WORKSHOP: Why are the cuts a feminist issue?

….Because the way cuts will impact on working-class women. For instance, job cuts will disproportionately affect women as we make up 65% of the public sector workforce (often in the lowest paid grades).
….Because financial support and services for children will be seen as “extras”. Billions of pounds are being cut from child benefit, tax credits, maternity support, Sure Start and other Children’s Services.
…And for many other reasons.
This workshop will start with an overview of government plans.
This workshop will ask particpants to think about and discuss the myriad ways in which cuts affect women. We are affected as “frontline workers”. But also because we are patients, refugees and survivors of domestic abuse. What will “redundancy” mean for women? Part-time jobs at ever lower rates of pay? What happens to our lives when bosses scrap rights such as “flexible working”?
Women from the RMT union who are fighting job cuts on London Underground will discuss with us what is at stake in their industrial dispute. They want to stop job cuts which could also worsen the inequalities they face in their working lives.
All politicians like to talk hypocritically about making the cuts “fair”; they might even identify cuts that impact disproportionately on women as being unfair. But that does not mean, as is implied, that there should be more cuts for men, or different kinds of cuts! How do we criticise those arguments? What are our alternatives and how can we promote that alternative in the wider movement against the cuts?