
female jobs the hardest (Fawcett Society, 2009; Office of National Statistics recorded a 15-year high in
women claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance in April
2011 (474,400 claimants), see also Rowley, 2011).
In seeking to tackle the products of the financial
crisis by encouraging greater engagement with the
labour market at the same time as reducing state
funding for the principle sources of quality female
employment and support for female employees, the
coalition government’s attempts to reduce the UK’s
deficit constitute a backwards step for gender equality. While the government might expect the reduction and removal of subsidies for low-paid work
and/or costly childcare, along with the imposition
of tougher welfare-to-work measures that expand
the scope of individual responsibility for income
protection to enable or encourage women to deliver
the Big Society by replacing their paid labour with
unpaid labour through more voluntary action, it is
arguably more likely to result in a socially divisive
rise in unemployment and pockets of extreme disadvantage (Lister and Bennett, 2010). The 2001
Census recorded the highest proportions of caregivers in areas with higher than average levels of
deprivation and long-term illness. Carers in such
areas were themselves more likely to be in poor
health. There were also clear variations in care giving propensity by ethnic group (Young et al., 2005).
Austerity measures—though affecting both middleand lower class women—will be most keenly felt
by those living in areas of deprivation where geographical location, time and mobility constraints pertaining to familial responsibilities, low funds and
poor health combine to limit ability to look for work.
In affording priority to paid work in the consultation
document, 21st Century Welfare (DWP, 2010), the
coalition government does not take this into account.
Rather it identifies disincentives to work and the
complexity of the benefits and tax credits system as
key contributors to the disconnection observed between welfare recipients and work. As an approach,
its austerity regime ‘‘is essentially punitive and
betrays classic signs of ‘blaming the victim’ without
addressing underlying structural causes and barriers’’
UK coalition government’s welfare reform proposals
to sustainable and rewarding positions of employment (Lister and Bennett, 2010, 102).
Conclusion
By awarding priority to paid work over unpaid
reproductive and caring roles, the goal of contemporary welfare austerity is ostensibly to underwrite
the flexible labour market and manage the UK
population such that the fabric of society remains
intact in the context of challenges emergent from the
current recession. Certainly, the overall objectives of
reform—encouraging those who can to work, delivering a simplified system, reducing costs and removing perverse disincentives to paid employment—do
not purport to share economic risks across a wider
population, redistribute resources over the individual/family lifecycle and between generations and
balance taxation between those with and without
dependents in the manner of the post-war welfare
state. Rather they are designed to reduce the social
insurance and protection that was instituted by the
welfare state by forcing a substantial reduction in the
numbers of those receiving financial assistance.
Whilst a tailored benefits system has the potential
to enable moves into paid work and out of poverty
(see Barnes et al., 2008), the coalition government’s
proposals are, by contrast, in danger of reducing the
popular acceptance and trust of government because
they do not consider the impact of these reforms on
women as the sex most vulnerable to new social risks
owing to their dual and potentially conflicting, roles
in reproductive care and paid work. In this sense the
‘New Politics’ of austerity not only fails to take account of the inherent link between the issues of economic redistribution and gender inequality, it also
risks further embedding and exacerbating that linkage.
Yvette Cooper, the Shadow Foreign Secretary and
Shadow Minister for Equalities, has gone so far as
to argue that the coalition government’s proposals
‘‘represent the biggest reversals in opportunities
for women since the end of the first world war’’
(Guardian, 2010a; see also Guardian, 2010b).
Polemical as Cooper’s point may be, the force of
her argument points directly to the radical implications of austerity for women’s lives. Though labour
markets are becoming less gendered with men and
women in direct competition for jobs (although this
is happening relatively slowly and is not consistent
across occupations or sectors) state supports remain
necessary to facilitate women’s labour market entry,
as well as job retention and career progression. In
addition, as the division of labour within the household is not always shared equally between men and
women in couples, policy instruments that encourage
a fairer gender division of time spent in paid jobs in
the labour market against domestic work and care
duties ought to be explored as a supplement to state
investment in increasing (quality) employment, training and skills. Not only would this likely improve
contemporary living conditions for women but it
would reduce instances of time and skills-related underemployment, which yield economic benefits both
at the household and national scale.
Endnotes
1
I am grateful to Al James for this point.
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge Al James and a further anonymous reviewer for their critical reactions and suggestions to an earlier draft. Additional thanks are due to
Columba Peoples for his helpful discussions of many of
the issues raised in this paper.
References
Barnes, M., Lyon, N. and Millar, J. (2008) Employment
Transitions and Changes in Economic Circumstances
of Families with Children: Evidence from the Families
and Children Study (FACS). DWP Research Report
506. London: Corporate Document Services.
Bonoli, G. (2005) The politics of the new social policies:
providing crage against new social risks in mature welfare states. Policy and Politics, 33: 431–449.
Boushey, H. (2009) Gender and the Recession: Recession
Hits Traditionally Male Jobs Hardest. Washington,
DC: Center for American Progress.
Calder, A. (1969) The People’s War. London: Pimlico.
Calder, A. (1992) The Myth of the Blitz. London: Pimlico.
Cameron, D. (2007) Making British poverty history.
Speech to Chance UK, 16 October 2007.
Cameron, D. (2008) We are the champions of progressive
ideals, The Independent, 9 May 2008.
365
MacLeavy
Cameron, D. (2009) The big society. Hugo Young lecture, London, 10 November 2009.
Cameron, D. (2010) Supporting parents. Speech to
demos, 11 January 2010.
Castree, N. (2009) Crisis, continuity and change: neoliberalism, the left and the future of capitalism, Antipode,
41: 185–213.
Catney, P. and Doyle, T. (2011) The welfare of now and
the green (post) politics of the future, Critical Social
Policy, 31: 174–193.
Clarke, J. (2010) What crisis is this? Constructing business as usual in recession. Paper circulated for at University of Bristol Institute of Advanced Studies
Exploratory Research Seminar, ‘Governing After the
Crisis,’ Bristol, 9 September 2010.
Conservative Party (2010) Why We Think You Should
Vote for Us. Invitation to Join the Government of Britain. The Conservative Party Manifesto 2010, London:
Conservative Party.
Convery, P. (2009) Welfare to work—from special measures
to 80 per cent employment. Local Economy, 24: 1–27.
Crisp, R., Macmillan, R. and Robinson, D., et al. (2009)
Continuity or change: what a future conservative government might mean for regional, housing and welfare
policies, People, Place and Policy Online, 3: 58–74.
De Graaf, J. (2003) Take Back Your Time: Fighting
Overwork and Time Poverty in America. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler.
Driver, S. and Martell, L. (2002) Blair’s Britain. Cambridge: Polity Press.
DWP. (2002) Helping People into Employment. London:
Stationery Office.
DWP. (2004) Building on New Deal: Local Solution
Meeting Individual Needs. London: Stationery Office.
DWP. (2006) A New Deal for Welfare: Empowering
People to Work. London: Stationery Office.
DWP. (2008) More Support, Higher Expectations: The
Role of Conditionality in Improving Employment Outcomes. London: Stationery Office.
DWP. (2010) 21st Century Welfare. London: Stationery
Office.
Epstein, G. (2010) The David Gordon Memorial Lecture:
Finance without financiers: prospects for radical
change in financial governance, Review of Radical Political Economics, 42: 293–306.
Esping-Andersen, G. (1999) Social Foundations of Postindustrial Economies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Esping-Andersen, G. (2002) Why We Need a New Welfare State. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Evans, P. (1998) Why has the female employment rate
fallen so much in Britain? Bank of England Working
Paper 87, http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/workingpapers/wp87.pdf
Fawcett Society. (2009) Are Women Bearing the Brunt of
the Recession? London: The Fawcett Society.
366
Giddens, A. (1998) The Third Way: The Renewal of
Social Democracy. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Gilmore, G. (2010) Borrowing is £3bn less than expected—yet still hits a record high, Times, 23 April 2010, 54.
Grant, L., Yeandle, S. and Buckner, L. (2005) Working below potential: women and part-time work. Working Paper
Series 40. London: Equal Opportunities Commission.
Guardian. (2010a). Cuts will hit women twice as hard as
men, commons research shows. Guardian, 22 October
2010.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/oct/
22-cuts-women-spending-review?INTCMP=SRCH
Guardian. (2010b) The Fawcett Society takes the cuts
to court. Guardian, 22 October 2010. http://www.
guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/oct/22/yvette-cooper-fawcett-society-cuts?INTCMP=SRCH
Hartman, Y. (2005) In bed with the enemy: some ideas on
the connections between neoliberalism and the welfare
state, Current Sociology, 53: 57–73.
Harvey, D. (2009) The crisis and the consolidation of
class power: is this really the end of neoliberalism?
Counterpunch, 13–15 March 2009. http://
www.counterpunch.org/harvey 03132009.html
Hinton, E. and Redclift, M. (2009) Austerity and sufficiency: the changing politics of sustainable consumption. Politics and Development Working Paper Series,
Department of Geography, King’s College London Environment, 17, 1–22. http://www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/
sspp/geography/research/epd/working.html
Hobson, D. and Mabbett, D. (2009) UK economic policy
and the global financial crisis: paradigm lost? Journal
of Common Market Studies, 47: 1041–1061.
Hogarth, T., Owen, D. and Gambin, L., et al. (2009) The
Equality Impacts of the Current Recession. (Equality
and Human Rights Commission Research Report 47).
Warwick: Warwick Institute for Employment Research,
University of Warwick.
Jansson, B. (1997) The Reluctant Welfare State—American Social Welfare Policies: Past, Present and Future,
3rd edn. New York: The Haworth Press.
Keynes, J. M. (1936) General Theory of Employment,
Interest and Money. Cambridge: Macmillan.
Krugman, P. (2010) The third depression. The New York
Times Online, 27 June 2010. http://www.nytimes.com/
2010/06/28/opinion/28krugman.html
Kynaston, D. (2007) Austerity Britain: 1945–1951. London: Bloomsbury.
Labour Party. (2010) A New Generation for Change. The
Labour Party Manifesto 2010 London: Labour Party.
Lister, R. and Bennett, F. (2010) The new ‘Champion of
Progressive Ideals’? Cameron’s Conservative Party:
Poverty, Family Policy and Welfare Reform. Renewal,
18: 84–109.
Lødemel, I., Trickey, H. (eds) (2001). ’An Offer You
Can’t Refuse’: Workfare in International Perspective.
Bristol: Policy Press.
UK coalition government’s welfare reform proposals
MacLeavy, J. (2007) Engendering New Labour’s Workfarist Regime: exploring the Intersection of Welfare
State Restructuring and Labour Market Policies in the
UK. Gender, Place and Culture, 14: 721–743.
Macmillan, H. (1957) Speech by the Prime Minister to
Conservative Conference in Bedford, 20 July 1957.
McDowell, L. (2001) Father and Ford revisited: gender,
class and employment change in the new millennium,
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers,
24: 448–464.
McDowell, L. (2003) Redundant Masculinities? Employment Change and White Working-Class Youth.
Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
McDowell, L. (2005) Love, money, and gender divisions of
labour: some critical reflections on welfare-to-work policies in the UK, Journal of Economic Geography, 5: 365–
379.
OECD. (2010) Employment Outlook 2010: Moving Beyond the Jobs Crisis. Paris: Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development.
Oxfam. (2010) A Gender Perspective on 21st Century
Welfare Reform. Report for Oxfam GB by Janet Veitch
with assistance from Fran Bennett. London: Oxfam.
Pascall, G. and Lewis, J. (2004) Emerging gender
regimes and policies for gender equality in a wider
Europe, Journal of Social Policy, 33: 373–393.
Peck, J., Theodore, N. and Brenner, N. (2009) Postneoliberalism and its malcontents, Antipode, 41: 94–
116.
Rowley, E. (2011) Number of women on the dole reaches
15-year high, The Telegraph, 18 May 2011. http://
www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/jobs/8520417/Numberof-women-on-the-dole-hits-15-year-high.html
Rubery, J. (ed.) (1988) Women and Recession. London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Rubery, J. (ed.) (2010) Women and Recession (Routledge Revivals). London: Routledge.
Scott, J., Crompton, R. and Lyonette, C. (eds). (2010)
Gender Inequalities in the 21st Century: New Barriers
and Continuing Constraints. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Scott, M. (2010) Reflections on ‘The Big Society’,
Community Development Journal, 46: 132–137.
Seager, A. (2010) UK scrapes out of recession but growth
figure disappoints city. Guardian, 26 January 2010. http://
www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jan/26/uk-recessionover
Stewart, H. (2011) Job losses have hit women hardest.
Guardian, 14 April 2011. http://www.guardian.co.uk/
business/2011/apr/13/more-women-and-young-peopleout-of-work
Summers, D. (2009) Cameron talks of a ‘new age
of austerity’. Guardian, 26 April 2009. http://
www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/apr/26/davidcameron-conservative-economic-policy1
Taylor-Gooby, P. (2009) Political legitimacy and social
citizenship: a dilemma of austerity, Paper prepared for
the Social Policy Association Annual Conference,
June–July 2009.
Tickell, A. and Peck, J. (2003) Making global rules: globalization or neoliberalization? In Peck J., Yeung H.W.
(eds.). Remaking the Global Economy. London: Sage.
TUC (2009) Women and Recession. London: Trade
Union Congress.
Wheeler, B. (2010) Your cosuntry needs you, says David
Cameron. BBC News Online, 14 October 2010. http://
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11481223
Young, H., Grundy, E. and Kalogirou, S. (2005) Who
cares? Geographical variation in unpaid caregiving in
England and Wales: evidence from the 2001 Census,
Population Trends, 120: 23–34.
367