Contrary to the exhaustive repetitions from two of austerity's architects, George Osborne and David Cameron, this chapter exposes how women are certainly not ‘all in this together’. An intrinsically gendered issue, the burden of austerity has fallen heavily on women. Austerity has reconfigured the value of women's capital, the range of possibilities open and, ultimately, the degree to which economic necessity presses on their senses (Atkinson, 2013a: 14). Yet, as this chapter shows, the gendered effects of austerity are not experienced equally; they can be felt as minimal, significant or extreme. For some women, the realities of austerity are witnessed through small changes to their employment sectors. Others navigate short-term or part-time contracts, hoping for something better to come along. Many women try to succeed, but ultimately always fail to please their Jobcentre advisor despite searching for a certain number of non-existent or unsuitable jobs per week. This is done while juggling child care responsibilities on their own. For several women, being sanctioned no longer becomes a threat, but a repetitive reality. Multiple caps and cuts to welfare leave a number of women hungry, homeless and in debt. Austerity's effects are therefore messy, complex and multifaceted. Some women live in but not necessarily with austerity. Others cannot escape and are thus engulfed by it.

As this chapter will show, Pierre Bourdieu's metaphors of capital (1979, 1986, 1989, 1991) provide the greatest explicatory power with regard to the ways in which difference — particularly through the lens of class, but also mindful of ‘race’ (immigration and citizenship), age, parenthood and disability — affects the ways in which women are living in and with austerity. Despite austerity decreasing women's ‘space of possibilities’ in general, as this chapter highlights, the ways in which austerity materializes itself in women's lives is dependent on the volume, composition and trajectory of their differing economic, cultural and social capital and resources. Those with a lower volume and composition of capital will be ‘closer to necessity’ as opposed to those who are further away, who have higher volumes and different types of capital.