Money is not going to close the gender divide

When governments divide up the economic pie, there will always be groups that miss out. Sadly, it is often the groups that need more support, with budgets cut for sectors across health, childcare and domestic violence. However, in 2021, after a nightmare start to the year, the Australian government poured money into women’s issues in their May budget. While having more money to support women is a move in the right direction, filling the coffers for women’s issues comes across as tokenistic, lacking conviction and dedication to true empowerment. Pouring money feels like an attempt to buy the female vote without making any true changes.

This year, the Australian government rolled out money for:

• Childcare subsidies
• The government guarantees 18% of the purchase price of homes by single parents with dependent children, so they can purchase with a mere 2% deposit.
• Increased funding for women’s health
• Funding for all important domestic violence services

For a government under fire for the way they have dealt with women’s issues, this is money well-spent. It’s an investment in their own future.

So what’s the problem?

It doesn’t really solve any problems. These are simply band-aids for very real bullet wounds in society that need addressing now. These issues involve:

• Childcare

Childcare and preschool needs to be free. The proposed subsidy increase is only for the second child and does not address the cost of preschool. It also assumes that women want to take on or indeed have time to take on an additional day or two of work. Women already spend 64.4% of their average weekly working time on unpaid care work (men: 36.1%). Source: Workplace and Gender Equality Agency. I’m not entirely sure how women will be able to take on this extra work without a considerable toll on their physical and mental health. How do we as a society make it possible or even desirable for men to take on an equal share of the caring responsibility?

• Housing affordability

The 2% deposit required for single parents is only for 10,000 ‘lucky’ people across four years. Who can afford to fund the repayments on the extra 18% of the purchase price? Women are more likely to work part-time and in lower-paid jobs than their male counterparts, making participation in the scheme out of reach for many women. This is where equitability comes into play. Opportunities can’t simply be equal, they need to be equitable.

• Health

The increase in funding for women’s health does nothing to address the gender bias in diagnosis of medical conditions (particularly heart attacks) and medical research (where women are underrepresented in clinical trials as they are more complex than men and the assumption that if it works for men it must also work for women). An article was published in news — GP for Royal Australian College of General Practitioners about this very issue as recently as 8 March 2021.

• Domestic violence

What are we doing to stamp out domestic violence? One in four women suffer domestic violence, which means approximately one in four men are perpetrating domestic violence (our population is 51% women and 49% men… and these stats do not even taken into account transgender and gender neutral people). What impact are these men having not only on our families but also in our workplaces? Let’s not forget that when these men leave home they are spreading their toxicity among the people they work with, including other women. What impact does a perpetrator of domestic violence and outdated views on a woman’s role in society have on:

a) a female subordinate’s career progression?

b) the quest for gender pay equality in our workplaces?

c) gender equality in our workplaces? and more broadly

d) gender equality in Australian society?

Statistically speaking we have perpetrators of domestic violence in our governments, defence forces and police forces — the very people we trust to make society a just and equal place for all. There is a push for more women in leadership roles but it is a slow process — in 2019–20 women made up 50.5% of the private sector workforce yet make up only 32.5% of key management roles and 28.1% of directors. Source: Workplace and Gender Equality Agency.

These are all questions that need to be addressed so any money being spent is done so with meaning and a desire for real change.