Universal credit & domestic abuse

[QuarksandLeptons]

Good article in the Financial Times

www.ft.com/content/aaaaf2fa-4c63-11e8-8a8e-22951a2d8493

Brief summary:
10% of the households receiving the benefit are couples. The new system puts it all into one account which means that in the event of it going into the account of a controlling & abusive partner, the abusive partners can end up not sharing the money, leaving women and children vulnerable. There are cases documented of women and children going hungry and not having money for nappies or sanitary items.
Worse, women & children end up being forced to stay in dangerous circumstances because they don’t have the money to leave.

How can changes like these be made to the system without thinking through the real life consequences to huge numbers of women & children? Surely, this would have been flagged up if relevant women’s groups had been asked to comment on proposed changes

I feel like I failed the formatting initiation on that previous comment - but I am over trying to morph myself to some bloody developer's formatting fetishes and I bet they were bloody male

I feel a bit better now getting that out but wine is called for

Woman - I don’t know but I suspect this will be largely irrelevant because of the widespread acceptance that austerity is a legitimate aim which overrides social welfare. The conflict between monetary policy and social welfare, which was won long ago by proponents of neoliberal economics, in the EU is one of the many reasons certain parts of the left wanted to leave the EU.

Oh and we haven’t ratified it

Apparently we are planning to ratify it only when we have decided that the uk complies with all of it’s provisions.

Great investigate work womanformerlyknownaswoman

I’d happily chip in for a legal case

It’s pointless right now as it is not ratified by the UK.

The COE is technically a different organisation (though much is interrelated) to the EU and once ratified this convention would apply in a way similar to the ECHR but leaving the EU will likely weaken enforcement and compliance with it.

The govt are consulting on the domestic abuse bill which they plan to introduce in 2019. Apparently they are waiting for this to pass before they will ratify this convention. Sure it is just a co-incidence that this will mean ratifying around the same time we leave EU. 🙄

I'm curious as to whether legally there are any EU grounds to hold the UK govt to account for it's targeting of women - austerity or not, the data is there that it unfairly discriminates against women and particularly VAW victims. I think it's worth a lawyer taking a look or giving an opinion - there must be some EU human rights legislation that could be used.

And Brexit isn't a done deal so I wouldn't be quite so quick, personally, to write off the ECHR yet ;) A good legal challenge is maybe enough to unite the working class against austerity ..perhaps

I wonder too but I’m also aware that there is certainly an acceptance of austerity policy as having a legitimate aim and suffering caused as acceptable collateral damage within all the European structures.

Sex has been mainly an area concerned with things such as pension age within social security as far as I am aware.

I think that even people who are generally behind austerity as a way to balance the books would not be comfortable with the horror stories described in this thread that are directly due to Universal Credit and other policies.
Framed in a simple way, like the Windrush scandal (as another poster suggested) I think that those on the right as well as the left could get behind a drive to stop creating dire conditions women and children

Framed in a simple way, like the Windrush scandal (as another poster suggested) I think that those on the right as well as the left could get behind a drive to stop creating dire conditions women and children

Yes that's a good idea and similar to what I am thinking about. This is a national scandal and one that is being kept under wraps for the most part - with the human suffering hidden by stats. and political ideology. Most onlookers from other countries think austerity is unnecessary btw but that's another thread! Don't want to muddy the waters. Saying austerity has legitimacy is like a cult leaders mantra of this is the only way to find God….let me lead you and in the process get rich and powerful…I digress

It needs to be a Cathy Come Home movement to illustrate that people are going their best and can't get it together - don't you think they would if they could - but that the system of welfare is punitive and vindictive and stops them thriving by keeping them at the point of homelessness/in survival mode all the time - and we are not built to, as humans and mothers, to deal with that unrelenting pressure - it's an unreasonable expectation. The welfare systems are supposed to help not harm - if they're harming something is very rotten and needs exposing and cutting out

I think you may be underestimating how many people will file this away under ‘your fault for having kids in the first place’

If you look at the wind rush stuff there was a lot of ‘been contributing to British society’ stuff about it...

Most people will eventually concede to my face (after I have jumped through their deservingness hoops) that I may well not personally deserve xyz (sure lots of others will be nodding along to this) but that I am an exception and whilst it is unfortunate that the system has had the unintended effect of penalising me, it is unavoidable if we want to rebalance the books/get those other bad ones who make up the majority of welfare recipients/mothers/disabled people/whatever...

On a day to day basis with individuals I am OK with having these go nowhere discussions but I think you have to realise what you propose above is actually feeding welfare claimants to the wolves without much prospect of potential benefit because women are inherently seen as undeserving, money grabbing, manipulative etc

I’m welfare but not yet UC. What I would like is organisation around collective action of the underclass and certainly this with a feminist remit for women.

I feel we need help from women in positions of relative power and relative wealth for this as we are so frequently just totally drained of all reseources.

IME people are able to have numerous discussions with numerous people and still conclude that every single lived experience is an ‘exception’ in a fair system with important aims.

That said I’m also very keen on actual voices being heard.... No matter what is taken away.

We are in the stupid position of benefits street/Jeremy Kyle or extremely sanitised versions of the WC narratives, by people who have been trained to access society through establishmentisation such as OJ, being the only times voices of the WC/UC are even heard.

I tend to feel though that this should happen for it’s own sake and not because anybody is under the illusion that minds will be changed or public consciousness will shift.

Also mindful of avoiding the real problem of having to cater to portraying oneself as a (socially acceptable) victim in order to be taken seriously. This is so disempowering for women particularly. It plays into paternalistic narratives and does little to achieve structural change.

I was interviewed once on a national broadcaster and received much hate mail from people who had been riled enough to track me down online... and that was when I was more socially acceptable (married)...

Confronting the shear hatred is a burden in itself.

But yes, ordinary people often think austerity is ideological. The power structures have broadly been organised around protecting it, hence left wing leave views.

Most people will eventually concede to my face (after I have jumped through their deservingness hoops) that I may well not personally deserve xyz (sure lots of others will be nodding along to this) but that I am an exception and whilst it is unfortunate that the system has had the unintended effect of penalising me, it is unavoidable if we want to rebalance the books/get those other bad ones who make up the majority of welfare recipients/mothers/disabled people/whatever...

I've been banging on since 2010 and I'm afraid I see it like this, too. It's received wisdom.

And nobody who should be in this corner is in this corner. The WEP said it felt addressing this stuff wasn't part of its remit (FFS, austerity is gendered you dipshits). We get an actual left wing Labour Party leader but the manifesto gives orders of magnitude more cash to middle class students than it does to poor mothers.

There might be some room in strategic litigation on human rights grounds to ameliorate the worst of it - disabled groups have forced some limited victories this way, for example on the bedroom tax.

The only other hope is that as UC rolls out nationwide, it will scoop up so many people - 1 in 5 of the working population will be subject to the same levels of control and abuse as the unemployed and disabled - that there is a Poll Tax-style revolt.

People who care about austerity and think it is ideological often also don’t care about austerity and women, hence brocialists...

Yy Lang re WEP. They are a write off for me so far as they seem to be completely divorced from class analysis/critical thinking.

I don’t expect the Labour Party to be in this corner really, it’s always really been a men’s rights movement.

People who care about austerity and think it is ideological often also don’t care about austerity and women, hence brocialists...

This is my worry. One in five of the population should trigger a Poll Tax-style revolt - but if 90% of that one in five are women, nobody will get particularly exercised.

I deliberately used the word ‘trade’ BTW as I think that is an accurate description for women. We are female by biology but women by trade. We lack rights specifically in the trade aspects of womanhood.

Great research woman and interesting points offred and lang. The amount of negative press surrounding UC before it's even gone nationwide should be enough to tell people this isn't working. But I admit, sadly, welfare claimants need new PR....we're all leeching off the state apparrently and should just get jobs