Using interviews with women from diverse backgrounds, Dabrowski makes an invaluable contribution to the debates around the gendered politics of austerity in the UK.

Exploring the symbiotic relationship between the state’s legitimization of austerity and women’s everyday experiences, she reveals how unjust policies are produced, how alternatives are silenced and highlights the different ways in which women are used or blamed.

By understanding austerity as more than simply an economic project, this book fills important gaps in existing knowledge on state, gender and class relations in the context of UK austerity.

Austerity, Women and the Role of the State is shortlisted for the 2021 BSA Philip Abrams Memorial Prize.

"In the neoliberal capitalist world of ours, the crisis which arrived with COVID‐19 pandemic has highlighted the ‘austerity issue’. (This book) compels us to rethink the ‘state’ narrative of why we ‘need’ austerity programmes." British Journal of International Relations

"... an essential read for academics, activists, and those who have been subjected to the violence of austerity." The Sociological Review

"A unique account of how austerity is lived in radically different ways and how state policies are about the distribution of intimate feelings, not just economics." Beverley Skeggs, Lancaster University

“Many people know (or should) that austerity policies impact particularly harshly on women. This exceptional study shows exactly how. It is essential reading about brutal politics.” Mary Evans, University of Kent

Vicki Dabrowski is Associate Lecturer in Sociology at the University of York. Her research interests include gender, class inequality and the role of the state.

Introduction

The Political Project of Austerity

Living In and With Austerity

Navigating through Austerity

Austerity Talk

Austerity and Feminism(s)

Austerity Future(s)?

Conclusion: The State Women Are Now In

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