Deep public spending cuts would lead to heavy job losses for women and substantially reduce their income in retirement, according to a report published by the TUC.

The report Women and the Recession: One Year On warns that early public spending cuts would hit female employment hardest because around four in ten women work in public sector occupations, compared with less than two in ten men.

The report identifies Wales (46.6 per cent), the North East (45.9 per cent) and Scotland (43.1 per cent) as the areas where the highest proportion of women work in the public sector. Women working in these areas are most vulnerable to job losses resulting from public spending cuts, the report says.  Many areas with a high proportion of female public sector workers also have higher than average male unemployment rates, so spending cuts could leave many families with both parents out of work.

The report warns that cuts to public sector pensions would also increase the gender divide in retirement income and lead to greater poverty for female pensioners.

Women’s average income in retirement is a third less than men’s, and it would be much worse were it not for the superior record of the public sector in providing decent pensions for women and lower-paid staff.  Women hold nearly two-thirds (64.5 per cent) of defined benefit schemes in the public sector so any cuts to pensions would disproportionately fall on them.

According to the Office for National Statistics, the average age of public sector workers in the UK is 44.