Analysis: Little to cheer for Scots women facing inequality

GEORGE Osborne’s Budget speech contained little that can be applauded by the women of Scotland. There is no room for any complacency with regard to women’s deteriorating position within Scotland’s labour market.

Women’s unemployment has doubled – currently at 8.3 per cent – since in the start of the recession in 2009.

The UK government’s Budget presents a real challenge to gender equality in Scotland.

Tax changes announced in the Budget will do little to improve the position of women in Scotland’s economy. Women make up a disproportionate number of the lowest earners who will gain from increases in the personal tax allowance. However, it is difficult to see how such tax measures will benefit those women who are losing their jobs at a rate of 240 per day, as indicated by the latest figures.

The reforms to child benefit, first outlined in the June emergency Budget, were one of the most serious attacks on women’s economic independence in the government’s spending plans.

In many households, child benefit is often the only source of independent income available to the primary care giver, most often the mother.

While the Chancellor has raised the threshold at which the cuts to child benefit kick in, this Budget was a missed opportunity to rethink the planned changes thus reversing a significant attack on the economic independence of many mothers.

• Ailsa McKay is professor of economics at Glasgow Caledonian University