Engender blog

The cost of living crisis is a crisis for women's equality

The cost of living crisis is an issue which is profoundedly gendered. This blog, containing extracts taken from our submissions to the Scottish Government sets out some of the ways that the cost of living crisis is also a crisis for women's equality.

Women in Scotland are and will be disproportionately impacted by the cost of living crisis, with acute ramifications in terms of economic and physical security, health and wellbeing. This is the result of existing economic inequality that repeatedly sees women, and especially minoritised groups of women, at the sharp end of economic and other crises.

The disastrous forecast for the rate of inflation cannot be divorced from the egregious impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on equality, which has already placed women at greater risk of economic insecurity. A rollback on women’s rights and equality is widely recognised, with specific issues and their ongoing implications manifesting for Black and minority ethnic women, young women, disabled women, unpaid carers, mothers, pregnant women, LGBT women, and women with insecure immigration status, amongst other groups. Against this baseline, the current cost of living crisis will further exacerbate women’s economic inequality, pushing many into poverty. The harm this will cause will resound throughout the course of women’s lives and those of their children.