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A vote for women's equality will free councils from budgetary paralysis

Female care worker helps elderly person
‘Men still outnumber women two to one on local councils. Little wonder that social care is at the bottom of the to-do list.’ Photograph: Daisy-Daisy/Getty Images/iStockphoto

Every Wednesday morning on my street the birdsong is punctuated by the trundling sound of brown and black containers being wheeled into the middle of the pavement. It’s bin collection day. A bit later on come the other familiar morning noises – buggies and small people on scooters navigating those bins with the women who shepherd the school run – and recently the door-knocking of political canvassers.

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It’s spring and so it’s local election time. The regularity of bin collections will, as usual, dominate doorstep discussions – I was forwarded an email from the Conservatives yesterday with the subject line: “What this election is about?” Their answer? Bin collections and road repairs. But I’m campaigning to include those women in the discussions too. I think local politics needs a shift in focus. Because it’s in crisis, and in that crisis lies opportunity.

Two weeks ago, while canvassing in Harrogate, I spoke to a voter who looked suspiciously at my Women’s Equality party leaflet and asked: “Why would I vote for women’s equality? What’s that got to do with my local council? It’s not going to fix the potholes.” My answer to him was: it’s precisely what’s going to fix the potholes. And the bin collection. And the staffing of your local library. Investing in women is vital if councils are to survive, and even one day thrive.

Out canvassing, I tell voters women's equality is precisely what's going to fix the potholes

Councils have undergone massive and unprecedented funding cuts since 2010. According to the Local Government Association, funding from central government will fall by a further £2.7bn over the next two years. That’s a 54% cut – causing a crisis that means we are way past cutting frontline services. The pips have already been squeezed. If councils are to avoid the funding cliff-edge now in sight, they must drive local growth to avoid exorbitant costs later down the line. Councils have to rethink what constitutes investment and what counts as expenses that can be cut. And that means understanding women.

By 2020 more than half of council tax revenue will be spent on social care, approximately 60p for every £1 you pay in council tax. This may sound like a lot, but it doesn’t even come close to tackling the fact that by the time we are 65, the majority of us will have at least one long-term condition; and by 75 most will have two. In fact, cuts mean that 26% fewer people now receive local-authority-funded care, and one in 10 people over the age of 50 in England have unmet care needs. We are paying more and more into a system that doesn’t pay out.

This has been allowed to happen because care is not valued in our country. Keir Starmer offered to swap today’s parliamentary debate on the social care crisis in exchange for a crunch vote on a post-Brexit customs union. Labour voters marvelled at Starmer’s cunning in forcing the prime minister’s hand and wresting control of the Brexit debate from the Tories. But the fact that he picked this debate to trade says more about the lack of appetite from both parties to talk about social care than their hunger for a meaningful vote on our future relationship with the EU.

And the reason care is not valued is because women are more likely both to need it and provide it. Women live on average two and a half years longer than men, and while formal care needs are falling for men, they are increasing for women. Dementia has become the leading cause of death among women. Women also make up the vast majority of the social care workforce – as much as 86% of care workers and senior care workers, and home carers.

So while the chancellor and shadow chancellor alike unveil their national infrastructure projects – jobs for the boys to see us through Brexit – care is relegated to local authorities to be rationed. But there is simply no more rationing to be done. The National Audit Office found that councils were already dipping into financial reserves to cover their overspend on social care, and that one in 10 of them will face bankruptcy within three years if they continue to do so.

Unable to raise prices, care providers are lowering wages and employing less-skilled workers. This exacerbates the gender pay gap, drives women into insecure and lower-paid employment, and forces them to take on more and more unpaid care to cover the shortfall. Carers UK estimates that the economic value of women’s unpaid care now stands at £77bn per year. Many of these unpaid carers are forced to give up work and begin to see their own health decline, increasing the demand on the very services that are being cut. Let’s be clear: cuts to social care were sent from Westminster to local government, which then passed them on to women.

This debate cannot be delayed any longer. The crisis is here – and other vital services are being hollowed out. Expenditure on libraries, courts, leisure centres and, most importantly, bin collections and potholes is decreasing. By 2019/20 only 5p of every £1 in council taxes will be spent filling the potholes – and you need quite a few 5p pieces to fill some of them.

The Women’s Equality party is running candidates in 30 communities this spring because we understand that social care is the big issue. And because we need to send a clear message to government that care matters. We want a national care service to be funded via pound-for-pound investment in physical and social infrastructure, so that local councils can be freed from this budgetary paralysis to serve their constituents’ needs. Unless and until this happens, all of the other commitments bulleted in neon caps on the endless party literature shoved through your letterbox simply won’t happen either. Because they can’t.

This year marks a hundred years since the first women got the vote. In the century that has passed, women held only 10% of all elected positions, and men still outnumber women two to one on local councils. Little wonder that social care is at the the bottom of the to-do list. The suffragists and suffragettes believed that votes for women would deliver equality. They didn’t see the other mechanisms holding women back. And that is why completing their mission means not only voting, but voting for women’s equality.

  • Sophie Walker is the leader of the Women’s Equality party