Spring Budget 2024: Taxation and Gender
Analysis, UK Budget Assessments, UK Policy Briefings
A pre-budget briefing from the Women’s Budget Group
Updated analysis: Early Years Education and Childcare funding shortfall
In March 2023, the Chancellor announced the expansion of funded childcare for children aged 9 months to 2 years from working families, with an investment of £4.2bn in 2025/26, once the roll-out of the policy is fully in place. With the information available at that...
Analysis
TOPICS
Spring Budget 2021: Women and employment during Covid-19
Mar 1, 2021 | Analysis, UK Policy Briefings
View and download the full briefing here. Key facts: Women are the majority of employees in industries with some of the highest Covid-19 job losses, including retail, accommodation and food services. Overall, more women than men have been furloughed across the UK, and...
Spring Budget 2021: Violence against women and girls
Mar 1, 2021 | UK Policy Briefings
View and download the full briefing here. Key points: Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) includes physical, sexual, psychological, emotional and financial abuse, stalking, and harassment and coercion, forced marriage, so-called honour-based violence and female...
Spring Budget 2021: Taxation and gender
Mar 1, 2021 | UK Policy Briefings
View and download the full briefing here. Key points: Tax is the necessary financial contribution that individuals and companies make to a well-functioning society. Women tend to benefit particularly from the public spending that tax can be used to finance. Given...
Spring Budget 2021: Social security, gender and Covid-19
Mar 1, 2021 | UK Policy Briefings
View and download the full briefing here. Key points: Women are more likely than men to rely on social security for a larger part of their income because of their generally lower earnings, longer lives and greater caring responsibilities. Some groups of marginalised...
Spring Budget 2021: Social care, gender and Covid-19
Mar 1, 2021 | UK Policy Briefings
View and download full briefing here. Key points: The need to reform the social care sector is long overdue. Decades of cuts, deregulation and privatisation have left the sector in crisis and ill-equipped to respond adequately to the Covid-19 pandemic. In addition,...
Spring Budget 2021: Maternity, paternity and parental leave
Mar 1, 2021 | UK Policy Briefings
View and download the full briefing here. Key points: UK maternity, paternity and parental leave policy design is based on an out-of-date model that does not encourage sharing of care between parents. Maternity leave provision is up to 52 weeks of leave, 39 of which...
Spring Budget 2021: Local government, gender and Covid-19
Mar 1, 2021 | Analysis, UK Policy Briefings
View and download the full briefing here. Key points: Women and girls rely disproportionately on services provided by local authorities because they do the majority of unpaid care work and therefore rely on local services to support themselves and their families....
Spring Budget 2021: Housing, gender and Covid-19
Mar 1, 2021 | Analysis, UK Policy Briefings
View and download the full briefing here. Key points: Women’s housing situation differs from that of men, and is generally poorer, in terms of affordability, ownership, safety and overcrowding. Housing is a known public health issue. Prior to the Covid-19 crisis, poor...
Spring Budget 2021: Household debt, gender and Covid-19
Mar 1, 2021 | Analysis, UK Policy Briefings
View and download the full briefing here. Key points: Before the coronavirus pandemic women, especially low-paid, disabled and Black, Asian and ethnic minority women, were more likely than men to be in debt: 61% of those getting into debt to purchase everyday...
Spring Budget 2021: Health inequalities and Covid-19
Mar 1, 2021 | UK Policy Briefings
View and download the full briefing here. Key points: The healthcare sector has been at the forefront of the fight against Covid-19. The pressures on the NHS have been immense and issues around funding and staff shortages have come to the fore. The pandemic hit after...
Spring Budget 2021: Pensions and Gender
Mar 1, 2021 | UK Policy Briefings
View and download the full briefing here. Key points: State pensions in the UK have been among the lowest in the OECD, nearly £40 per week less than the threshold of eligibility for the means-tested Pension Credit. The new Single Tier Pension is only just above the...
Spring Budget 2021: Education and gender
Mar 1, 2021 | UK Policy Briefings
View and download the full briefing here. Key points: A well-funded, high-quality public education system is vital to economic prosperity, as well as to reducing inequalities. With successive lockdowns and school closures widening gaps between disadvantaged pupils and...
Spring Budget 2021: Covid-19 and economic challenges for young women
Mar 1, 2021 | UK Policy Briefings
View and download full briefing here. Key points: Prior to the coronavirus outbreak and ensuing labour market shock, young women were already facing disadvantage in employment in a gender earnings gap (32.8 per cent for 18-21 age group and 19 per cent for 22-29 age...
Spring Budget 2021: Covid-19 and economic challenges for migrant women
Mar 1, 2021 | Analysis, UK Policy Briefings
View and download the full briefing here. Key points: Migrant women have been vital key workers during the current Covid-19 pandemic. Migrants are over-represented in care roles, for example 37% are registered nurses and 16% of the social care workforce are migrants....
Spring Budget 2021: Covid-19 and economic challenges for disabled women
Mar 1, 2021 | UK Policy Briefings
View and download the full briefing here. Key points: There are 14.1 million disabled people in the UK: 20% of men and 23% of women are disabled. Half of all people in poverty live in a household with at least one disabled person. Overall, 28% of disabled families...
Spring Budget 2021: Childcare, gender and Covid-19
Mar 1, 2021 | UK Policy Briefings
View and download the full briefing here. Key points: The childcare system in England was not fit for purpose and was failing to meet the needs of children, parents, and the economy prior to the onset of the coronavirus pandemic: Access to high-quality education and...
Spring Budget 2021 Pre-Budget Briefings
Mar 1, 2021 | UK Policy Briefings
Ahead of the Spring 2021 Budget, the following pre-budget briefings set out the gender impact of coronavirus on different groups of women and policies. They make recommendations for investments and policies to promote gender equality for women in all their diversity...
Submission to IPSA Consultation on Parental Leave
Feb 25, 2021 | Consultation Responses
The UK Women's Budget Group has made a submission to IPSA's consultation on creating an MP Parental Leave Cover Fund. IPSA is the body which regulates and administers MPs' staffing and business costs. You can read our submission here. You can read more about the...
Shared Parental Leave reform
Feb 18, 2021 | UK Policy Briefings
Access the briefing here Access the large print version of the briefing here. This briefing published jointly with Maternity Action UK sets out the current problems with the shared parental leave system in the UK today, and the impact that this has on gender-equality...
Pushed to More Precarity: The uneven impact of lockdowns on mothers and lower income parents
Feb 17, 2021 | Analysis, Reports
The lockdown efforts to contain the spread of coronavirus have affected everyone's lives. But the financial and economic impact of lockdowns has entrenched pre-pandemic inequalities. Our survey shows that the uneven impact of school closures, shutdown industries,...
Lessons Learned: Where Women Stand at the Start of 2021
Jan 26, 2021 | Reports
The Covid-19 pandemic has worsened the situation for many women in terms of health, employment and unpaid work, resulting in increased levels of poverty, debt and mental health deterioration. Violence and financial abuse against women and girls also continues to...
Distribution of Money within the Household and Current Social Security Issues for Couples in the UK
Jan 21, 2021 | UK Policy Briefings
Access the briefing here This briefing by Marilyn Howard and Fran Bennett provides a detailed insight into how money is distributed in a household and the implications for those on social security and experiencing spousal abuse. When it comes to dealing with money in...
WBG Budget Representation 2021
Jan 12, 2021 | Consultation Responses
Each year, HM Treasury consult civil society ahead of the Spring Budget. In 2021, our submission focuses on immediate action needed to mitigate inequalities in lockdown and then, urgent structural reform needed to recover from the coronavirus pandemic. View and...
Lockdown 2021: Immediate Actions Needed
Jan 5, 2021 | UK Policy Briefings
Download this briefing here. Based on the evidence from 2020 it is clear that the current lockdown, including school closures, will have significant and distinct consequences for different groups of women and men. This briefing summarises the immediate actions that...
Submission to HCLG Committee on The Spending Review and Local Government Finance
Dec 16, 2020 | Consultation Responses
December 2020
Submission to the HCLG Committee on the Planning System in England
Dec 9, 2020 | Consultation Responses
December 2020
Response to the Spending Review 2020
Dec 2, 2020 | UK Budget Assessments
'Austerity in place of ambition' View and download the full response here. Key points: Covid spending aside, this Spending Review was a de facto return to austerity for many government departments and local authorities. As in 2010, these are political not economic...
Covid-19 and Economic Challenges for Young Women
Nov 24, 2020 | UK Policy Briefings
A policy briefing from the Young Women’s Trust and Women’s Budget Group. View and download the full policy briefing here. Key facts: Prior to the coronavirus outbreak and ensuing labour market shock, young women were already facing disadvantage in employment in a...
Social Care, Gender and Covid-19
Nov 23, 2020 | UK Policy Briefings
View and download the full briefing here. Key points: WBG is in favour of a Universal Care Service that provides residential, domiciliary, and other forms of care, free at the point of delivery. It would have equal standing to the NHS. The need to reform the social...
Covid-19 and Economic Challenges for Disabled Women
Nov 23, 2020 | UK Policy Briefings
View and download the full briefing here. Key points: There are 14 million disabled people in the UK: 20% of men and 23% of women are disabled. Overall, 36% of households in the UK have a disabled person. 37.7% of disabled mothers have struggled to feed their...