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This article explores how the experience of recession followed by austerity in the UK has differed not only by gender but also by ethnicity. This is undertaken through examining labour market developments and government policy responses in the immediate recession and the phase of unfurling austerity. The findings highlight both the varying overall effects by gender and the tendency for ethnic minority women and men to have fared worse than UK born white women and men in the recession. Austerity policies, it is argued, are furthermore intensifying the underlying fault lines in the UK’s high inequality economic model and will place future pressures that disproportionately affect women though public sector job and welfare cuts.