Living In and With Austerity

Abstract

The chapter explores how austerity measures — the consequences of welfare reform, increased levels of debt, increased pressure on household income and wages, and changes to employment — have differently affected women's everyday lives. Austerity has real outcomes and gendered social effects. It is this symbiotic relationship — the role of the state in shaping women's experiences — that the remainder of the chapters of this book investigate. Highlighting how changes to employment and living standards are impacted by class and other intersecting forms of social difference, this chapter demonstrates how austerity measures intensify and extend existing forms of inequality. Ultimately, this chapter exposes how women are certainly not 'all in this together,' showing that the gendered effects of austerity are not experienced equally; they can be felt as minimal, significant or extreme. It exposes the details on how women's experiences of the present are shaped by pre-existing social markers, particularly class, but also by 'race,' parenthood, health and disability; and how these experiences are being further exacerbated by, and within, austerity Britain.