"The government has decided that women, families and children will bear the brunt of cutting the deficit," Ruth Lister, head of social policy at Loughborough University told a TUC forum on 22nd July 2010.
Although the government claims that the emergency budget is fair, the combined effect of changes to benefits and service cuts is hitting the poorest hardest, especially low paid women workers and their families.
The Chancellor has claimed that the budget will "have no adverse impact on child poverty".
But, according to research by Ms Lister, the government is asking families with children to make an additional contribution that others are not paying.
"Gender and family friendliness are vitally important when we're talking about passing the fairness test," said Ms Lister.
"The conservative manifesto promised to 'make Britain the most family-friendly country in Europe'," she said, "yet there seems to have been no assessment of how the budget will affect the coalition's family-friendly agenda".
The Equality and Human Rights Commission has recently advised the Treasury of its legal obligation to carry out an equality impact assessment of the budget.
"We need to remind the government of its duties to do an equality impact assessment of the emergency budget, and the spending review expected later this year," said Ms Lister.
Cuts to services announced in the budget, and housing benefit changes, will also hit women hardest. Research commissioned by UNISON, shows that service cuts will mean the poorest tenth of households will lose the equivalent of 20.5% of their household income, whilst the richest tenth will lose just 1.6%.
Service cuts will be particularly harsh for low-paid women, who make up most of the public sector workforce, and their families and children.
Low paid workers, who already face pay freezes and job cuts, will now also see their services and household income cut.
The government is planning to cap and put restrictions on housing benefit, which many hard-working low-income families depend on to meet rising housing costs.
Freezing of child benefit, and focusing on Child Tax Credits, which will be reduced and withdrawn from many families also indicates a shift in government policy from universal to means-tested benefits for families and children, warned Ms Lister.
