The public spending cuts, the attacks on the welfare state and the ideological offensive to promote the sanctity of the nuclear family will have major repercussions for women.
The Tories launched an offensive on the welfare state in the summer of 1993 motivated by European integration and the general economic crisis. An offensive which will not be altered by Blair's pro-European Labour Party, steeped as it is in the new 'communitarian' ethics of duty and responsibility. Maastricht forces whoever is in government to cut spending on the welfare state resulting in massive attacks on the public sector. Women are the majority of the public sector workforce, the majority of service users and will suffer most from their reduction. The fight to defend the welfare state raises fundamental questions about women's position within the family, the workforce and the nature of women's oppression.
The idea that the workforce, the community and service users constitute separate interest groups must be refuted. The left must learn to move beyond the narrow terrain of defence of jobs and build broader alliances with service users.
The massive cuts in central funding of local government services and creeping privatisation impact sharply on women. As the cake has got smaller the competition for the crumbs has become more ruthless and divisive.
Non-statutory services are pitted against statutory services with women often the biggest losers. Competition has ensued between wages and conditions and redundancies - in some areas sickness and maternity pay pitted against redundancies.
Many services previously provided by local authorities are now privatised with more on the way. Local government and civil service unions have fought long and hard to win improved equal opportunities policies and maternity and sickness conditions. Privatised services are often staffed by poorly paid, non-unionised workers with no job security and no rights.
Ten million British workers currently earn less that the Council of Europe decency threshold. This will increase, with women's already minimal pay pushed even lower than men's as CCT and privatisation continue.
With the huge reduction in public services, women are also forced more and more into the role of unpaid carers. There is an attempt by the ruling classes to present this as natural and 'how things used to be' and to 'privatise' social care. The Labour Party's comments on school truancy, ascribing all blame to negligent parents, also fall very readily into this framework. The reality is and was very different. The unpaid labour of millions of women caring for dependent relatives in isolated homes is being exploited as a
means of reducing public spending and funding tax breaks for the rich. Both carer and cared-for suffer as a result: indeed in today's more mobile society this form of care is often impractical. The elderly person in need of 'care' may well live hundreds of miles away from the woman who is meant to do the 'caring'
Many families no longer expect to fulfil this role as the state has looked after those in need for many decades. Expectations Women's expectations have also significantly altered with their entry into the paid workforce, particularly the public sector, since World War Two. They do not expect to do for free the "caring jobs' they have been paid to do and they also expect some kind of financial independence.
However this does not mean women will refuse to do these tasks. The unpaid workforce of 'community carers' is huge. Seventeen percent of all women are carers; 6.8 million people in Britain currently care for relatives or friends - an estimated saving to the state of £24 billion.
The Tories have not chosen to confront any of the gains women made in the '60s and '70s head on. There have been no government backed attacks on abortion rights and no negative changes to the Sex Discrimination Act or the Equal Pay Act. some layers of women continue to do quite well and the Tories can exploit this division to their advantage.
A small layer of women without dependents and/or with high wages have benefited from equal pay and reduced direct taxation despite the existence of the glass ceiling in senior management. But the vast majority of women have seen their pay levels reduced, working conditions deteriorate and caring role increased. The independence they previously gained from their access to the paid workforce is under attack by their new commitments, while access to services as diverse as contraception, abortion, child care and sate public transport has been massively undermined. The split between women is partly a class divide but it can now be seen between women working in similar jobs in the private or public sector, and between women with or without dependents. This division also masks the fact that attacks on the public sector are de facto attacks on women's rights.
Building an effective alliance between workers in the public sector and the users of public services is vital for the defence of the welfare state.
At the same time it raises questions about the nature of councils as the local state, of women's oppression, the reason for women's responsibility for the reproduction of the family and how women can actually begin to realise the formal rights they have won over the last 2o years.
This inevitably leads to discussions about the kind of society which can realise the liberation of women.