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The gendered impact of Universal Credit

Women and poor families will fare badly under the new welfare system due to measures aimed at those in part-time or low-paid work.

By Ruth Cain
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This is the third in a series of ten articles on the theme of rethinking recovery.

Prime Minister David Cameron visiting a nursery.
Prime Minister David Cameron visiting a nursery.

Flickr/Number 10. Some rights reserved.The recent Conservative election victory has been swiftly followed by a reaffirmed commitment to sweeping welfare reforms, including the coalition government’s beleaguered flagship welfare system, Universal Credit (UC), now being rolled out across a limited number of local authorities in the UK.

Launched in April 2013 to be implemented from September 2014, UC claims to help ‘people prepare for work, move into work, or earn more’ by making benefits more like paid employment. For instance, it imposes a “claimant commitment” by using an employment-style “contract” with penalties for breaches.

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Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0