It’s a little-known fact that ‘Men Who Hate Women’ was the original title in Swedish of Stieg Larsson’s book The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, before publishers rejected it as too offputting to readers. Perhaps a similar rationale led to that same title being rejected by the authors of the coalition’s midterm review, instead going for the more innocuous – but less appropriate – ‘Together in the National Interest’.

More than in any previous recession, unemployment is a now gender issue. Joblessness among men has remained roughly static since 2010; more women are now out of work than at any point in the last two decades. The majority of public sector redundancies are set to come in 2013; redundancies that will overwhelmingly hit women. The universal credit – also set to be implemented later in the year – will take millions of pounds out of the wallets of women, and, in many households, will transfer financial power from women to men on an unprecedented scale. The coalition’s changes to tax credits will reduce the incomes of almost five million women. The mirage of rising employment – the zero-hour contracts, the part-time work taken in lieu of full-time work – hits women harder than men.

More dispiriting still than the financial costs heaped upon women are the large numbers of women who have been forced to give up their jobs, not through choice, but because the cost of childcare has become so exorbitantly high that it has become more expensive for both parents in an average income household to work than it is for one to give up their job. As prime minister, David Cameron has presided over a sexual revolution: but one overseen by the counter-revolutionary Whites, not the radical Reds. It is impossible to think of a precedent in postwar times: you have to go back to the Edwardian governments of Campbell-Bannerman and Asquith, which imprisoned and force-fed campaigners for a woman’s right to vote, to find a government that has done more to keep women at home than this one.

The transfer of millions of women out of the workplace and into the home will not be temporary: it will become permanent. If people are forced to stop working for prolonged periods, they are likely to never return. Younger applicants are more likely to be interviewed than older applicants. Applicants without gaps on their CVs are more likely to be interviewed than those with gaps. Don’t forget that in Britain the unhealthiest occupation is to be unemployed: people without work are more likely to become severely depressed or fall ill. They are more likely to become the victims of social isolation. Stay-at-home parents don’t buck this trend: and with the coalition also closing social hubs for stay-at-home parents, such as libraries and community clubs, the social consequences of being forced out of work will only get higher.

Labour has spent much of the last week discussing whether or not it is on course for a 1974-style return from the wilderness or a 1992-style kick in the teeth. The entrails have been consulted, the numbers crunched, the answer: a shrug and a mumble. Labour might still be on course for a victory or a bruising defeat, but more important than reading the runes is becoming an opposition which deserves to win. That is partly structural – about building a formidable ground operation and a top-class communications machine – but it is also intellectual. That means a full-throated commitment to the Dilnot plan for adult social care – still an area that impoverishes women rather than men – and a plan for a Dilnot for childcare, too. The more important question than whether or not Labour is the favourite for the next election is whether it deserves to be.

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Stephen Bush writes a weekly column for Progress, the Tuesday review, and tweets @stephenkb

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Photo: Surian Soosay