THERE was a post doing the rounds on social media yesterday, hailing Rachel Reeves’ Budget day as some kind of massive accomplishment for women. It said “today marks a historic moment in British history as Rachel Reeves, the first female Chancellor, is due to deliver the budget”.

It, naturally, left a really sour taste in my mouth. When I went digging even further, it only got worse. Almost every single news outlet reporting on the Chancellor’s first Budget was fawning over her gender. Her own speech was pitched to young girls who she encouraged to break through the glass ceiling.

It’s 2024.

With all due respect, is the bar on the floor?

Am I genuinely, as a woman, expected to jump for joy just because another woman has been allowed to do a job that men have been doing for more than eight centuries?

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Women simply existing in spaces we have always deserved access to isn’t an accomplishment in and of itself. Certainly not when the Budget in question actively harms women in more ways than one.

It is so incredibly one dimensional, and arguably not feminist, to put women on a pedestal in this way – especially when they are pulling the ladder up behind them.

Reeves’s Budget was, expectedly, a sore disappointment for a multitude of reasons but I want to look specifically at why it is bad for women and why pretending she is some kind of feminist hero just for being in the job achieves little other than setting the women’s rights movement back.

Granted, Reeves has inherited an incredible mess. It’s hardly a surprise that after over a decade of Tory financial management, the financial health of the UK is as good as non-existent and she has a tough job on her hands. For that, I will afford some grace.

A central feature of Tory fiscal policy was of course austerity – a highly ineffective attempt at slashing public spending – that disproportionately disadvantaged women.

It’s thought that women lost twice as much as men as a result of austerity cuts across successive Tory governments. Not only entrenching economic disparities, but significantly widening the gender pay gap while they were at it. There are no two ways about it, austerity has been a disaster for women and all evidence points towards that fact.

So why then did Rachel Reeves, the feminist icon of the hour, make the decision to preserve austerity as a core element of the country’s financial plans?

She spoke of “fixing the foundations” but failed to deliver solid investment in the community pillars that underpin the UK economy.

It’s short-sighted to focus on fixing infrastructure without paying proper mind to the services that operate within that infrastructure – and it will do nothing for women to stick a plaster on systemic issues that need tangible money and not just empty gestures.

Thinktank the Women’s Budget Group published analysis showing that the Chancellor’s 1.7% benefit increase would translate to just £2.50 per week for lone mother households. Coupled with an expected 2.6% rise in inflation in 2025, that leaves those women staring down nothing other than a real-terms cut. Thanks to Reeves, those women won’t be afforded any relief from a cost of living crisis with an ever-tightening grip.

Women are more likely than men to rely on social security, for a whole host of reasons and not least due to higher caring responsibilities.

So of course, on her mission to liberate women, Reeves chose to preserve the national shame that is the two-child benefit cap.

A particularly cruel Tory offering that stops parents from being able to claim child tax credits or universal credit for any third or subsequent child born after April 6, 2017.

What is perhaps most harrowing about this one, as if knowingly and willingly pushing children into poverty isn’t bad enough, is that there are exceptions to the rule if the mother was raped and it resulted in a third or subsequent child – if they are willing to fill out an eight-page document detailing what happened to them to prove it.

(Image: House of Commons/UK Parliament/PA Wire)

That in itself should obliterate any notion that Rachel Reeves is a feminist, or is somehow a feminist figure to be admired.

The two-child cap is as nonsensical as it is obscene and any socialist or feminist-leaning government worth its salt would have jumped at the chance to abolish it. Had the Chancellor chosen to do so, it would have been one of the single most effective routes to tackling child poverty in Britain.

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Immediately, over 300,000 children would have been lifted out of poverty and a further 700,000 would be in less serious poverty than they are currently. That’s over one million children whose lives could have instantaneously improved yesterday.

But she didn’t, so their lives will stay the same – that’s the reality that this Chancellor’s budget imposes on the UK’s poorest kids. And it will be felt most keenly by the UK’s single mother households, who already shoulder some of the harshest consequences of bad fiscal policy.

Marginally cheaper pints, which are highly unlikely to even materialise on the ground, don’t remedy your decimation of the welfare system. Or even scratch the surface of ever-rising bills that you swore you were going to reduce. Or make up for the utter betrayal of vulnerable women that you promised to reverse.

Unfortunately, this is just another disappointment from another out of touch government. Not a notable day for the feminist history books.