If women disproportionately suffer from austerity then they must have disproportionately benefited from the previous system

This is not something which we insist is right or wrong, something that should be or not, it's just a logical truth which we think is worth pointing out:

Labour has urged the Conservatives to carry out a gender audit of its tax and spending policies, as the shadow equalities minister, Sarah Champion, published analysis showing that 86% of the burden of austerity since 2010 has fallen on women.

Champion said research carried out by the House of Commons library revealed that women were paying a “disproportionate” price for balancing the government’s books.

Leave aside even whether there has been any austerity (spending seems to keep on going up after all) and whether, if there has been, there should have been. Concentrate instead just upon the logical implications of this:

In total, the analysis estimates that the cuts will have cost women a total of £79bn since 2010, against £13bn for men.

It shows that, by 2020, men will have borne just 14% of the total burden of welfare cuts, compared with 86% for women.

If cutting that welfare state means that women are getting less out now then that obviously means that before the cuts to the welfare state then women were getting more out.

No, we don't know either what is the correct split between taxing everyone to benefit women and taxing everyone to benefit men is. We might even point out that as men make the higher wages they get taxed more to boot. But that is still the correct question to be pondering. Not how much has that distribution to male and female changed but what is the righteous and just structure of that distribution in the first place?