The impact on women of the government’s hated disability benefit cuts is coming out more, including in a new article by Guardian journalist Frances Ryan. Read it here. WinVisible is among organisations calling out sexism in the humiliating PIP test and how women’s needs are downgraded.
We comment:
| “Women are angry that Sir Stephen Timms said needing help to ‘cut up food, shower and dress the entire lower half of the body, and needing assistance to use the toilet’ are ‘low-level functional needs that can better be solved with aids and adaptations’. Disabled women are discriminated against in the humiliating PIP test because needing help washing below the waist scores lower than for above the waist – 2 points and 4. But we need help especially for period care, “women’s conditions” like endometriosis, as rape survivors, or due to complications after childbirth or negligent maternity care which affect our continence and mobility. It’s harder to get PIP because women are expected to just get on with doing our own housework and care – and are disbelieved about pain, particularly if we are women of colour and/or immigrant, and our symptoms and needs are doubly dismissed because of racism. In social care too, degrading living conditions are normalised. We supported Elaine McDonald in 2011, where the Supreme Court ruled that Kensington & Chelsea, the richest borough in England, could force her to lie on incontinence pads at night instead of funding her carer to take her to the toilet. Similarly, disabled mothers are refused council support for our caring responsibilities, while councils spend massively on privatised placements taking children from “unfit” mothers. Labour is cutting benefits to fund higher military spending, backing up the bombing of children and hospitals in Gaza, and more Trident nuclear submarines and fighter jets. Losing PIP and the protection it gives from the total benefit cap for disabled households with high rent; the freeze and halving of Universal Credit disability payment combined with the two-child limit, all hit disabled mothers harder. This leads to tragic deaths like those of Philippa Day, left starving, and Jodey Whiting, worried sick about debts. We’re fighting for welfare not warfare – for our survival and respect for life internationally. #WelfareNotWarfare #TakingThePIP |
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