To ensure economic recovery for women, we need Plan F

Plan F: a feminist strategy for economic recovery to ensure a balance and sustainable economic recovery that includes women, enables them to be financially autonomous, and supports gender equality, we need policies to create a caring economy in which:

• paid care workers (who are mainly women) get better training, better pay, better employment rights, better job security
• unpaid carers looking after family and friends (who are mainly women) get better support from public services and social security benefits, enabling them to take paid employment, if they wish to do so
• both private sector and public sector employers recognise a duty of care for their employees, paying them a living wage, and pro-actively reducing the gender wage gap, including reducing job segregation

To help achieve this, government needs to:

• invest in the development of high quality care services
• stop the roll-out of cuts to public services- by end of 2013, Institute of Fiscal Studies estimates that only 31% of planned cuts will have been achieved
• reform Universal Credit to ensure that women with employed partners gain from earning – as it stands their family will lose payments at a very high rate if they start earning, leaving little gain
• raise the minimum wage to a living wage
• repeal social security measures that are destroying women’s links with their families and communities, such as the bedroom tax and the benefits cap
• raise more tax revenue from wealthy people and companies
• support investment in social housing rather than
  subsidize lending for mortgages, which is
  creating a new house price bubble in London and
  Southeast.

Read and download the full briefing here.