FiLiA’s view on the planned cuts to disability benefits
The Government has announced £5bn of cuts to disabled people’s benefits. One of our volunteers affected by this announcement has this powerful and devastating message for the Government.
By Gemma Aitchison
It takes girls longer to get diagnosed with disability than boys, affecting their education and mental health long term. Our health system is based on the white male medical model and that includes the criteria for diagnosis.
This leads to girls getting worse education, leading to worse employment opportunities. With employers being completely tokenistic, and posts often inaccessible given the push to reduce remote working, this of course impacts their economic situation, with worse life outcomes for them.
Then once they've grown into women, the medical model dismisses women as exaggerating pain ‒ simply walking hysterical hormone sacks fainting at the slightest breeze.
Maybe they grow up and find someone to love and support them? But abuse and exploitation of disabled women figures show they are more vulnerable and have fewer services available for them. There are less shelters; they are less able to just quickly jump on a free train and escape and risk losing the services and medication they need.
Women who go onto be mothers are constantly expected to walk the changing tightrope of proving they are competent enough to be mothers or risk being deemed not being capable or lacking capacity as a mother. At the same time, they needing to be struggling enough to meet the criteria for services.
Some disabilities are genetic, and most unpaid carers are women. Their caring responsibilities mean they are unable to get paid work, but carers allowance is around £70 a week. Women are no strangers to working hard yet being the poorest. Austerity hit women hardest and we see the same with the cost-of-living crisis ‒ not to mention over a millennia of women's unpaid labour being relied upon yet dismissed.
So disabled women and girls are failed by everyone but the women who step up to be their carers to the own detriment of those very women. They are more at risk of abuse, poverty and discrimination for something that is not in fact a choice. For something they have to battle to have recognised and, once it is, it is done so resentfully by a welfare state looking to trip them up.
Now the proposed changes to the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) will affect disabled women again. Giving women less ways to able to be independent of abuse and exploitation, it will affect disabled girls and their female carers. They are already the tick box often ignored, the afterthought, but now they are being told what their narrative is.
They aren't simply falling down the cracks. They are being plastered over to muffle their voices. Because the real stories of these women aren't convenient.
FiLiA joins disability, poverty and women's organisations in raising alarm at the Government's announcement to cut £5bn from disabled people’s benefits. As Dr Mary-Ann Stephenson of the Women's Budget Group notes, ‘These cuts will have a devastating impact on… Disabled women and carers – who already face significant barriers in accessing support and employment opportunities. Cutting their incomes will only exacerbate these challenges, leaving them without the essential help they need.’ Governments have choices on how to balance the books, but with these policy changes they are choosing to make life worse for some of the most vulnerable and poorest in society. The Government is set to release a full assessment on the impact of the changes next week, in or after the Spring Statement, revealing exactly how many people will be affected and how. Figures from 2024 show that almost 55% of those receiving the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) are women and 58% of carers are women (60% among those caring for more than 50 hours per week). Disabled women face specific and particular impacts: one in two disabled women experience domestic violence and disabled women are almost twice as likely to experience economic abuse than non-disabled women.
The Government is now consulting on ‘proposals to reform health and disability benefits and employment support’. This includes understanding what support the Government could provide disabled people, how the healthcare system could be improved, what employers should be doing to support disabled people, and more. FiLiA is committed to amplifying the voices of grassroots women and wants to include perspectives of women across our networks in our response to this consultation. We will shortly share plans of how we will be engaging with women across the FiLiA legacy cities and online to do so. If you are interested in sharing your views, please register your interest by joining the FiLiA Women's Assembly or by emailing: womensassembly@filia.org.uk.