A. Elementos de la infraestructura verde periurbana en espacios naturales

New Labour’s policies explicitly attempted to tackle child and pensioner

poverty, to get more people (especially women) into the labour market, and to ‘make work pay’ through tax credits and the minimum wage. These policies have already been evaluated in section 2.1. of the previous chapter. Here, their impact on women’s poverty will be discussed.

3.3.1 The mixed impact of New Labour’s policies

Despite New Labour’s clear commitment to tackle child poverty and to increase family incomes, there was no explicit policy focus on women’s poverty (Lister 2006), nor was there much attempt to improve the way it was measured in official statistics. In 2001 Rake concluded that a number of current government policies were actually detrimental to women. In particular, the dominance of men in The New Deal for Young People and the New Deal for the Unemployed led Rake to suggest gender bias, as significantly more resources went to these two New Deals than to the two dominated by women (The New Deal for Lone Parents and The New Deal for Partners of the Unemployed). The introduction of compulsory joint claims for Job Seekers Allowance was an attempt to shift expectations of women away from home-making and towards paid employment. But in reality women entering part time work on a low wage gained very little if their partner was unemployed; after the £10 earning disregard for Job Seekers Allowance, benefit was withdrawn by a pound for every pound earned (Rake 2001). Dean’s qualitative work in inner London concluded that many low income families were failing to benefit from the government’s ‘family friendly’ and tax credit policies (Dean, 2007). Childcare was fragmented, management reluctant to make allowances for family friendly working, there was wide spread anxiety and mistrust of the tax credits system and a lack of independent advice on benefits, tax credits and legal rights. Duncan and Smith (2002) drew attention to regional variations in the number of mothers in the labour market, ranging from

50% in Lancashire and parts of London to just 10% in the suburban south east. Newcastle, the study area of this PhD, comes roughly in the middle. They

suggested a number of historical and cultural reasons for these differences, and concluded that ‘gender cultures’, more than social policy or employment policy, were crucial: ‘people’s own gender expectations, negotiations and demands about what being a woman or a man is, and what they should do in

consequence’ (31). Thus a mother’s decision to enter the labour market or to remain outside it is influenced by a complex array of factors which are not all amenable to policy change.

Despite these many criticisms, government policies aimed at tackling child poverty (section 2.1.2) did place substantially more resources into the hands of women, especially mothers (Bradshaw et al 2003, Gregg et al 2005). The Child Tax Credit, introduced in 2003, was paid directly to the main carer,

predominantly the mother (HM Treasury 2001a). This resulted from extensive lobbying and was a victory for organisations concerned with women’s poverty (HM Treasury 2001a). Child Benefit was substantially increased, around 25% in real terms between 1997 and 2008, and this has always been paid directly to the mother. In 2008, Child Tax Credit and Child Benefit together gave almost £6,000 a year to a mother of two children who qualified for the full amount. In

addition, both Income Support and Job Seeker’s Allowance were increased above inflation. Maternity and paternity provision were substantially improved, the National Child Care Strategy was introduced and SureStart created, specifically targeted at poorer mothers. One result of the many women-into-work measures outlined in section 2.1.4 was ‘the highest ever levels of labour force

participation being achieved by married women and increased participation by lone parents’ (Bradshaw et al 2003, 32), with over three quarters of working-age adults in paid employment, and the numbers in paid employment growing by 1.1% per annum for a decade (Gardiner & Millar 2006). Two thirds of the 1.5 million workers benefiting from the Minimum Wage were women (BBC 2008). Working Tax Credits and the National Minimum Wage also benefited women more than men, as they accounted for a greater proportion of the low-paid. The increase in employed lone parents was particularly marked, from 45% in 1997 to 56% in 2008 (ONS 2008). As they were the poorest group in the population, and a

group dominated by women, this was a real step forward in reducing women’s poverty.

One major attempt was also made to deal head-on with the disadvantaged position of women in the workplace; The Women and Work Commission created in 2004. Its task was to establish what polices could be implemented to abolish the gender pay gap within 25 years. The Commission’s final report, Shaping a

Fairer Future, restated the nature of the gender pay gap and its causes, and

made a number of major recommendations on reforms to schooling, training, regeneration and development policies, career guidance, the New Deals, flexible working practices, job sharing, part time work, the social care sector and child care, and the implementation of the Gender Equality Duty on public bodies (Women and Work Commission 2006). Women’s poverty was not explicitly dealt with, but as women’s poor position in the labour market is one of the key determinants of their poverty, any narrowing of the gender pay gap is sure to result in reducing women’s poverty.

Nevertheless, as there is no national measure of women’s poverty, it is

impossible to establish clear figures on the overall impact of the many policies outlined on low income women; it was argued in Chapter Two that only a proper gender impact assessment would reveal the true impact. Moreover, where

benefits have occurred for women, these have largely stemmed from the policy drive to increase the number of people in work and to reduce child poverty, rather than an explicit desire to improve the lot of women (Lister 2006). In a scathing attack on the gender impact of government employment policy, Fagan, Grimshaw & Rubery (2006), argued that the tax and benefit reforms were aimed at raising the employment rate not on any broader concern for equal

opportunity. This was especially true for the ‘making work pay’ agenda for low- paid workers. Despite The Women and Work Commission, gender equality issues remained at the margin.

3.3.2 Towards the individualisation of benefits?

The over-representation of women among the poor described above (section 3.2) has led some feminist authors to argue that policies should be implemented

which secure incomes for women independently of men. Jenkins, for example, formulated a specifically feminist concept of poverty based on an ‘individual right to a minimum degree of potential economic independence’ (1991, 464). A wide range of academic literature has dealt with this concept of

‘individualisation’ (Beck & Beck-Gernsheim 2002). A fully individualised benefit system would make the individual rather than the family the basis of both assessment and payment (Millar 2003). Traditionally, almost all welfare regimes (outside of Scandinavia) have calculated benefits at the household level and have paid those benefits directly to the male partner (Daly & Rake 2003), but in Britain over recent years an increasing proportion of state transfers have been paid to the female partner (mother). With Child Benefit, Working Tax Credit, Child Tax Credit and Childcare Tax Credit this could now amount to well over £6,000 a year for a mother in a low income family. This is still not fully

individualised, however, as state transfers are calculated on the basis of family income and family characteristics, meaning the mother potentially remains dependent for her entire income on a combination of her partner’s earnings and the ages of her children. Currently there are no plans to change the family as the unit of assessment. Moreover, these benefits are intended to secure the material well-being of the children in the household, not for the mother herself; she is effectively the conduit of this money between the state and her children. On the other hand, individualisation has come to the fore in Government labour market policies, where each member of a couple is encouraged to find a job. This has been made explicit in the case of the New Deal for the Partners of the Unemployed and in the move to joint claims for Job Seekers Allowance

introduced in 2002, and is also implicit in a number of policies aimed at getting more mothers into the labour market discussed in Chapter Two (Millar 2003). For the foreseeable future, it seems Britain will have a confusing mixture of

individualised and family based polices (Lewis & Bennett 2004). For most mothers, state transfers are calculated on a family basis but paid on an

individual basis. This may create considerable confusion for mothers as to who is ‘entitled’ to gain from the money: them or their children (section 4.3.4). On the other hand, this situation certainly reflects the reality of modern women’s lives; neither fully dependent on their partner for financial support, nor fully

independent (Lewis 2001). Although talk of benefit individualisation has been muted in academic literature, especially in the last five years, it remains

important when considering how state transfers are channelled into households and in how household members view the role of those transfers.