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Poverty disproportionately impacts women - we need solutions

After over a decade of austerity in the UK, the cost-of-living crisis could hardly have come at a worse time. Scotland remains an unequal country with very high levels of poverty. As an organisation that primarily serves women, we are acutely aware of the gendered impact of austerity and economic difficulties. Rape Crisis Centres across Scotland have been dealing with this impact first hand.

Women are more likely to do low-paid work, more likely to rely on public transport (the costs of which are soaring) and are more likely to struggle with high childcare costs. Women of colour, disabled women and women in other marginalised groups continue to face particular social disadvantages.

Poverty and bad quality and insecure housing and employment all create trauma and poor emotional wellbeing and contribute to a risk of gender-based violence. The cost-of-living crisis has only deepened these inequalities.

The Fawcett Society produced research in 2022 which found that over two thirds of women (68%) had struggled to pay their household bills in the past 6 months, rising to 80% of minoritised women.

Women are twice as dependent on social security than men and have less access to resources, assets like home ownership, and occupational pensions. As such, women are disproportionately impacted by welfare reforms. According to the Women’s Budget Group, over the decade of austerity between 2010 and 2020, 86% of ‘savings’ made from cuts to social security came from women’s incomes.

According to research by organisations such as Engender and the Scottish Women’s Budget group women are the “shock absorbers of poverty” – spending a huge amount of time, energy managing rising costs and often going without food, heating, clothing, and travel to health care appointments to provide for others.

Rape Crisis Centres across Scotland have been taking steps to ensure that every survivor who reaches out for support is able to access it, and that their needs are met after they have left the Centre. This can mean providing food larders in centres, offering beauty bags to help survivors with self-care, partnering with the Fuelbank Foundation to support survivors living in fuel poverty, supporting survivors with the cost of travelling to receive support and much more.

But Rape Crisis Centres should not be having to fill these gaps. We need to see sustainable solutions so that nobody is left struggling with basic costs of getting by and that where people do have needs, these needs are met by properly resourced services. We also need guarantees of long term, sustainable funding for Rape Crisis services so that survivors are able to access specialist support when they need it.

All support from Rape Crisis Centres and Rape Crisis Scotland is free and always will be. The Rape Crisis Scotland helpline is open daily from 5pm - midnight and offers confidential short-term, crisis and initial support by phone, email, webchat and text. Our helpline team can arrange for language interpreters, including British Sign Language, for free.

For more information on what your local Rape Crisis Centre can offer, contact them directly.