1 The ‘shock absorbers’
Debt-related austerity is bad news for women, whether it’s introduced by a cuts-hungry government determined to ‘manage’ national debt through ideology, or enforced as a condition of an IMF loan.
Globally, women do more than 75 per cent of unpaid care. They are more likely to pick up the slack from the erosion of social provision, lose jobs through public sector cuts, and be impacted In fact, development experts have said that ‘the availability of women’s unpaid care as a “shock absorber” is a premise on which cuts to public services are based’.
