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Category: equality

  • Civility policing: So what if activists cause discomfort?

    The Governor of Florida, Republican Ron DeSantis, is reportedly pushing for a bill that would make it unlawful for schools and workplaces to make people feel uncomfortable when providing instruction on discrimination in US history. The bill is part of a wider debate in both the US and Australia over the teaching of critical race theory — a debate that has been used as a proxy for an ongoing culture war over the nature of racism and systematic injustice. This wider debate raises many important issues, but one I am particularly interested in here is the issue of discomfort, because it permeates so many of the current debates around injustice and social change.

    When children marched peacefully for climate justice, for example, our Prime Minister admonished them for not being in school and said, ‘What we want is more learning in schools and less activism in schools.’ When a local conservation NGO used litigation to force the Minister for the Environment to actually follow the law when considering an application to approve the Adani coal mine, our then Attorney-General accused them of illegitimate green ‘lawfare’. When NFL players quietly took the knee to draw attention to systemic racism in the US, President Trump called on them to be fired.

    In all of these examples, the real target of the critique was the underlying cause. The Prime Minister did not agree with criticism of his government’s record on climate change, and nor did the government agree that the Adani coal mine poses an unacceptable risk of damage to the local and global environment. Similarly, President Trump is an unashamed defender of white supremacist ideology, and underlying this new Florida bill is a fundamental refusal to acknowledge any problem with the systemic nature of racism in the US or the responsibility of white people to challenge it.

    However, as fundamentally problematic as all these examples are, what I find particularly insidious are those critics who profess to support activist causes, but still insist that their activism should avoid causing discomfort.

    We see this all the time, such as in the civility policing of Grace Tame, whose principles and activism are apparently less important than the Prime Minister’s self-serving photo opportunity, or in the hounding of Adam Goodes for not being more gracious to football fans who booed him and shouted racist epithets. We see it in the (incessant) cries of #NotAllMen from men who claim to support campaigns to end violence against women by are more offended by any language that might appear to implicate them, the good guys, as being part of the problem.

    You may well disagree with the actual agenda of protestors, whether they be from Extinction Rebellion or the Anti-Vaccination Convoy. If so, have the courage to debate their ideas rather than hiding behind a critique of their methods.

    This same attitude is also evident in the calls from liberals for protests not to inconvenience fellow citizens (by, for example, disrupting traffic), or in the recent debates around the boycott of the Sydney Festival for accepting a prominent sponsorship deal with the Israeli government. Ben Adler and Nawfel Alfaris, for example, argue that Palestinian activists should have confined their activism to non-disruptive forms of free speech — such as speaking to organisers behind the scenes — because art should ‘unite’ us or, as festival director Olivia Ansell put it, ‘everyone has the right to feel safe’ (where ‘everyone’ apparently does not include Palestinian people).

    The consistent theme here is that challenging the status quo is fine unless and until it actually threatens to make anyone uncomfortable or, you know, to disrupt the status quo. Fundamentally, this is an underhanded means of silencing people while refusing to debate the merits of their cause. Of course, you may well disagree with the actual agenda of protestors, whether they be from Extinction Rebellion or the Anti-Vaccination Convoy. If so, have the courage to debate their ideas rather than hiding behind a critique of their methods (so long as they are not hurting anyone) or complaining that their approach makes you uncomfortable.

    Avoiding discomfort is a privilege only enjoyed by those who benefit from the status quo, and civility policing is fundamentally about protecting both that privilege and the status quo itself. Confronting the reality of injustice in both our past and our present should be uncomfortable, and no one is entitled to immunity. A corollary of this is that no matter how far removed you may wish to be from the struggle, you are not entitled to sit comfortably on the sidelines. As the late, great Archbishop Desmond Tutu, my absolute favourite rabble-rouser, once said, ‘If you are neutral in the face of oppression, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.’ The only option left is to rock the boat.

    Please note: Feature image is a stock photo.

     

     

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  • COVID-19: Economic insecurity and domestic abuse

    The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted significant concerns about the “shadow pandemic” of violence against women, and in particular intimate partner violence. A new study published by ANROWS highlights the intersection of economic insecurity and women’s experiences of intimate partner violence during the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia.

    Consistent with other Australian and international research, there was clear evidence from the study that economic factors, including job loss and financial stress, linked with the pandemic were associated with both the onset and escalation of intimate partner violence.

    Capturing these insights and more, Economic insecurity and intimate partner violence in Australia during the COVID-19 pandemic builds upon earlier ANROWS research to provide the most comprehensive survey of women’s experiences of intimate partner violence during the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia to date.

    Many of the women surveyed reported experiencing economic insecurity during the first 12 months of the pandemic, and the report reflects women’s experiences of violence during this period. Economic insecurity was linked with the increased likelihood of experiencing intimate partner violence.

    Anthony Morgan and Dr Hayley Boxall, from the Australian Institute of Criminology, surveyed 10,000 women aged 18 years and over about their experiences of violence in their most recent intimate relationship during the first 12 months of the COVID-19 pandemic. The women were also asked about their experiences of violence prior to the pandemic.

    The findings reinforce the need to focus on women’s economic security, both in the context of the pandemic and beyond, given the complexity in determining the relationship between intimate partner violence and economic security.

    A key finding of the study is that economic disparity within relationships was associated with intimate partner violence, even after controlling for economic insecurity.

    A key finding of the study is that economic disparity within relationships was associated with intimate partner violence, even after controlling for economic insecurity. Picture: Shutterstock 

    One key finding was that economic insecurity co-occurred with other vulnerabilities reported by women which were associated with an increased likelihood of IPV. Speaking to this finding, co-author Anthony Morgan said, “Not everyone we surveyed was at the same risk of being a victim of intimate partner violence. Certain groups – women with a disability, First Nations women, pregnant women and women with children – were more likely to have been subjected to violence by a current or former partner. The risk was even greater when these women experienced economic insecurity. Measures designed to address women’s economic insecurity need to be targeted, accessible and culturally safe, and developed with and by communities.”

    The relationship between economic status, stress and disparity and intimate partner violence varied according to the type of violence and whether it was experienced as a chronic condition or an acute stressor. “The research findings help us to better understand the complex role of economic stressors in intimate partner violence,” Mr Morgan said. “It’s not easy to disentangle which aspects of economic insecurity are a cause, characteristic or consequence of violence. We need to think about the circumstances of both partners and the role of economic disparity, and consider the impact of both chronic and acute stressors.

    “For example, being unemployed was itself not a risk factor for violence. But women who were working when their partner was not were more likely to be subjected to violence and abuse. This was true also if they were the main income earner in the relationship. And the loss of a job or work during the pandemic, whether by women completing the survey, their partners or both, was a risk factor for first time and escalating violence.”

    The report makes a number of recommendations, including that economic support for women must take into account ways to prevent violence, support victims and survivors currently in abusive relationships and support women after they leave abusive partners. “Economic insecurity is a risk factor for violence, but it also acts as a barrier to women being able to leave an abusive partner,” said co-author Hayley Boxall.

    The recommendations invite policymakers to consider tailoring financial supports designed to improve women’s economic security to be accessible by women who live with intersecting disadvantages, such as those in carer commitments and disabilities, and developing them in consultation with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities to ensure they are culturally appropriate.

    “We need to think about how we can improve the economic security of women longer-term to prevent violence, provide economic support to victim survivors so they can leave abusive relationships, and find ways to minimise the immediate effects of the economic consequences of the pandemic on women’s safety,” Dr Boxall said. “Our research shows that we need to challenge the traditional gender norms held by men that position women’s economic power as somehow a threat to their masculinity.”

    In the week since its release, the research has been well and widely received, indicating not only the importance of the issue but the desire to take the steps recommended by the research to improve women’s economic security, particularly in light of its intersection with intimate partner violence. ANROWS looks forward to seeing the findings addressed and the implications incorporated in policy and in practice.

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  •   An inspiration: Professor Stuart Macintyre (1947 – 2021)

    In 1993, as a freshly minted Harvard graduate and thrilled by my appointment to teach constitutional and administrative law at Melbourne University, I had an idea of academia as seen through a student’s eyes. But it was on being introduced to Professor Stuart Macintyre from the school of history that I got to see the ideal of what it really meant to be an academic in action. He had earlier taught me in a large lecture theatre when I was an undergraduate arts/law student, but I only met him when I started writing about Australian citizenship as a legal scholar. Stuart’s work on civics and citizenship made him an obvious mentor but he was more than that, he was an exemplar citizen, to use Professor Frank Bongiorno’s recent dub and an inspiring historian and teacher.

    In 1994 Stuart led an inquiry into reviving civics and citizenship education. It found little understanding and awareness of the Australian system of government — our federal structure and of the Commonwealth constitution. But there was a spark of hope with the Inquiry’s finding of a higher level of interest in civic issues and an appreciation of the value of citizenship.

    Stuart wrote about this in a 1997 Parliamentary paper asking: “How is that aspiration [the higher level of interest] to be connected to knowledge and understanding? How might we promote the civic capacity?” In other words, how do we ensure that all Australians have the knowledge and wherewithal to be truly active citizens?

    The inquiry’s recommendations dealt mostly with school education and were accepted in 1995 by the Keating government and later implemented by the Coalition ministry.

    In 1997 Stuart felt that had he a chance to rewrite the report he would have done so even more convinced that an understanding of the history of citizenship holds the key to a higher interest in and appreciation of civic issues.  In that same year, I published one of my early articles on the history of citizenship in Australia, around which we had great conversations.  Those chats were but one example of Stuart as a model of academic collegiality (as many have written ) and it is hard to estimate how many references he wrote for me for various fellowships and awards which, thanks in no small part to him, I am proud to have held.

    In mourning his death last November, I began revisiting his penultimate book, Australia’s Boldest Experiment: War and reconstruction in the 1940s. While some attention has been given to the book about its guide to a post COVID reconstruction of Australia, it is the sections of Stuart’s book about women and their role in the reconstruction that stand out for me.  They illustrate how some things have changed since those days but powerfully, also, how many things remain shockingly the same.

    Flora Eldershaw, a Sydney history graduate, schoolteacher, distinguished novelist and the first woman president of the Fellowship of Australian writers, was recruited by the government in the early 1940s to the small reconstruction division within Harold Holt’s department Scientific and Industrial Research to advise on the role of women. She had three strikes against her — the only woman in the division, the only one without an economics degree and also the oldest of the group. But she rose above the prejudices of her time, and subsequently, to do what most advising government should do – she consulted with a diverse group of women.  She met with the Housewives Association, the National Council of Women, the Country Women’s Association, and the Federation of University Women, all of them keen to be involved. She reported their key concerns — ‘employment, living conditions, education, child welfare, health, legal rights and the circumstances of Aboriginal women’.  But, as Stuart explains, the then head of the division poured cold water on her proposal warning ‘it was desirable to avoid giving official recognition to conferences of rather miscellaneous organisations.’  Those advocating on gender policy today, consulted for their views, would feel a sense of Déjà vu. Yes, the experience of spending time and energy responding to calls from government to contribute to policy development, consulting widely, and then having their ideas ignored.

    Another part of Stuart’s book highlighting women’s involvement in the post war reconstruction project is the section on housing.  Government publicity around this was aimed at “Mrs Australia” and with the promise that she would be able to build her dream house.  This led to the South Australian secretary of the Housewives Association complaining her organisation was inundated with bulletins ‘on such inane matters as the height of wash troughs’.

    In May of 1942, an Opposition member asked the Prime Minister how many boards, trusts, commissions and other special agencies had been set up as part of the reconstruction. He wished to highlight the proliferation of such bodies and asked a supplementary question about the number of women involved as members. The answer was 67 organisations, with 387 members, but just one woman and with an ironic name — Ellen Couchman. She had served on the Women’s employment board and was there to represent all Australian women!  As Stuart reports, women’s organisations were less than impressed.

    Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

    Flora Eldershaw. Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

    Ever since Flora Eldershaw had approached them back in 1941 they had been advocating for their involvement in the post-war reconstruction.  Having been earlier rebuffed, they were ‘particularly exasperated’ by the omission of any reference to women in the Constitution Alteration (War Aims and Reconstruction) Bill the government introduced to the Parliament.  The United Associations of Women wrote to the PM asking him ‘to introduce an amendment which would free women once and for all from the multifarious discriminations and limitations imposed on the by-laws and regulations.’  The Federation of Women Voters urged that the Bill should include ‘equal economic, political and social rights’. As President of the Council for Women in War Work, the historian Kathleen Fitzpatrick proposed the elimination of all forms of sexual discrimination. She argued — ‘this country cannot be considered a democracy while women remain, despite legal equality, in effect a subject race.’  These appeals had no effect and the only women present at the Constitutional Convention in November were 12 members of the Women’s Royal Australian Navy Service who acted as orderlies.

     

    Eighty years later, those appeals are familiar to women working for equality in Australia. On Sunday 27thFebruary 2022 the Women’s March for Justice will be holding its anniversary event of the 15th March 2021 that drew over 110,000 women and their allies in more than 200 cities and towns around Australia, to draw the government’s attention to the ongoing unaddressed demand for equality and justice for women in Australian society.

    This inequality underpins women’s safety inside the very house of Parliament, and led to the Independent Review into Commonwealth Parliamentary Workplaces report.

    The report highlights the desperate need to ensure women are safe in every dwelling in Australia, let alone live in an equal and just society. Women’s safety is directly related to gender equality; without one we cannot have the other.  The report is clear that in workplaces where women are equally present as leaders, a more equal work place leads to a safer workplace and a safer society.

    Stuart Macintyre emphasised in writing of the reconstruction project, that once it became official policy, there were determined efforts to stimulate popular participation.  In this part, the most ambitious was the desire to ‘enlarge citizenship and establish a new relationship between government and the people.’  In the remaining months before the Federal election, we should all be energised by the moment we are in, seeking to work towards a post-pandemic normal, to be demanding the same of those elected, and using our citizenship – our vote – to have a government that better reflects the needs of Australian women and men, working towards a society that is safe for all.  And Stuart Macintyre’s collegiality should be an inspiration to active citizenship beyond the vote – looking out for our fellow members as we move forward as an inclusive nation.

    • Feature image: Professor Stuart Macintyre AO, 1947 – 2021. Picture: University of Melbourne

     

    This article was originally published in The Canberra Times. 

     

     

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  • A Summer of Hope: Margo’s story

    After two long years of the global COVID-19 pandemic, so many of us find ourselves tired and lacking energy for even basic tasks. Facing a new year does not fill us with the joy of possibility as it may once have done. Where, then, do we find hope?
    In this uplifting summer series, Ginger Gorman talks to six extraordinary women about how they found hope in unexpected places. This series was first written for HerCanberra and is republished here with full permission. 

    Straight after we meet, Adjunct Professor Margo Neale, tells me her Indigenous name is “Ngawa Gurrawa.” Fittingly, it means: “Talkative but knowledgeable,” she says with a kind of nervous embarrassment. When I ask if that was a birth name, she laughs in a deep and infectious way.

    “I was born way back then, when children were being taken away, before we were counted in the census or got the vote in 1967. We were not Australian citizens but considered more as part of the flora and fauna domain so kids in the so called urbanised ‘colonised south east of the continent’ didn’t get Aboriginal names, not publicly at least,” she says.

    It’s a swift reminder of the unspeakable way colonisers have tried to erase Indigenous culture since Captain Cook claimed Australia as British territory in 1770.

    But we’re not here to talk about that. Instead, we’re here to talk about how strong and enduring indigenous knowledges are. Margo has the proof.

    Songlines is the blockbuster exhibition that she developed in her role as Museum’s Head of the Centre for Indigenous Knowledges. The exhibition was created in collaboration with what she terms a “community curratorium” of elders. Margo explains that these elders “approached us with and urgent plea to help them preserve their Seven Sisters songlines.”

    Not long into our chat, I jokingly describe Songlines as “The Andrew Lloyd Webber of the Aboriginal World.” Why? Because it’s a global hit and is currently on tour in the UK heading for Europe, Asia and the US.

    Margo Neale Wati Nyiru room

    Margo Neale in the Wati Nyiru room at the National Museum of Australia’s Songlines exhibition. Credit: National Museum of Australia.

    Songlines is more of an experience than an exhibition. Canberra-based Aboriginal academic and barrister Prof Mick Dodson declares it as a ‘communication portal.’ The show traverses three deserts across different states, it uses more than 300 paintings and photographs, objects, song, dance and multimedia by over 100 artists to narrate ancient stories of desire, pursuit, betrayal and family. It’s racy and compelling.

    Just a few short weeks ago during the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Margo was on BBC TV  in the UK with a well-known presenter who asked her why anyone in England should care about the exhibition Songlines (currently at The Box in Plymouth).

    Margo struck back with “nothing could be more relevant” and “ it is the Empire striking back.”

    Margo’s message was: “You Brits came across to Australia 250 years ago to colonize and civilise [us]. Well, obviously that didn’t work. So, we’re now here to teach you how to civilise sustainably.”

    “We’re still here…and it’s because of the way we live with the land. Despite the onslaught of colonialism, Indigenous values are so deeply-rooted and strong. We black fellas knew how to keep Country healthy for 60,000 years or more.”

    Kungkarangkalpa (1)

    Kungkarangkalpa—Seven Sisters, 2015, by Tjungkara Ken, Yaritji Young, Maringka Tunkin, Freda Brady and Sandra Ken, Tjala Arts. Copyright the artists/Copyright Agency 2020. Image: National Museum of Australia. Part of the Songlines exhibition.

    Indeed, Britain is ecstatic about the show and it’s getting so much media coverage around the world, Margo can’t keep up.

    What is a songline? Margo says that for the Indigenous people of the songlines, this question is like being asked to “describe breathing.”

    She explains it to others is like this: “You visualise it as corridors or pathways of knowledge that crisscross the continent, that have been laid down over millennia carrying knowledge.”

    “And it connects and links natural features that tell of the creation of those sites and transmit cultural values,” she says, “All the knowledge is written in the land.”

    And in terms of how the concept plays into Songlines the exhibition, “it’s the history of Australia, written by Aboriginal people recorded millennia before white man arrived. Originating from a non-text based society it’s transmitted through performance, song dance, art and all these other modes of communication.”

    “And as you move through the exhibition you are walking the Seven Sisters songlines, where paintings are portals to place and sites of knowledge.  At these sites, like the places they represent in Country, you’ll learn about its creation and values  and then you’ll move on to the next site, and so on. This is Australia’s book of Genesis.”

    “All ancient civilizations have epic sagas like The Odyssey and The Iliad to tell of the knowledge and truths critical for survival morally and physically it’s packaged in story because it has to be passed on and you’re not going to pass on some boring old story which no one wants to listen to.”

    “So, it has to have love and loss and tragedy and obsession and all the human attributes, virtues and vices, right?”

    For example, Margo says that something central to the Seven Sisters story is an epic chase between a man who wrongfully pursues the Seven Sisters which she calls “The #MeToo movement in advance.”

    “There are multiple layers in there that resonate with all the critical contemporary issues of the day. Aboriginal culture is always contemporary, because the values and belief systems are always being adapted to the now.”

    Margo is of Irish and Indigenous descent, born and raised in Kulin Country in East Gippsland with clan connections to the Wiradjuri in the Riverina and Gumbayngirr of the Northern Rivers.

    This was a country town, not a mission, so, it was dangerous to draw attention to yourselves as Aboriginal. This was a period of assimilation where mixed blood children were regularly removed from their families as her mother was,  so Margo and her three siblings weren’t allowed to talk to the neighbours and invite people home.

    According to Margo, her Irish father was reminiscent of the dad in Frank McCourt’s book, Angela’s Ashes.

    “He used to drink, but was likeable, charming and a big personality. But did give my mum a lot of grief as she was trying to give us kids a stable upbringing in a poor working-class household.”

    “On my 16th birthday, I made my life decisions. I thought: ‘No one else is going to get us out of this working-class rut, so I have to.’ I knew then that I had to make it on my own for the sake of my family and my children.”

    And she did. From there Margo went on to get a scholarship, became a teacher of many subjects including art, then moved from teaching in infant school to university and the levels in between, then into business and later an award-winning author and curator on the international stage based at the National Museum of Australia and as an Adjunct Professorship at the ANU.

    Margo Neale working at home. Picture: Ginger Gorman

    Margo Neale working at home. Picture: Ginger Gorman

    Looking back on her childhood and the racist country she grew up in, Margo notes that she already a young adult when Australia held the 1967 referendum to finally count Indigenous Australians in the census.

    And with this backstory in mind, Margo looks at far we have come and feels hopeful.

    “Just the fact that it’s [Songlines] so well received says a lot about how attitudes have changed. It’s seen more as: ‘My goodness, what have these fellas got to teach us?,’ rather than ‘We better put them back in their box and turn them to the white fellas’.”

    The exhibition has spawned a series of First Knowledges books in areas such as architecture and design, land management, medicine, astronomy and innovation, for the general readership as well as a series for schools.

    “This is more than art. It shows our integrated, enduring embodied knowledge system,” Margo says.

    Thinking about both the show and the success of the books, she says: “It’s hopeful because we’ve got there. We’ve actually made it from the wings on to the stage, you know, we’ve worked so that our voices can be heard and we cannot be ignored.”

    Please note: Feature image of Margo by Ginger Gorman. 

     

    BroadAgenda is a proud partner of HerCanberra. Everything you need to know about Canberra, one destination.

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  • We will not be invisible: photographing older women

    Women over the age of 40 often say they are suddenly become invisible in public life.  Well, not to photographer Yasmin Idriss. Two years ago she embarked on a project to photograph the fabulousness of older women. 

     

    How would you explain the 40+ project in a nutshell? What inspired you kick off this project?

    The 40+ Project is a culmination of more than two years photographing women who are 40 years and over. This exhibition is a celebration of who we are as women as we age.

    The entertainment industry and fashion magazines make it clear they think we are too old to be the glamorous leading lady, and for the most part, we become invisible. We will NOT be invisible! Moreover, we are certainly never too old to be pampered, photographed, loved, admired and adored.

    Being in my forties myself, the project developed from my desire to create a photobook called “40 Something”, about us (women), who we are, our journey thus far and how we feel in our forties. It was a project I could relate to directly.

    As the project progressed, I realised I wanted to capture and include gorgeous images of my mother and the other generations before me, before it was too late. Thus, the concept of a second book manifested itself as “50 over 50”.

    To simplify a call out for participants, “The 40+ Project” was born.

    Photographer Yasmin Idriss believes older women should not be invisible. Photo: Supplied

    Photographer Yasmin Idriss believes older women should not be invisible. Photo: Supplied

    Who did you photograph and how did you go about it? How did you find participants? 

    I began by talking to family and friends about my ideas and asking them if they would participate. I also asked everyone to spread the word and ask their family and friends if they were interested in participating. Facebook was handy for spreading the word, and I set up an information page on my art website.

    How many women did you photograph? 

    Thus far, I have photographed over 20 women. Unfortunately, the pandemic caused a number of delays and progress was slow at times. It was important to me that I help keep vulnerable family members safe, otherwise there’d have been more photoshoots to date. It wasn’t all bad – I think it gave some ladies more time to think about what sort of photoshoot they really wanted to have.

    By the way, this project won’t stop just because I’m having an exhibition! I still have a number of photoshoots lined up for February and March. In fact, I’m having this exhibition to showcase what I have done so far and generate further interest in the project.

    I’m hoping that when ladies see my artwork and meet the other participants at opening night they will be keen to get involved. I am always on the lookout for interesting people, faces and life stories. Please come and join the project.

    Title: "Veil" by Yasmin Idriss

    Title: “Veil” by Yasmin Idriss

    What’s your favourite moment or anecdote from working on this project? 

    My favourite moments are when I see my subject relax, let loose and simply have fun in front of the camera. There’s often a lot of laughter during my photoshoots. I think it’s important to have fun and be able to enjoy these experiences, both for me and for my subject. One lady mentioned that the photoshoot was such fun that she was able to forget about her major health problems for a few hours. That really grabbed my heart – job done, Yasmin.

    What did you learn that you weren’t expecting?

    1. I learnt that you can’t always predict who will be willing to get in front of the camera, nor can you predict who is going to jump in and go for it! I never know what people are willing to do for the camera till we are in session! I love it. It’s always a pleasant surprise to discover the creative, fun loving side of people.
    2. You can’t always predict what people love or hate about themselves or their image. Sometimes, I am surprised!
    3. The right hair, makeup and fabulous outfit can transform even the most anxious of subjects into a super star model.
    "Bronze splendour" by Yasmin Idriss

    “Bronze splendour” by Yasmin Idriss

    What don’t people understand about women in this age bracket that you’d like people who see the show to think about? 

    Why does age make us less attractive? We all age. Perhaps a person’s beauty should be determined by their personality, actions and life experiences, not their age.

    We are 40+. Do not think of us as old. Think of each of us as having 40+ years of accumulated knowledge, adventures and invaluable life experiences you may not have even imagined. After 40, we care less about what other people think, and some women become more vibrant and interesting with age. Some are great listeners and make amazing friends. We have persevered through life, no matter what it throws at us. We are strong, even if we don’t know it. And we shine when we work together. Confidence is so alluring, and I want to photograph that spark in every single woman I meet through these projects.

    Anything else you want to say? 

    40+ women are beautiful. Come and see it for yourself.

    One of my favourite quotes:

    “Feminism isn’t about making women stronger. Women are already strong. It’s about changing the way the world perceives that strength.” – GD Anderson

    • The 40+ exhibition runs from 3-26 February 2022 and it’s on at Rusten House Art Centre, Queanbeyan, NSW. Entry is free.  Opening night is on Thursday 3 February @ 5-7pm

    Feature image at top: Title: “My tattoo” by Yasmin Idriss

     

     

     

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  • No women involved? You can count me out.

    Over summer, BroadAgenda is republishing some of its most popular articles. This compelling piece was first posted earlier this year.

    My great Auntie Rita grew up in an Australia where being Aboriginal, with dark features, saw her dismissed, degraded, and all but shut out of society.

    My beloved late Aunt told me that growing up in country Victoria in the 1940s and 50s, she had to learn to fight at school because of the level of bullying she faced. She ate her lunch in toilet cubicles by herself, to avoid the taunts from other students.

    Dan with his Aunt Rita

    Dan with his Aunted Rita circa 2008/09. Picture: Supplied

    Getting a job was just as hard. Auntie Rita was forced to say she was Indian, in order to be shown some respect, and get a job.

    On top of that, Auntie Rita told me being a woman made life even harder in the workplace, as it was trying to find somewhere to live. She told me of being turned away from rental properties she wanted to inspect, because she didn’t have a man to chaperone her.

    Given all of this – which is only a snapshot of some of what she faced – you could understand if Auntie Rita felt resentful to her country, and those who bullied, harassed, or dismissed her.

    But she wasn’t.

    In fact, she was positive, even optimistic, with a killer sense of humour. She told me that she was encouraged by the enormous change she had seen – in recognition and respect of First Nations Australians. But she added there was much more still to be done.

    And when I asked her about how she didn’t hold on to the anger about how she was treated – in her typically pragmatic way, she pointed to me. She told me that the fact I had the opportunity to share people’s stories and talk about big issues, spoke to the changes in Australia. She believed my generation was where there would be the greatest change.

    Auntie Rita faced the worst kind of exclusion throughout her life – it’s why she encouraged me to always think about inclusion.

    Inclusion is something I think about every day.

    Taking a stand

    As ABC Canberra’s 7pm Newsreader, a senior ABC presenter, and non-executive director on a number of boards, I am often asked to speak to groups, facilitate panels and discussions, and host events.

    I also regularly speak about my Indigenous heritage, and about being gay and part of the LGBTQIA+ community. Diversity and inclusion are topics I regularly speak to.

    These are fantastic opportunities – particularly when I am helping to navigate through tough or confronting issues or topics – with respect and care.

    When I’m asked to speak or host, I have Auntie Rita’s calls for inclusion ringing in my ears.

    That’s what drove me to take a stand.

    I won’t host any panel discussions or events that don’t include women. I just don’t agree with it and won’t be a part of it.

    (And I certainly won’t agree to sit on panels, as a guest or panelist, that don’t have women on them either.)

    Dan WIM event

    Dan, centre, at a Women in Media event on cultural diversity in the media at National Press Club earlier in 2021. Also pictured (left to right) are journalists Aarti Betigeri, Shalailah Medhora, Gabrielle Chan, Paula Kruger. Picture: Ginger Gorman

    Nor will I host events about groups of people, if they are not part of that conversation. Meaning, I won’t facilitate a panel about Indigenous Affairs, without other Indigenous people on the panel; I won’t facilitate a discussion about a group of people, without that group of people filling the panel.

    This may seem relatively simple. But it’s seen me walk away from leading high-profile discussions and events. It’s the first question my manager asks when approached for me to host or be involved in events.

    For me it’s simple – I have a public profile and have a platform when I speak. And to me, it’s important that I use that profile and platform to make a point about diversity and inclusion. And I call on anyone with some kind of platform to do the same.

    At the start, I didn’t know if it was having any impact, other than anecdotal comments from event organisers and those sitting on panels. But after a number of years of doing it, I know it makes event organisers stop and think, and it definitely cuts through with the audience.

    Ngunnawal Elder here in Canberra, Auntie Caroline Hughes wrote after one event I hosted: “What a wonderful ambassador for our people you are Dan! Well done.”

    This feedback is so heartening. It’s not what drives me – shifting the conversation is!

    Conversation is the change maker

    I was recently asked to host a panel about communicating with Indigenous Australians.

    Before my manager could ask his first question, he was told it was a panel of all women, and most of them Indigenous.

    Danika Davis is a writer and editor, and was part of that panel. She later wrote to me: “The audience came away feeling informed and empowered to improve their work with First Nations communications, which is the best result we could hope for.”

    I agree. It’s all about listening and changing our perspectives. Feedback from others in the crowd centred on the importance of the diverse lived experience and perspectives.

    The media

    There are significant challenges when it comes to the media, bore out in the 2020 Media Diversity Australia report: Who Gets To Tell Australian Stories.

    The report was confronting, but not surprising. It spoke to structural, systemic, and cultural issues.

    The report raised red-flags about the dramatic lack of culturally diverse women and men in the media as journalists and presenters – but also highlighted the lack of cultural diversity of commentators, case studies, and those highlighted in the media.

    I’ve recently been doing a lot of backfill hosting on ABC News Channel from my home in Canberra – to help ease the pressure on colleagues in Melbourne and Sydney, while we were all in lockdown.

    I’ve been fortunate to work with a fantastic team, who I work closely with to get a range of views and perspectives on air.

    In writing this article, I asked about the breakdown of talent – those that we picked to discuss specific topics – over September and October, while I’ve been backfilling the Afternoons show.

    I was thrilled to see women making up 58% of guests in September, and 52% in October.

    Indigenous guests made up 14% and 20% respectively across those months, while guests who were culturally and linguistically diverse were 17% and 16% across those months.

    I’m proud of the different perspectives that I’ve helped to bring to air – but know that I, and all media leaders, have much, much more work to do.

    There is also much to consider about building trust with communities that have lost trust in the media because of what’s happened in the past.

    The task for all media companies, is to look at their diversity on air, and ask themselves if it reflects the country they are communicating to.

    Language on air

    I’ve saved this for last, because I want to leave you with a sense the importance of language.

    In 2019, ABC Canberra colleagues and I embarked on a series of conversation with Canberra’s Ngunnawal Elders, through the United Ngunnawal Elders Council, and the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies.

    Dan with Canberra’s Ngunnawal Elders. Picture: Supplied.

    Dan with Canberra’s Ngunnawal Elders. Picture: Supplied.

    We wanted to explore options to build greater relationships with Elders and the Ngunnawal community, while seeing if there were appropriate acknowledgements to their heritage and story across ABC Canberra.

    It began with Ngunnawal Elders, welcoming listeners across ABC Radio Canberra programs, in their language and English.

    That grew to be an acknowledgement behind me as I read the 7pm News each night – where I begin and end the bulletin by using Ngunnawal language – ‘yuma’ means hello and ‘yarra’ means goodbye.

    For the first broadcast, we invited the United Ngunnawal Elders Council into the studio to see and hear it.

    There were tears from Elders, as they told me they never expected to see and hear their language on the news.

    And the Elders have told me they love hearing Canberrans using their language – and say it’s what will help to preserve and protect the language for future generations.

    Acknowledgements like this have now spread far and wide across the ABC – with different approaches in different cities after discussions with the local Elders.

    It’s now commonplace to hear ABC Canberra presenters use Ngunnawal language on air, to see presenters on News Channel acknowledge the Indigenous people of the land they are broadcasting from, while Landline includes the name of the Indigenous people next to the name of the town at the start of each report.

    I’m so proud to be part of the team to lead this work.

    Recently Channel 10 presenter, Narelda Jacobs began using her Noongar language from her country, on air, and pointed to our work as the inspiration to do this on her network.

    And the more it happens, the more we will see and hear of language and culture on air – that’s something I’m really proud of.

     

     

     

     

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  • Our storytelling around fatherhood must change

    Over summer, BroadAgenda is republishing some of its most popular articles. This compelling piece was first posted earlier this year.

    I groan at the screen when I see my kids watching one of the typical portrayals of the ‘modern dad’. Perhaps the most common depiction is the well-intentioned, loving but equally clueless, hopeless and bumbling father. I grew up on this imagery courtesy of Homer in The Simpsons in the 90s and now that I am a father, the representation has not changed much at all. This type of dad is in way too many stories and shows.

    My two children have loved Peppa Pig, where Daddy Pig is doing not much of anything, except falling over and lazing around. Of course, there’s the dad who is off working all day and comes home ready for dinner and a cuddle. In my home, we recently discovered the animated show, The Tiger Who Came to Tea, with its surprisingly scintillating British voice cast, and catchy tune from Robbie Williams. Even though the show is based on a 1968 book it doesn’t appear dated in 2021 because so little has shifted culturally. Then there’s the emotionally distant, aloof or altogether absent father who doesn’t tend to his children at all. Almost every Disney movie fits this category.

    The fact is, kids love storytelling. Reading a book, watching an adventure-filled show or creating some fantastic backstory for a new game to play, storytelling adds colour and vibrancy to childhood experiences, instils children with lifelong values and passions and significantly influences their cognitive development. But what are kids learning from stories about the role of dads in their lives?

    At a time when more men are trying to juggle work to allow more family time, when young dads are trying to take parental leave and share the load, fatherhood depictions remain horribly outdated and narrow.

    This Facebook post is a classic example of dads being shown as hopeless and incapable of doing their share. It’s meant to be funny. But what message does it really send? 

    Research demonstrates all men are capable of providing the physical and emotional support children require to develop into skilled, confident and socially adjusted people. Yet one of the great parenting myths is that men are thoroughly incapable and inattentive, and women naturally attuned to children’s needs. We are feeding that myth to our kids every day because it remains deeply ingrained in our popular culture and children’s entertainment.

    If we go back to popular culture again, sadly, Bandit Heeler on Bluey (pictured above), the loving, emotionally involved and active dad, is the exception to the rule. He is doing almost all the heavy lifting to change the perception of fatherhood. While we all celebrate this show, we can’t expect one gorgeous animated blue heeler and his adorable family to change perceptions alone. And we can’t just let the next generation passively absorb such counter-productive tropes. Role modelling inside our homes offers a much more positive depiction of fatherhood than books and screens ever could, and is an absolute necessity. Our kids must experience dad nourishing them, playing games, nursing them on sick days, and counselling them with vulnerability, sensitivity and affection when problems arise. Our children need a high-definition dad ‘for real life’ as Bluey and Bingo would say.

    Equally, we must help our children develop a healthy curiosity about how gender norms are depicted. When we bump up against the unhelpful depictions of dopey dads and overworked mums, we can pause and inquisitively ask our kids whether this reflects their life, and even whether they think it’s fair only one parent runs the home. One of the best qualities we can gift our children is the capacity to question the order of all things, especially gender norms. Ginger Gorman, author and editor of BroadAgenda, says she finds herself regularly engaging in such a commentary with her kids,

    “Not long ago one of my kids brought home a home reader. And mummy was cooking everyone breakfast and getting the kids to school, meanwhile Daddy just walked out of the door to go to work. This kind of cultural indoctrination teaches very small kids that in heterosexual relationships, this is what can be expected from Dads – they don’t share the domestic load and put the burden entirely on their partner.”

    Ginger says she can see the progress she’s made within her family, “I’ve taught my kids to be gender literate, and my then 6-year-old daughter instantly picked up on this disparity. At the time, she said: ‘Why is mummy doing all the housework and daddy just goes off to work? That will make mummy cranky and tired, and she won’t have time for a shower before she goes to work [herself].’ It was cute that she could so clearly see the issues. But also infuriating that little people are being taught this gender inequity from such a small age”.

    The culture inside our homes is as important as anything portrayed in a book, show or game. Every family can reshape the representations of fatherhood by taking concrete action every day. If we do this, over time, hopefully our children start creating more empowering and enlightening stories of their own.

     

     

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  • I’ve suffered gender discrimination. Now I fight it.

    Over summer, BroadAgenda is republishing some of its most popular articles. This compelling piece was first posted earlier this year.

    Picture this: a young mother, struggling across the road with a cumbersome contraption that appears to be two cheap strollers screwed together. A pair of male police officers watch her, amused. They don’t offer to help her over the curb, instead making mocking comments about her: Serves you right. She is 21, but looks younger, and has two kids under the age of two in those strollers.

    That young woman was me. Growing up as a 10-pound Pom in the low-socioeconomic status northern suburbs of Adelaide, I’d moved out of home at 15 and married at 18. There were certain expectations or assumptions about me that were reinforced by people in authority, like these two police officers. These limiting assumptions – being a teenage mum, being poor, being female – also stood in the way of one of my daughters receiving appropriate medical treatment when she suffered an aneurism at eight months old.

    When we presented at hospital and the medical staff noticed a small bruise on her arm, the immediate assumption was one of child abuse. When I tried to explain that the was the result of a recent vaccination, they didn’t believe me.

    Niki, age 19, with daughter Kyla.

    Niki, age 19, with daughter Kyla. Picture: Supplied

    When I tried to explain the symptoms and that my baby who could usually crawl was now unable to sit up, they ignored me. As a young woman, I had become used to people not taking me seriously but never in a situation like this.

    How could these medical professionals, people who were charged with caring for my daughter, refuse to consider information from the child’s parent?

    Would they have treated me the same way if I was older? If I was wearing more expensive clothing?  Or if I was a man? It was when I became a parent that I realised how unequal the world was, and this experience reinforced it.  It took days – and finally a neurosurgeon – before the medical team could see past their bias and listen to me. I have never felt so powerless and frightened.

    These two incidents are not the only time I’ve experienced discrimination based on my gender, age, or socioeconomic status, but they illustrate how these factors intersect. Academic Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term “intersectionality” to describe how multiple aspects of discrimination and disadvantage stack up. Identity characteristics do not exist independently but intersect to create complex forms of oppression, inequality, and exclusion. For example, recent figures show that Aboriginal people, LGBTIQ+ people, young women, people with disability and those on lower incomes are much more likely to experience workplace sexual harassment.

    Niki's PhD graduation and second university medal age 51.

    Niki’s PhD graduation and second university medal age 51. Picture: Supplied

    My own experiences of discrimination and sexual harassment were compounded – and it didn’t help that my husband had an affair that led to our marriage breakdown.

    As a single mother of four young children, you can imagine the kinds of assumptions people made about me. I could easily have become disengaged from my education and career possibilities, facing an impossible juggle with caring responsibilities, but a positive workplace experience changed it.

    By now, I’d completed a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in Psychology.  I’d been getting straight distinctions, but because I was caring for my children and working part-time to run the family building company, rather than spending time with other students, I didn’t realise this wasn’t the norm.

    I carried all those limiting assumptions with me – just like the police officers and medical staff – I looked down on myself.  It was not until a notice arrived in the mail informing me I was to receive the University Medal for my academic performance that I realised I was smart, and probably had important contributions to make to the world (in addition to trying to be a good parent). This recognition changed my outlook completely and I gained the confidence to apply for a role in an academic centre.

    By chance, another student overheard me talking to a university librarian about the job and approached me to say she was also considering applying but couldn’t take it on full time as she was still studying. Even though we’d only just met, we decided to apply together, and the lead professor agreed to a job share, which was very innovative in the mid-90s (my job-share partner and I are still close friends to this day).

    I felt supported at work, but caring for my children, going through a marriage break up and being promoted to work on a challenging research project involving illegal drug users began to stack up. My boss recognised this and said: “I don’t care when or how you work, as long as you keep meeting the deliverables.”

    The flexible working arrangements meant I could work around school drop-off and pick-up times, work from home if I had a sick kid or after hours when the kids were asleep. Not only did this flexibility help me succeed at work, it also set up my approach for how I would lead my organisations in the future.

    I went on to establish the Leaders Institute of South Australia and run the Governor’s Leadership Program, where I noticed a lack of diversity among participants. Where were the women, the people of colour and those with a disability?

    Niki with granddaughter Imogen

    Niki with granddaughter Imogen. Picture: Supplied

    Too often when people talk about diversity in leadership, they take a binary approach, simply replacing white men with white women, and failing to apply an intersectional lens. Tu Le and Molina Asthana recently wrote about the ‘double-glazed glass ceiling’ they face as women of colour. As an experienced board director, Molina has described her efforts to increase diversity only to be told that the mandate is for gender equality only – which can further marginalise women of colour and mean they are overlooked for leadership roles.

    We needed to bring more diversity into the Governor’s Leadership Program, so I set up scholarships for women, people with disability and Aboriginal leaders – as well as leaders from rural and regional areas.

    It was through this work in SA that I came to know and admire the work of the Equal Opportunity Commissioner for South Australia. When the job was advertised, I thought: why not? It was an opportunity to continue the work I had started, channeling my passion for equality that began when I was a young mother, struggling to be heard. That role then led me here to Melbourne as Victoria’s – and Australia’s – first gender equality commissioner, where I continue to draw on my own experiences and those I saw around me.

    My family now includes 18- and 21-year-old stepchildren and a foster daughter (now 18, but who has been part of my family since she was 13).  I also recently welcomed my 10th grandchild (remember, I had my kids young!).

    Too many new parents still don’t have access to the workplace flexibility I had 25 years ago.

    Niki with daughter Tami and granddaughter's Charlotte and Poppy. Picture: Supplied

    Niki with daughter Tami and granddaughter’s Charlotte and Poppy. Picture: Supplied

    Consequently – as we’ve seen during COVID – outdated gender norms around parenting are re-enforced when women step back from work to care for their children because the juggle of working, home schooling and everything in between has largely been women’s burden to bear.

    But it doesn’t have to be this way.

    As parents know (but employers seem to routinely forget) kids don’t operate on a timesheet. I’m heartened by organisations making changes to break down gender stereotypes around parenting. For example, South East Water has removed the definition between primary and secondary carer, allowing all parents access to flexible parental leave. For one new father, that allowed him to change his part-time working hours to accommodate his child’s challenging sleep schedule – and ensure both he and his partner got their own sleep in. Bass Coast Council has also made this change, as well as paying super on parental leave and making it the default for parents to work flexibly or part time.

    I hope to see more organisations following this lead and breaking down these tired gender stereotypes and assumptions that can limit people in life.

    I’m a product of what can be achieved when we remove bias, offer flexibility, and empower employees.

    But we still have so far to go to make this a mainstream experience – and we can’t sit back and wait for this to happen. In fact, based on the current pace of change the World Economic Forum estimates it will take another 135.6 years to achieve global gender equality.

    But not if my team and I have anything to do with it!

    The post I’ve suffered gender discrimination. Now I fight it. appeared first on BroadAgenda.

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  • Gender and office housework: Who cleans the microwave?

    Over summer, BroadAgenda is republishing some of its most popular articles. This compelling piece was first posted earlier this year.

    Think about the microwave that sits in your office. Who cleans it? Also, think back to your last office birthday party. Who organized the party? Who brought a birthday card and cake? Were they women? Have you noticed that women end up doing those office housework tasks more often than do men? If so, you are not alone.

    According to Grant and Sandberg writing in the New York Times back in 2015, women tend to perform more office housework behaviours such as these in the workplace than do men.

    Further, as office housework requires the expenditure of time and energy, women are expected to experience more burnout than do men. However, while office housework is undoubtably necessary for office functioning (imagine what the microwave would look and smell like without it?), engaging in these behaviors may negatively impact the individual performing them.

    Specifically, while performing office housework, people may miss opportunities to participate in activities that are more directly related to career success indicators such as job promotions. This can create an inadvertent pathway through which the careers of women may be adversely harmed by their greater engagement in housework compared to men.

    However, while these claims were put forth, they had not been formally tested. Thus, our research team investigated the topic of office housework with empirical data. In our study, we first defined office housework as “menial administrative tasks that keep an office running.”

    Then, we created specific items to measure office housework and collected data from over 1,000 full-time workers. Results revealed that women performed more office housework than did men, as previously speculated.

    However, contrary to the popular press claim, results showed no significant relationship between office housework and burnout, and women did not necessarily experience more burnout by performing more office housework, providing no evidence that housework harmed individual health.

    Yet, there were career outcome differences between women and men related to housework.

    Despite the fact that women performed more office housework, men received better career outcomes such as more promotion from performing office housework than did women.

    Such findings highlight the unequal expectations and performance regarding office housework and their different career consequences for men and women; more specifically, we posit that these findings emerged due to gender stereotypes related to who should perform housework with men receiving greater rewards because this behavior was viewed as going above and beyond their expected behaviors at work, whereas women were expected to do this and were simply seen as doing what they were supposed to.

    In the article, we assert that supervisors need to be aware of this unequal work distribution of office housework between men and women and try to ensure that office tasks that can be considered as “housework” are evenly distributed across genders. For example, bringing in the office birthday cake could be rotated across all employees.

    Moreover, organizations should seek to create and maintain a fair and equitable culture related to performing these non-productivity related behaviors that are necessary for organisational functioning.

    In a culture of this kind, women and men should be equally rewarded for comparable behaviors. Furthermore, we recommend HR practitioners be cognizant of this potentially unequal career compensation between men and women and provide equal career compensation for equal performance of office housework regardless of the gender characteristics of employees.

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  • “In front of our eyes, they beat my sister”

    Over summer, BroadAgenda is republishing some of its most popular articles. This compelling piece was first posted earlier this year.

    Content warning: This story contains graphic descriptions of violence against women.

    So many have asked me about the plight of women in Afghanistan. I am not going to cite statistics. I am not going to cite numbers. I will however re-tell the story of my sister-in-law who just relayed this to me. In her own words…

    It was about 3am on a cold Afghanistan morning. My family and I lived in a small village in the province of Herat. I was about five years old. We heard loud banging and then I heard screams.

    My sisters and I ran into the living room. We feared the worst, especially as my father was away on a work trip, and we felt even more vulnerable. We had heard about how local militia groups would barge into homes trying to kidnap young men or worse, kill them if they were not able to meet their demands.

    My mother told my brothers to flee. And flee they did, by the time the militia group had barged into our home, broken the door and all that was in their path, my brothers had left via the backyard.

    Several men stormed into our home – there were so many, I couldn’t count them – there were at least 20 of them. They were holding machine guns and had masks over their mouths – all we could see were their eyes. I had never seen my mother look so terrified as she did that night.

    What unfolded in the next 30 minutes or so will forever be etched in my memory.

    My mother, assuming, they were there for my brothers told them she had no sons. She pleaded with them not to hurt her and young daughters.

    “We are not here to take your men,” they declared.

    Turning their attention to my 20-year-old sister, they yelled that they had warned her many times – “How dare she continue to teach at the local school!” While there women who were teachers in other provinces, the small village we lived in Herat, my sister was one of a few female teachers. Little had we realised that their taunts and threats passed on to us via random people were in fact real. Could this really be happening?

    There in front of our eyes, they beat my sister so hard. Trying to drag her out the door, my mother pleaded with them to not take her. She offered herself up and told them to take her instead.

    “No” they screamed, they needed to ‘teach women a lesson that this behaviour was unacceptable!’. The screams, the yelling, the chaos. It was indescribable. My sisters and I, aged between 5 to 14 years old, watched on in complete shock and horror. It’s like time had stood still. I was screaming but it felt like no noise was coming out.

    That was the last time we saw my sister. To this day, we do not know whether she is dead or alive. No police or other government authorities were able to do anything in the days, months and years that followed.

    About two years later my father passed away, leaving my mother to look after all of us on her own.

    My 40-year-old sister who witnessed it all that night, is still living in Herat with her young family. Offering her reassurance over the phone is all I can do for her. I fear for her safety. I fear that she too could be forever taken from us. She knows all too well just what the Taliban is capable of.

    Such is the plight of women and girls in Afghanistan. In the past three months alone, 900,000 people have been displaced. Many of these are women and children. What are our leaders doing to make sure this doesn’t become the fate of more women in Afghanistan?

    Editor’s note: Do not look away. To read more about the way women and children are treated by Taliban please read this piece and this piece, published by academics writing for The Conversation website over the last 48 hours.

    And if you can, give generously to Mariam’s campaign on behalf of the UN Refugee Agency – Australia for UNHCR.

    Feature image: The Taliban does not want women and girls to be educated. Photo depicts The Female Experimental High School in Herat. Picture: World Bank Photo Collection is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

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  • Maternity leave: how long is long enough?

    Over summer, BroadAgenda is republishing some of its most popular articles. This compelling piece was first posted in 2020.

    The United States and Australia were famously slow to guarantee new parents paid time off from work. The Australian national paid parental leave policy wasn’t enacted until 2009, and it is relatively modest compared to other developed countries. And the US still (shockingly!) lacks a national law, although a growing number of American states have enacted paid leave policies.

    But in some ways, both countries are also leaders. Virtually every other country in the world explicitly prioritises maternity leave over paternity leave. Australia’s national policy, and the US state laws, by contrast, do not use sex-based classifications. That said, as I discuss more fully in a forthcoming paper, simply labeling both as gender neutral obscures fundamental structural differences.

    130520 shutterstock 1384591460

    Australia provides 18 weeks of benefits for primary caregivers and just two weeks of benefits for secondary caregivers; parents also have a right to a year of unpaid leave. In the US, by contrast, mothers and fathers each generally receive 12 weeks of leave. I’m an expert on US leave laws, and I was curious about these different approaches. So, with the support of a grant from the Fulbright Commission, I came to Australia to learn more about the Australian system.

    Maternity Leave Taking

    In Australia, most new mothers take between six months and one year off work, with fathers typically taking much shorter leaves. Talking to experts (and non-experts) in Australia brought home to me how societally informed our sense of how long leave should be. Most of the people I interviewed thought new mothers needed at least six months to physically recover from pregnancy and childbirth, bond and care for a new baby, and facilitate breastfeeding. Many thought a year was ideal. That said, some suggested that the norm of a year was too long and that it contributes to women’s disengagement from work or the frequency with which women are made redundant during maternity leaves.

    130520 shutterstock 613571849

    In the US, most women take far less time off. Since there’s no federal right to paid leave, low-wage workers are often back on the job within just a few weeks. Even more highly-paid workers typically take just three or four months. And, strikingly, most say they are satisfied. In a large poll of new mothers, 72% of mothers said they had stayed home as long as they wanted to; this was true even though about half of the mothers were back at work within three months or less. When the pollsters explained that most countries provide longer paid maternity leaves, US moms indicated a preference for, on average, a six or seven-month leave, but some continued to say three months was optimal whereas others said a year or more would be optimal.

    “Equality’s Riddle”

    Laws shape such leave patterns – and are shaped by them. In fact, questions regarding how infant care should be allocated between parents, and how leave policy interacts with women’s participation in the paid workforce, implicate fundamental questions of sex discrimination doctrine and theory, famously characterised by American law professor and advocate Wendy Williams as “equality’s riddle”.

    Advocates suggest that sex-specific maternity leaves reify assumptions that women will provide the bulk of childcare, and may spur workplace discrimination against new mothers.

    Given biological differences between women and men, and gender norms around infant care, some theorists and advocates suggest women’s equality is best served by providing a relatively lengthy maternity leave. Without this, they suggest, women will simply drop out of the workforce entirely. Other theorists and advocates suggest that sex-specific maternity leaves reify assumptions that women will provide the bulk of childcare, and may spur workplace discrimination against new mothers. Australian policy generally reflects the first approach, and US policy reflects the second.

    Australia: Historical Supports Specifically for Mothers

    Australia’s maternity leave regime dates back to a 1979 test case, which resulted in a labor standard that required employers to provide new mothers 12 months of unpaid leave, with six weeks being mandatory. The federal Sex Discrimination Act, enacted in 1984, specifically permits women to receive benefits connected to pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding that are not provided to men.

    130520 shutterstock 472132927In a later case, men tried to argue that the maternity leave regime was illegal sex discrimination, as well as that it was bad policy. They lost. The Industrial Relations Commission took the position that differential treatment may be required to promote equal opportunity, a concept often known as substantive equality: “It is our view that under certain conditions discrimination can arise by purporting to treat equally persons whose circumstances are materially different.”

    Even now that Australia’s leave regimes are nominally gender neutral, they prioritise benefits and leave for a primary caregiver, and offer much less support for secondary caregivers. (For more detail on this, see my earlier Broad Agenda blog post.)

    US: Equal Treatment of Mothers and Fathers

    The US history is quite different. Sex discrimination in employment was prohibited in 1964, long before the country had enacted any leave rights. Courts and the federal equal employment agency interpret that law to require that men and women receive equal amounts of parental leave time, other than a relatively short period (generally 6-8 weeks) when women are considered to be physically recovering from child birth. Accordingly, the federal law that provides unpaid leave rights, and more recent state laws providing paid leave, provide equal and individual benefits to each parent, without any distinction between primary and secondary caregivers.

    This has some important benefits. As I discuss in a forthcoming study, early evidence suggests it’s effective at encouraging men to take time off. But it also has some real downsides. The overall length of leave in the US remains quite limited, and it shortchanges single parents who receive half as much leave.

    Ultimately, I would say the jury is still out on equality’s riddle. Both countries have made important progress, and both have more to do on supporting mothers and fathers as workers and parents.

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  • Time to stop excluding women for having difficult bodies

    Over summer, BroadAgenda is republishing some of its most popular articles. This compelling piece was first posted earlier this year.

    There is a passage in Carmen Maria Machado In The Dream House about going back in time to talk to your younger self. I love it because I am a chronic time-travel day dreamer. I also love it because it made me laugh out loud at the unsentimental answer Machado gives to the ridiculousness of this preoccupation:

    “If, one day, a milky portal had opened up in your bedroom and an older version of yourself had stepped out and told you what you know now, would you have listened? You’d like to think so, but …you didn’t listen to any of your smarter, wiser friends…so why on earth would  you listen to a version of yourself who wrecked her way out of a time orifice like a newborn?”

    Still, I can’t help but daydream. Often these daydreams focus on medicine and the body. My body. My fragile, strong, pain in the arse body. A body that has been misdiagnosed by doctors. Ignored by doctors. Condescended by doctors.  A body that doctors only now, in 2021, have the knowledge to diagnose.

    Medicine moves so slowly. On average, outside of a pandemic, it takes from ten to seventeen years to move from concrete tested research findings to routine clinical practice. It moves more slowly again when it comes to women’s bodies. I learnt in my first year of university, with much horror, that women are routinely excluded from drug and medical trials.

    We are excluded for having difficult bodies that don’t conform to the controlled environments of experiments. And if you layer intersectionality onto that, even fewer non-white women are included in research studies. Never mind that men actually have quite considerable levels of hormonal variance too. That men might be a little unruly as well; for them it is more hidden – their variances don’t draw blood. And, well, we live in a patriarchy, so this is just one in a very long list of ways in which medicine has mistreated women and their bodies. From the infamous hysteria diagnoses to the on-going underdiagnosing and undertreatment of women’s chronic pain and health issues, ignoring women’s bodies and women’s suffering has a long history.

    Still today, women are less likely to receive lifesaving care for a heart attack than men, because most doctors don’t know, or simply don’t take seriously, the very different symptoms of heart attacks in women. It took years of suffering and thousands of complaints for women to have problems associated with ‘vaginal mesh surgery’ for incontinence to be recognised, and that technique to be banned as an ineffective and damaging treatment.

    The inequities run to denying women treatments routinely available to men. Testosterone replacement therapy is known to help women as well as men, but it’s only on the national pharmaceutical benefit scheme for men. Viagra, which is helpful for treating problems with the lining of the uterus, is also not covered for use by women, though the government will happily subsidise a routine erection. Women are even excluded from universal health services: at the time I write this, only 37% of people receiving benefits from one of the largest social and health welfare programs in our history – the National Disability Insurance Scheme – are women. This is despite the fact that our population statistics indicate that disability is at least equally split between men and women.

    When I nearly bled to death in a storage room in a Sydney hospital, the director of the emergency department allowed me to spend as much time as I felt I needed speaking to him about the incident. This was my compensation for nearly dying because of medical neglect. It didn’t feel like much compensation, but I made of it what I could.

    I grilled him on the differences in health care received by men and women: no, he did not know women underrate their pain when it is likely higher than men’s. No, he did not know that women are less likely to be treated for heart attacks when they present to emergency. No, he did not know that women are less likely to be listened to when they present with health problems – from chronic pain to serious disability. This, I told him, is why a woman in her thirties came moments from losing her life in your ER – “because you didn’t see me, you didn’t hear me. Because of my gender, you disregarded me”.

    Globally, in our fight to overcome the gendered biases in medicine, women have dedicated whole months to specific female diseases in the hope that that doctors will be unable to continue to ignore them. We have endometriosis month, post-menstrual dysphoria month, polycystic ovary awareness month, amongst months for other long ignored but serious conditions.

    We give months in an attempt to overcome years of medicine not taking women’s pain and health seriously.

    I have had an adventurous time with my body. I tell each new doctor I see ‘I’ve collected every reproductive health condition there is’. And they laugh, until I list them off and they realise I wasn’t making a joke and it’s probably not great practice to laugh at the multiple, life altering, diagnoses of your patient.

    First, I got endometriosis which is pretty well known now; it’s when the lining of the uterus grows on, and into, organs and in the abdominal cavity. It’s painful and can cause significant damage to women’s organs in some cases. Soon after that diagnosis, I developed some variant of polycystic ovarian syndrome that at the time they weren’t sure about because “only overweight women have PCOS” (a statement now known to be completely untrue). Later on, when trying to get pregnant, I found out I had adenomyosis; a disease I describe as the evil cousin of endometriosis. It is endometriosis growing inside the muscles of your uterus. It is exactly as messed up and painful as that sounds. And somewhere back there in that mix I also developed post-menstrual dysphoria disorder, before we had a name for it.

    When I was twenty, and three endometriosis surgeries had not cured my pain and none of the treatments made the PCOS systems liveable, a doctor put me on a drug that induced menopause. When I came back several months later and said “this is amazing, you’ve given me my life back. The pain is gone. The fatigue is gone. My moods feel stable and normal again”, he nodded.

    He then said, “I wasn’t sure if you had a reproductive health problem or a psychiatric problem”.

    I wanted to yell at that doctor. I wanted to slam my first on his desk and say ‘seriously?! You’re telling me you haven’t believed the things I’ve been saying to you for years?! And you think I should trust you as a doctor, trust you with my health… still?’. But I also wanted to prove it was a reproductive problem, not a psychiatric problem, and I wanted to stay on the drug that had transformed my wellbeing and my life. So, I didn’t say anything. I just nodded back, gathered my script and left his office.

    How often have women not said something, because we are socialised to not speak? To not make a scene? To not challenge male authority figures?

    In the famous book ‘Men Explain Things To Me’, Rebecca Solnit wrote about how any woman in any professional field knows, more often than not, their male counterparts won’t listen to them. That male authority figures will speak down to them. I have found far too often that this overconfidence extends to knowing women’s bodies and bodily experiences better than the woman who inhabits that body. And this silencing, in reaction to that over confidence, extends to speaking out about our own bodies – because at best we might not be heard, and at worst our words might be used against us.

    I argued with doctors for years to stay on that one menopause drug that helped me. I described my body as being “allergic to its own hormones”. Artificial were fine, but if I came off the menopause drug and started producing my own again everything went sideways. When I described my experiences, I was told ‘hormones can’t do all the things you say are happening to you’. Time travelling me would like to go back and say ‘hormones can cause psychosis, so I think that proves they can do pretty much anything’. It’s true, while rare, post-partum psychosis can be brought on by hormones that flood the female body after pregnancy. Of course, saying the word ‘psychosis’ in a medical setting is, in itself, a dangerous thing as a woman.

    I remember spending a whole day ugly crying on my living room floor when they said they wouldn’t let me stay on the drugs for more than 6 months. By the end my day of crying I decided I would have a hysterectomy at all of 22, because I would not go back to what my life was like before. And then I cried some more, because it felt so unbearably unfair that this was all medicine could offer me.

    When I asked for the surgery, the doctors yielded and gave me the drug. All of a sudden, the un-doable was doable. No doctor wanted to leave a woman in her early twenties sterile. Women’s ability to reproduce matters, their quality of life does not. That’s what 22-year-old me learnt from those doctors.

    I then spent years feeling as though I was some kind of ‘unnatural woman’ for being hormone supressed, and kept it a secret from almost everyone I knew.

    That girl in her late teens, three surgeries down and still in pain.

    That young woman who felt there was nowhere to turn when the best women’s health doctor in the country said he’d been thinking she had a psychiatric disorder not a pain disorder.

    This woman in her early twenties who wept on the floor of her living room for six straight hours because if they refused her a drug, her only option was removing her entire reproductive system.

    The women in her late twenties still hiding she had medical conditions so severe she was chemically menopausal.

    This is who I now daydream of going back in time to speak to.  I want to go back and tell her she is right. That one day a doctor will say “we find some women react very strangely to their own hormones… it’s almost like they’re allergic to them”. I want to tell her that doctors will say “we believe you”. That “treatment options are limited. But we believe you”. Because there is such power in being believed. In not feeling like you are in an endless fight with a system much larger and more powerful than you.

    Solinit argues that to be a woman is to face your own annihilation in numerous ways, because we live in a society that relishes women’s erasures. Reflecting on her youth, she said “The fight wasn’t just to survive bodily, though that could be intense enough, but to survive as a person possessed of rights including the right to… dignity”.

    The failure of medicine to listen to women, to invest in the health of women, is an attack on both our bodies and our dignity. And our struggle is not just to receive treatment, but to be seen as worthy of treatment. To matter enough, individually and collectively, that society will not tolerate medical complacency.

    Eventually, medicine does and will catch up – which is to say, eventually society catches up. For medicine and society are enmeshed; society reinforces medical views of women, and in turn medicine reinforces societal views of women. Women were diagnosed as hysterical when it served the broader social project of keeping women subservient. Women don’t need drugs such as testosterone cream when it serves the neoliberally governed public purse not to finance them.

    Almost every doctor I’ve met is loath to admit it, but medical knowledge is cultural.

    The fact that it is cultural, however, means that it changes and can be changed. The story I have told here is a personal one, of personal problems. But the cure is not personal – it is cultural and communal. So many women have begun to speak both privately and publicly about their pain. About the things we are meant to keep hidden – bleeding, periods, hormones, and what it’s like to experience them all going wrong.

    When we collectively use our voice, we make complacency unacceptable. And in doing so, better treatments will come; medicine will catch up. We must continue to rebel against the erasure of our suffering.

    Feature image of Gemma Carey at home, by Hilary Wardhaugh. 

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  • What gender pay gap? Big little lies?

    Over summer, BroadAgenda is republishing some of its most popular articles. This compelling piece was first posted in 2019.

    Australia’s gender pay gap currently sits at 14%.

    Australian full-time working women take home an average of $1485 per week in pay, while full-time working men take home an average weekly pay packet of $1726.

    This gap of $241 is calculated using the latest workforce earnings survey information collected by Australia’s official data agency, the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

    Now, there may be many people reading this who believe that the gender pay gap is a load of nonsense. Or who are a bit confused by what it all means.

    At a first glance, the concept of the ‘gender pay gap’ might not make sense. Especially because we know it’s against the law to pay workers different rates for doing the same job. It’s understandable to have some doubts and criticisms.

    As an economist who studies the labour market, I want to address some of the commonly expressed concerns.

    The gender pay gap is a myth

    In Australia’s industrial relations system, it is illegal to pay a woman less than a man when they’re employed to do identical jobs – which is why you might be thinking that the gender pay gap is not real.

    This law stems from the 1969 Equal Pay Case and is reflected in several subsequent pieces of legislation including the 1984 Sex Discrimination Act.

    But paying workers the same rate for doing exactly the same job simply reflects the basic moral principle of ‘pay equity’ – this is not the same thing as the ‘gender pay gap’.

    The gender pay gap is a calculation of the difference in female earnings compared to male earnings across all jobs and industries. It reflects a combination of factors, which I will unpack here.

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    Women earn less because they work less

    If you’re thinking that women take home less money than men because they usually work fewer hours in paid employment than men, you’re right.

    Around 45% of working women are employed part-time, compared to less than 20% of working men. This reflects the reality that many women are juggling paid work alongside their family and caring responsibilities.

    This is why the 14% gender pay gap calculation is based only on full-time earnings.

    (Although, if we include part-time workers and calculate hourly wages, the gender pay gap still exists, as demonstrated in this latest KPMG report).

    Women earn less because they work in industries that pay less

    If you’re thinking that women receive lower pay because they tend to gravitate towards lower-paid industries such as education, healthcare and social assistance – while men are concentrated in higher-paid industries such as construction, mining and utilities – again, you’re right.

    Imagine what would happen to society if we started losing nurses, school teachers, childcare workers, aged care workers, mental health workers and counsellors?

    Some people argue, therefore, that if women wish to earn more, they should move out of traditionally female fields, and switch into jobs like engineering, mining, building and the trades instead. While this might sound like logical advice, imagine what would happen to society if we started losing nurses, school teachers, childcare workers, aged care workers, mental health workers and counsellors?

    These female-dominated jobs are essential to fostering a healthy and educated society. The problem is that the true value of many of these ‘human services’ jobs are dispersed widely throughout society – the benefits are not immediately visible and not fully reflected in their low wages.

    You might also argue that many women opt into care-oriented job because they’re more strongly motivated by a desire to help people than by higher earnings. Thank goodness we do have people in our society who care about helping others! But should it really mean that these caring jobs deserve to receive less pay?

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    Women earn less because they do less dangerous work

    Possibly you believe that female-dominated jobs, like nursing and teaching, don’t need to be paid as much because they are less risky and demanding.

    It’s correct that the highest rates of workplace fatalities are reported in male-dominated industries – transport, warehousing, agriculture and construction. This is largely reflective of the physical element of these jobs.

    Rather than use these risk factors as leverage to justify a gender pay gap, surely a target of zero fatalities and minimal mental stress should be the aim of all modern workplaces

    Fatalities are undeniably the ultimate tragedy, though also not the only way to measure danger. If we look at the top 10 jobs with highest number of claims for workplace-related mental stress, we find the female-dominated professions health and welfare support workers, nurses, personal carers and school teachers, alongside paramedics, defence personnel, police officers, and bus and rail drivers. Stress in these occupations often comes from exposure to violence or a traumatic event, assault, harassment, bullying, and ongoing work pressures.

    Rather than use these risk factors as leverage to justify a gender pay gap, surely a target of zero fatalities and minimal mental stress should be the aim of all modern workplaces.

    Women earn less because they work in lower ranked jobs

    Again, you’re right. Within most workplaces, men are more heavily represented among the senior occupational roles such as managers and CEOs.

    Men tend to climb the career ladder more rapidly than women. Taking time out of the workforce to raise children is one of the obvious factors that interrupts women’s career progression. Remaining out of the workforce after having children is not always by choice, if the partner can’t share the caring load or the childcare costs preclude the financial gains of returning full-time.

    But even if we remove the effect of motherhood, childless women do not necessarily reach senior ranks as quickly as men either. And even when women reach management levels, they still earn less than their male counterparts.

    Women earn less because they lack ambition and confidence

    While it might be perceived that men are more strongly motivated by money, there’s no consistent evidence that women flounder in terms of career ambition.

    In fact, a study of Australian school students found no major difference between males and females in the factors motivating their career aspirations. Women are now surpassing men in terms of post-school educational achievements. Surely pursuing educational qualifications, especially at university level, takes ambition.

    There is no economic evidence that higher confidence actually makes a worker a more productive and valuable to a company

    When it comes to confidence, it’s true that men generally report stronger confidence in their capabilities compared to women. And higher levels of confidence are linked to higher pay. But the sticking point here is that there is no economic evidence that higher confidence actually makes a worker a more productive and valuable to a company. Quite the opposite, an overconfident person can be more of a liability for a company through reckless decision-making.

    Any advice offered to women to lift their confidence as a way to boost her earnings might sound well-intentioned, but is not backed up by any solid evidence. On the contrary, there’s greater risk that women who show assertiveness and ambition will be perceived disfavourably – think of how female managers are often stereotypically viewed as too pushy and too bossy.

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    Women earn less because they are worse at negotiations

    It’s now been shown that Australian women ask for a pay rise just as often as men, but are less likely to be awarded it. And if we add in bonuses and allowances – which are often negotiable components – the gender gap in total remuneration widens further.

    Men are accruing more through negotiating – but any suggestion that women need to bargain more aggressively is not the solution, as women bear the risk of backlash for showing assertiveness in the workplace. In fact, women are pretty good are tuning into their environment and identifying when would be a good time to negotiate – and when not to. Plus, they are also pretty good at negotiating for others.

    Often it’s the subtle influence of unconscious bias that makes all of us lean towards men for senior roles and reward them with higher pay – simply because it’s the societal template we are accustomed to. Unconscious bias is a factor we can start to tackle.

    Ok, but why should I care about the gender pay gap?

    Taking home lower pay means that women are less financially empowered than men. This has rippling effects, such as having less money to their name for a home loan, and less superannuation to cover their retirement years.

    The 14% gap in pay means that women would, hypothetically, need to work an additional 59 days – that’s nearly two months extra – to catch up to the same pay packet as men over the course of a year. If we count of 59 days since the start of the financial year, we arrive at the 28th August as the date of  “Unequal Pay Day”. Today is a symbolic reminder of that gap.

    As individuals, the most important step you can take is to recognise that the gender pay gap exists in the first place

    What can we do about it?

    There are many everyday steps that workplace can take to close the gap in men and women’s pay and employment opportunities.

    Organisations can be more transparent about current rates of pay, salary bands, and what items can be negotiated for. They can undertake an analysis of their own internal pay gaps. Interview panels can use performance-based objective criteria to judge a candidate’s suitability – as opposed to subjective assessments like “he reminds me of my younger self”. These strategies reduce the potential for unconscious bias to contaminate hiring and pay decisions, ultimately ensuring you are appointing and rewarding your workers on the basis of merit and value.

    And, as individuals, the most important step you can take is to recognise that the gender pay gap exists in the first place.

    The post What gender pay gap? Big little lies? appeared first on BroadAgenda.

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  • Rage and the rise of a new women’s movement

    The power of this moment is unprecedented. But, as a nation, we must get this right. We must hear the myriad and complex reasons as to why women are so deeply aggrieved and angry.

    If those in power, who currently hold the political policy leavers, fail to act. Well, god help Australia.

    This is not all about Christian Porter and Kate, nor is it about Brittany Higgins, Dhanya Mani, Chelsea Porter, Grace Tame, Chanel Contos – and the other extraordinarily gutsy women who have come forward, taken action and spoken out. Those women have all gifted critical energy and momentum to a movement that was ready to form.

    Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Kate Jenkins, told the ABC she’s “never seen any moment like this.” Now, there is a solemn pause, at the beginning of yet another rapidly called Zoom meeting, when a woman of national note says, “a significant mass movement is developing”, and another, “finally, finally, we are collectively saying that the treatment of women in this country is unacceptable.”

    This is about all of us. Every single woman in Australia. The profound failure of the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, and every minister in his cabinet to understand that point is, frankly, breathtaking. Women’s emerging rage is so intense that the disappointment felt about senior women in government abandoning them is disorientating. The deafening silence from our Minister for Women, Senator Marise Payne, Defence Minister Linda Reynolds and others who have the privilege of voice, but not it would seem compassion or soul, will not be forgotten. I doubt it will be forgiven.

    I am not sure I can read any more of the heartbreaking testimonials pouring out from women at this heightened time. But they just keep coming, in texts, online posts, phone calls and even official emails from the boss addressed to “Dear Colleagues”.

    That one, dated 5 March, went like this … “The news coming out of federal parliament in recent weeks has been both distressing and confronting. The mistreatment of women generally, the failure to properly and appropriately respond … In 1989 I was raped … deep sadness and anger … it has felt overwhelming.” And on it goes.

    That was from a professor of law. An eminent dean. Fearless about sharing her vulnerability, she is one of the most enlightened and effective leaders I’ve ever met.

    She is also one of the thousands of women and girls pouring out their stories of sexual violence, abuse, harassment, gaslighting, shame, guilt and despair.

    But not all women can muster those words. Or that courage. Which is why a collective march is so important. Women need to know they are not alone in their pain or their anger. Not all women are victims and survivors of violence, sexual assault, rape or physical harassment. But every one of us are vulnerable to it. Every single day.

    Women’s anger has deep and ancient roots.

    Women’s anger has deep and ancient roots. We tap into those roots the moment we are born female and learn we are but the support act for men’s lives. We internalise our secondary status, our lesser value, and do our best to make good with what we’ve got. What we’re given. We learn to be grateful.

    And when we dodge the abuse directed at another woman, we think of ourselves as “lucky”. Sometimes we are forced to rely heavily, or wait patiently, on the men around us to permit entry to the world of power and influence.

    Mostly we just get on with our lives, and try to fortify against the everyday slights of disrespect and demeaning treatment. But resentment builds.

    Once you start to unpack the systematic, deliberate and sustained disempowerment of women and girls, peel away at the misogyny beneath it, once you start to see it in stark contrast to the privilege of being male, well, you can’t look away. Is it really any wonder women are angry?

    This is a crystalising moment for Australian women.

    Thankfully, there is positive power in that anger. As American writer Soraya Chemaly puts it, “Anger, when properly understood, is an outstanding clarifying emotion.”

    This is a crystalising moment for Australian women.

    Exhausted from years of waiting, lobbying, and campaigning, women are tired of pleading for proper resourcing and education around the prevention of violence.

    We are sick of competing for hand-outs. We are insulted by every single treasurer insisting there is not enough money. That is a lie.

    Governments just choose to spend it elsewhere. We are not stupid. We can read your colour-coded spreadsheet. We have had enough.

    We are tired of enduring repeated political failure to treat gender equality and women’s equal participation in building and shaping our laws and our democracy, as anything more than an irritant. A PC rash. Women’s voices are hoarse from explaining we are not the problem. Men are.

    But Chemaly lobs the ball back in our court: “What to do? What to do with all this rage?”

    After years of frustration and now a kaleidoscope of emotion, following an ugly clash of foolish utterances and actions by our political and public leaders, finally the women of Australia have an answer. We will gather in force.

    Monday’s March4Justice is about many things. The list of demands centre on appropriate responses to gendered violence; independent investigations; funding for violence prevention; meaningful codes of conduct in parliament; adherence to national recommendations and obligations around human rights and the elimination of violence; greater representation of women in political leadership; the implementation of a federal Gender Equality Act; and for all Australian parliaments to be gender equal by 2030.

    These are not new demands. Nor are they exaggerated. They are in fact, the basic bare minimum. Nothing stands in the way of the Prime Minister moving immediately on every one of these.

    All it takes is political will. And a mindset that truly values women as rightful and equal partners in every aspect of our democracy and Australia’s future.

    Perhaps Jenny might have something to add to that?

     

    This Opinion Editorial first appeared in The Canberra Times, 14 March 2021

    • Virginia Haussegger AM is a Canberra journalist and Founding Director of the 50/50 by 2030 Foundation. @Virginia_Hauss

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  • Research wrap: The tone deafness of popular music

    So it’s nearly Christmas. Mariah Carey and Michael Bublé are now both well and truly defrosted and roasted (with or without chestnuts).

    The holiday nostalgia these iconic artists evoke is like a security blanket, offering a moment of relief after the two hellish pandemic years. And so, we’ve stopped pretending that we’re even a teensy bit ironic about the whole thing as we sing along for the umpteenth time about the eternal longing for that special someone.

    Nostalgia is a powerful market force. And of course, there is no better time to hit the hungry audience than when the collective global exhaustion sees us yearning for simpler times.

    Which leads me to ABBA and their final studio album, Voyage.

    Attempting to capture the band’s glory days for one last time, Björn Ulvaeus argued the new songs were “absolutely trend-blind”.

    But as the album progresses and song after song features seemingly helpless women pining after men, one can’t help but think that ‘tone-deaf’ might have been more accurate.

    And that’s before even considering the strange, out of place Christmas tune, Little Things, which rather inexplicably blends imagery of a children’s fairytale-esque Christmas morning and transactional parental sex.

    Evoking the past is one thing, strictly adhering to oppressive gender roles for the sake of authentic time travel is something else. So, with that as our backdrop, we thought that our final BroadAgenda Research Wrap for 2021 should focus on music, seeing as music production has traditionally been a male-dominated field. How far have we come in general?

    Let’s start with the music industry itself.

    An analysis of the Billboard magazine’s Hot 100 end-of-year charts for the past 20 years did not exactly fill us with joy. The study authors investigated the gender profile of people involved with the top-ten charting songs from 2000-2020 in three areas: songwriter(s), producer(s), and artist(s).

    And the results? Of the 1726 participants identified from the 210 songs, a whopping 85.75% were male. Broken down in categories, women constituted 14.22% of songwriters, 4.24% of producers, and 23.04% of artists.

    While one of the limitations of the study includes its usage of the gender binary – which at a time of rapid social change may skew the results somewhat – the numbers that were unearthed were damning enough as they were. Yes, diversity should be a feature in any future research, but it doesn’t change the fact that the industry as a whole is in a dire need of an overhaul.

    However, the problem may also start a lot earlier in life.

    Research conducted in Germany studied the impact of gender role self-concept on the fifth-graders’ decision to attend music classes. Among other things, the findings showed that “female students seemed to value music more than boys did. Apart from that, male students felt more pressure from their peers for gender conform behavior compared to female students.”

    However, only “the feminine gender role self-concept showed a direct significant, but negative effect on attending a music class. The more students described themselves as feminine, the lower their probability to attend a music class was”.

    And what about music journalism, seeing as the industry and the media do not operate in a vacuum.

    In their comprehensive study of gender stereotypes in the US music journalism, Dr Kelsey Whipple and Professor Renita Coleman analysed a random sample of 936 articles across eight top US publications. The study covered eight different genres of music: rock, pop, rap, country, Latin, soul/R&B, dance and other, which included world, opera and other niche genres not represented by the other categories.

    Rather depressingly, the authors found “little improvement in the stereotypical themes and tropes used to describe women artists in US music journalism since scholars studied them 20 years ago”.

    While there was a significant gender imbalance among the music journalists themselves (men wrote over 70% of the articles studied), more worryingly they also found that “women music journalists were just as likely to stereotype women musicians as were men, if not more so”.

    In terms of content, stories about women used “significantly more sexually suggestive language and exoticized terms” and “and described women as sad, happy, angry or otherwise emotional significantly more often than stories about men did.”

    Hoo-boy. I’m feeling a little bit emotional about that.

    But since it is the season to be jolly, we’d like to end the year on a high note. Here’s a fascinating doctoral dissertation from Canada entitled ‘Music to Our Ears: Using a Queer Folk Song Pedagogy to Do Gender and Sexuality Education’. Folksinger/songwriter Dr Kate Reid’s study with older teens/young adults aged 16-20 found that the queer folk song pedagogy she trialled in the class room opened up new spaces for dialogue and helped create an effective learning environment.

    We’ll sing a song to that!

    Feature image: Graham C99 (schnappi), CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

     

     

     

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  • The Super Woman Myth: Can we have it all?

    One of the challenges of being a woman in the modern world is that no matter how far we’ve come in equality, in a heterosexual relationship women still, generally, bear the burden of the ‘mental load’ of running a household, and/or managing a family. It can happen bit by bit. A small career break, a few years part-time, while our partner’s career is progressing and suddenly it’s the most logical choice for the woman’s career to be secondary to the man’s.

    Understanding this in more detail was our objective in interviewing hundreds of women and writing our book ‘The Superwoman Myth’ (just published!). In the book, we explore stories from women in relationships with men, women in relationships with women, single women, people with children and people without children. We have discussed trans and gender diverse individuals, cultural differences, and Indigenous Australians. One of our authors is in a same-sex relationship, while the other two are in traditional marriages, and all three have children. We have tried to be as representative as possible in our interviews, and the stories shared within the book.

    In a heterosexual union, it’s not always the way that the man’s career dominates – we’ve talked to plenty of females who are the main or sole breadwinner, too – but it seems to be a very common story when talking about juggling two careers. Even in relationships where the couple do not have children, there is the burden of the mental load that someone has to carry. It might be a little more equitable, although our research shows us that even in heterosexual relationships without children, women tend to bear the brunt of the mental load. The following are some quotes from some of the women we interviewed:

    “I carry 95% of the mental load to keep the household running.  At times it feels like my partner is deliberately forgetting so he doesn’t have to a take any load.  When I have asked him to be responsible for something he has forgotten it or has not placed as much importance on it as I would have and is incomplete or sloppy, so, I have stopped asking.”

    “At first my husband “chipped in” and initiated some household tasks and I was left to do everything else (even when it came to his son). Now my 66-year old mother lives with us and she takes on most of the cleaning and laundry. My husband does very little. I want to do more and be more in control of my household but I don’t have the energy or time. I take on 100% of the mental load.”

    “I definitely carry about 90% of the mental load, my husband the other 10%, usually about himself. All other tasks, responsibilities to do with our children, dog and            household fall to me. In terms of household tasks, it would be 80% me, 15% my husband, 5% my children. I would love them all to do more but they complain and don’t do it”.

    This juggle to do it all is how women have become known for multitasking! Also, when women carve out time for ‘deep work’ – a time for focused work on a particular project (We can be masters at cramming it in and getting whatever is needed to be done in the time required! The three authors of this book regularly draw on principles of deep work to get their tasks done – indeed, writing this book has occurred during many of our ‘deep work’ moments. We have been asked by many people how we actually managed to juggle it all to write this book, and our answers differ slightly from one another.

    The book begins by raising a thoughtful question, "Can women have it all, family, work and everything in between?"

    The book begins by raising a thoughtful question, “Can women have it all, family, work and everything in between?”

    For Jennifer, she allocated time on weekends, while her husband looked after their child. For Raechel, she wrote mostly in the evenings, or during two hour chunks of time she blocked out in her calendar over the lunch time. In some ways the pandemic helped us – surprisingly so! For Rebecca it meant her husband was not travelling for work, so she managed it whenever she had spare time, even if it was just an hour at a time. For Raechel, the pandemic meant her children were home, but so was her partner. Still, she carved out time for ‘deep work’ whenever their  toddler napped. Deep work means planning the task in advance, avoiding distractions, and working solidly for a time period. The three of us are also very fortunate to all have supportive partners who are willing to step up.

    The data tells us that women today are doing more than our mothers did. We all know that more women are in the workforce than ever before. More women are working full time than ever before. Less than a quarter of women worked in the early 1970s, compared to two thirds today. Women are also better educated and are ‘catching up’ to men in terms of post-school education.

    The good news is that this results in many women in better careers. Despite all of this, the kids still need to get to school (when a woman has children, that is!), dinner still needs to be on the table, lunches need to be made, groceries need to be purchased, and as we have already shown you, women still tend to carry the brunt of that, even though men are, increasingly, stepping up. This means our lives are busier than ever before.

    You may have also heard that women today are spending more time with their children than women in the 1970s – this potentially surprising finding was reported by women in a survey in 2011. They indicated that they spent more hours with their children than their mothers had. While this may be the case, we need to consider why it may be the case. Children in the 1970s were more likely to roam the streets, playing with friends in the neighbourhood, and organising impromptu sporting matches. When they had extracurricular activities, they took the bus, or went on foot, and parents were not necessarily expected to attend.

    These days, parents generally organise ‘play dates’ for their children, through back and forth phone calls, text messages and calendar checking, something that was never really the case thirty or forty years ago. Parents today drive their children to sport and other extracurricular activities. They are present when the child is signed up, and often attend matches and classes. Yet, when we really examine the data, we can see that mothers today have much more ‘sedentary’ time compared with mothers in 1965. Mothers today are more likely to spend time in front of a computer, the television, driving, or ‘supervising’ children at their sports matches or play dates. In contrast, in 1965, mothers were more ‘active’ – cooking, cleaning, playing with children and exercising. While women still cook, clean, play and exercise, the increased use of technology (e.g., dishwashers, cooking appliances… and screen time!) has reduced a lot of the ‘activity’ component of these tasks.

    Nevertheless, data indicates women today spend more time with their children than mothers in the 1970s did, and regardless of how the data is interpreted, women are busy. Women are generally trying to do many things at once, and it is essential that for partnered people, tasks need to be shared to support the increasing roles of women in the workforce.

    “As women must be more empowered at work, men must be more empowered at home”). This needs to be happening now – women should not be carrying the lion’s share of home duties if a couple has dual careers.

    • This is an edited excerpt from “The Superwoman Myth: Can Contemporary Women Have It All Now?”. It’s out now!

     

     

     

     

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  • Report: The gendered distribution of household work persists

    Who does most of the housework is a sore point in many households.

    When we conducted the second Families in Australia Survey in November-December 2021, 2,610 partnered participants had something to say about this. Perhaps not surprisingly, many told us the housework was not shared equally: 42% said the female always or usually did more; 47% said the housework was shared equally and 10% said the male always or usually did more.

    Attitudes about gender roles continue to be a factor affecting how the housework is shared in many families. How much time each of the couple spends in paid work also seems to matter a lot. Higher rates of employment among men than women, especially if they are parents, leads to a gendered distribution of household work. And for parents of younger children, who did the housework was often connected to who was at home to care for children.

    I don’t work while he does so my job is to keep the house clean, take care of the kids, etc., which I’m happy to do. Female aged 30 years, male partner

    My wife earns the money. I look after the children and the house. We’re like a 1950s family in reverse. It works!  Male aged 45 years, female partner

    The cultural normative in my household still seems to be the man goes out to work and the woman takes care of the house and the children. I’ve tried to challenge it and encourage him to do more, and he says he will but it just ends up with me nagging him and it’s easier to do it myself. Female aged 37 years, male partner

    Some new mothers were worried about how household tasks would be managed after their return to work, although some expected the equal sharing would return at this time.

    I’m a stay at home mum while on maternity leave, I expect to do more. I’m very scared about how we will manage when I go back to work.Female aged 39 years, male partner

    Not surprisingly, dissatisfaction with how housework was shared was greatest among those doing more of the housework, particularly when they were experiencing other demands on their time. Among females who reported that the household tasks were done primarily by them, 43% were dissatisfied or very dissatisfied. Looking at couples who were more time pressured by work, those in which both partners worked full-time hours, among females who equally shared the housework, 87% were satisfied with how the housework was shared. This is much higher than the 23% satisfied among females who always or usually did more of it.

    Some of the stories told by participants indicated that the sharing of housework can be a source of conflict and stress, especially when it falls unevenly without agreement. On the other hand, negotiation and mutual respect appeared important in contributing to arrangements that work for each party.

    Very unevenly distributed and often causes conflict when the issue is raised that he needs to contribute more. Female aged 51 years, male partner

    I am home more so do a lot of the housework. When my wife is home, she does some of the jobs I don’t like doing but which she is happy to do. We also have a roster of who does what and when with most tasks alternating. Male aged 46 years, female partner

    We were curious to find out if COVID-19 restrictions affected housework sharing. Our first Families in Australia Survey found that the patterns of sharing housework were similar before and during the initial COVID-19 restrictions even though couples were spending much more time at home. Before COVID-19, in 43% of families the female partner was doing the majority of the housework, compared to a similar 41% during the pandemic. And 46% of households reported an even split pre-COVID-19, compared to 48% during, indicating evidence of entrenched gender patterns in housework.

    But two typical experiences of sharing housework in the context of COVID-19 have emerged from our surveys so far. One is that living in close quarters and working at home led to more housework, and this was usually done by the female. The other is that spending more time together increased awareness within couples of each other’s workload (whether paid or unpaid), and this sometimes led to adjustments. For example:

    Because I now work from home everyone expects me to do all the household chores and I end up doing them because I am home all day.  Female aged 46 years, male partner

    COVID actually allowed my husband to see how busy I am in my job. He took on much more of the household and child care tasks after that.  Female aged 30 years, male partner

    The sense that decisions about sharing housework changed with family circumstances emerged also in reports of who did the household work when one partner was injured or ill. For older couples, though, some had life-long patterns that were difficult to shift. Some mentioned the important contribution of other household members (such as grown-up children) in sharing the housework.  Across families, there was a lot of diversity in the stories told, including among those families that worked consciously to have more equal sharing, or who had arrangements that saw the male doing more. Some had found a way of sharing that suited, even if it was unequal.

    After 42 years of marriage we seem to fall into a routine of sharing tasks without even speaking about it, he likes to cook, I do most of the cleaning, we share the washing. We communicate about tasks. Female aged 63 years, male partner

    Our research will continue to explore what family members have to say about how they manage their responsibilities to each other, in the context of other stressors and strains.  We would love to hear from all kinds of families through the Families in Australia Survey.

    Our fourth Families in Australia Survey is open until 13 December 2021. It’s open to anyone in Australia aged 18 years and over. Please help us build up a picture of families across Australia and take the survey today Families in Australia Survey | Australian Institute of Family Studies (aifs.gov.au)

     

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  • Unequal media: 69 percent of quotes from men

    The “Women For Media: Take The Next Steps report” explores the role of female voices in Australian news, those quoted in news stories, and those who wrote the stories. 
    The 2021 report combines quantitative and qualitative analysis of more than 60,000 articles across the month of May 2021, plus in-depth interviews with leading figures in the media landscape.
    I put some questions about this huge and important piece of work to project leads, Dr Jenna Price with Dr Blair Williams. 

    Before we get to what’s in the report, why is it important to get a picture of women in the media – both as expert sources and as creators of journalism? What does it tell us? 

    News media has historically either excluded or trivialised women. Our lives, voices and issues traditionally weren’t considered ‘newsworthy’ and were often relegated to the ‘women’s section’ of newspapers or women’s magazines. Men’s voices dominated both in stories and in the newsroom, which meant that the news was presented through a male lens.

    More women have since entered news organisations, particularly in recent years, so it’s important to understand whether we’re still marginalised as both journalists and expert sources and if men’s voices continue to dominate. It’s crucial that the news reflects the diversity of our society, rather than the voices of a privileged few.

    This is a complex and in-depth and sometimes alarming piece of work that folks should take the time to read. However, what are your key takeaways here? 

    The biggest takeaway is that, despite more women in journalism and in senior positions in the newsroom, men’s voices predominate.

    • 69 percent of quotes were attributable to men, they accounted for 65 percent of first bylines of all stories and wrote 65 percent of opinion pieces.

    • Certain topics are gendered. Men wrote the vast majority of sports, politics, business and science stories while women wrote more health and arts and entertainment stories.

    • Despite some fantastic women COVID-19 experts and economists, women provided only a quarter of quotes for stories covering COVID-19 or the 2021 Federal Budget.

    One of the interesting findings is that what women (and men) write about is gendered. Can you tell me about this? 

    There’s quite a bit of academic research that identifies how certain topics have been placed into a binary of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ categories. ‘Hard’ categories consist of serious factual presentations of newsworthy topics, like politics, economics, major events, and public interest matters, and is regarded as important journalistic work that men do.

    ‘Soft’ categories are traditionally considered less important as they centre on human-interest stories, lifestyle, trends and personalities, and is considered more ‘feminine’. Our report confirms what other international studies have found – that despite the increasing number of women in journalism, the ‘hard’/’soft’ binary continues.

    2021 Women for Media - Take the Next Steps Report

    2021 Women for Media – Take the Next Steps Report.

    Women are also quoted far less in the media. Unpick this for me. (I note a quote from editor Juliette Lewis in your report saying women need to pitch – putting the onus on them. But to me this is problematic because it’s assuming there’s an equal playing field. Whereas as mentioned in my recent podcast there’s evidence showing women are seen as less expert, even if they do put themselves forward.)

    You’re right – women are quoted less in the media, and I think it’s due to two reasons. First, women are more hesitant to be interviewed by journalists than their male counterparts and research by Kathryn Shine has identified that this is due to a few key reasons: lack of confidence, time constraints, reluctance to appear on camera and a lack of understanding as to the operation of news media. Yet the onus shouldn’t be on women experts to change, but on journalists to provide more support and encouragement.

    Second, and more importantly, women are still seen as ‘less expert’. This is because men have, for so long, shaped what expertise ‘looks like’. When men make up the vast majority of expert sources in news articles, as well as the majority of senior academic positions (the leaky pipeline in academia is disastrous for gender equality in any level above a C), then I think it influences the perceptions of both journalists, the public and even the academic themselves. When they think of an expert, they see a white man in a tweed jacket or an old white man in a lab coat with wispy grey hair. We need to change these norms and journalists could start by doing a lot more to branch out and find expert sources who don’t fit the pale stale male mould.

    What did you personally learn during this investigation? What surprised you? 

    Blair says: I think I was more shocked by the findings of the 2019 report that Jenna wrote, which found that women wrote only 16 percent of political op-eds. As a woman political scientist, I was shocked but also sadly not that surprised?

    The 2019 report definitely primed my expectations when it came time to examine the data for the current report. However, we were quite surprised by the lack of women journalists and sources in some progressive publications, like Crikey or The Saturday Paper, and that some conservative publications, like The Daily Telegraph and The Courier-Mail, had the most women bylines.

    Who has the most bylines in Australia’s media? 

    In terms of who had the most bylines attributed to women? That would be the print version of The Daily Telegraph (61 percent) followed by the print version of The Courier-Mail (59 percent) and the online Sydney Morning Herald (58 percent).

    It’s easy to get depressed about the lack of equality in the media. But what hopeful signs of change did you find? 

    Yes, there continues to be a lack of gender equality in the media which is particularly depressing when you think of how many women have entered journalism and senior newsroom positions. However, our report found that women’s representation is slightly increasing – the first report in 2012 found that women only accounted for 20 percent of all comments whereas our 2021 report found they now provide 31 percent of quotes. There have also been marginal improvements in the number of women in different categories, like politics or business.

    We felt a bit more hope after reading the editor interviews as they were actually acknowledging the problem with some, like Lisa Davies at The Sydney Morning Herald, discussing how they’ve actively tried to implement change at multiple levels. This is indicative of the change we’ve seen in recent years, particularly since the March 4 Justice rallies we saw around Australia at the start of 2021, which has normalised discussion around gender inequality. It gives us hope that things will continue to change for the better.

    Read the full report here. 

    • Please note: Feature image is a stock photo. 

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  • I’m a Facebook jailbird: the system is sexist

    Content notification: This post contains discussion of and examples of online abuse and commentary some people might find offensive. It is published here in the interest of genuinely and openly discussing ideas and thoughts about what we, as a community, consider abusive and/or sexist on social media platforms.

    While draft anti-troll legislation by the current Australian Federal Government is intended to magically change the nature of global social media and protect those who are relentlessly bullied online  – with a cursory nod to women and children being the greatest victims of this abuse – the details are yet to be explained. On the surface of it, it appears more like a mental blip, than a comprehensive stab at halting harmful cyberhate and misinformation on the platforms.

    What about users who troll from a VPN? What level of abuse will be deemed severe enough for the Government to step up and step in? How many cases does it expect to prosecute and to what level? How will it force a global behemoth such as the likes of Facebook to gather and then share the necessary personal information?

    In the meantime, Facebook has its own measures to prevent trolling. Users can be reported by other users and Facebook’s algorithms or human moderators will assess the post and step in with a user ban: 12 hours, 24 hours, 3 days, 7 days, 30 days, depending on the number of misdemeanours.

    But how does this work? Facebook does not release details of its criteria for assessment. What we do know is that many platforms outsource their moderation offshore where barely trained and often very young people are dealing with our complaints.

    I have always been one who finds bullying, injustice and casual cruelty hard to walk away from, in person, and online. For example, I’m sometimes active with the Australian branch of the #iamhere movement, a group of volunteers who work on Facebook to take “action to disrupt those who are spreading hate on the Internet.”

    This work largely consists of the group focussing energies on particular public posts from MSM where hate is flourishing in the comment sections, and correcting the record by sharing actual facts about the content (such as in the case of vaccine or climate denial) and offering affirmative comments to offer space for those who are the subject of attack (for example in stories about domestic violence, transgender and sexuality issues). We get to see a great deal of human ugliness in this work. But we keep it polite and factual and it’s good to feel supported.

    However when free range, I’m a little more feisty. I’m sure if I just put up and shut up, posted nice pictures of my dinner, my cats, chooks, sewing and a few suggestive cleavage shots, of course, I wouldn’t get myself into social media trouble.

    But I’m in the fray and I don’t apologise for this – consequently I’m frequently in the Facebook slammer. In the interests of honesty, I’m also sometimes a smidge sarcastic. Recently, for example, I received a 30-day incarceration, which means no commenting, liking, or sharing, though I can still read posts and use Messenger.

    The Guardian had shared an article about Harry Styles’ new makeup range, with a picture of the gorgeous, sexually playful, gender non-conforming pop star and non-binary role model in full frockage. One commenter suggested that Harry and those like him be conscripted to the military. My response was: “really? why? to ‘make a man of him’? who made a man of you, pussycat? Was it nasty, or… fun?”

    Online hate

    Gretchen Miller says hate is flourishing in comment sections online. But somehow she always ends up in the Facebook slammer for seemingly mild commentary. 

    I am uncertain as to whether I was jailed for calling a man “pussycat,” or for the phrase “make a man of him”. Pussycat is a term of affection, something my father used to call me, and sure, I wasn’t feeling much affection for the commenter, nonetheless it’s no more offensive than love, sweetheart, or darling.

    As for the proposal that beautifully creative and fey people like Harry Styles should be subjected to the military, known for its brutality towards those who don’t fit in, well that is quite clearly menacing.

    My teen is nonbinary and I’m acutely aware that banally hideous comments like this, floating in a relentless sea of hatred and contempt, causes genuine damage to young people looking for role models. I wanted to make space for anyone reading the comments who might feel threatened, but heaven forbid, I, as a woman, should challenge this bloke. Thus, 30 days, in the slammer for ‘bullying’.

    Previously I have received 30 days for (light heartedly) describing my beloved cat as a female dog for scratching the furniture. I got another 30 for expressing horror that a Northern Beaches Sydney Christian school had a ‘rate my wife’ sexual education program for its teen boys, that categorised girls according to their church-going, virginity and other Christian values.

    In discussing this on my own private page with a friend, a mother of a daughter, I, as a mother of a son, wasn’t polite about the entitlement of the Christian mindset and wrote to her: “yeah. I can’t imagine having a daughter and knowing this stuff goes on. Makes one feel very impotent and powerless. But we’re not. The girls pushed back hard on this, thankfully. Don’t know how the boys responded but it seems ‘build a bitch’ does observe some kind of response to the cardboard cutout being designed here. Stupid flipping Christians.”

    Bam. More time behind bars. Apparently, that was hate speech. I’m not sure which element, however saw the door close and the key thrown away: the comment about Christians or the direct quote from the students who described this practice as ‘build a bitch,” which I pulled from a mainstream newspaper,

    I did, in irritation, call an anti-vaxxer a numpty one time: 30 days for that. And it’s not just me: a friend got pinged for hate speech for three days because she described a personal experience on my private page in this way: “As a teenage Mormon one of my male friends shared a pamphlet with me from his Sunday School class which warned boys against the sins of group masturbation because it leads to homosexuality. I remember just thinking, ew, so, is group masturbation a thing? Boys are just so gross.” Was it the mention of Mormons, sin, homosexuality, masturbation, or that “boys are just so gross”? Who’s to know?

    Meanwhile, a quick informal survey of friends and contacts and I gathered the comments below, all reported by women, all perfectly peachy as far as Facebook was concerned. Let’s take a real Facebook that I’ll give the pseudomyn “Random Specialist Mens’ Interest Group” (or RSMIG). In reality, it’s a misleading front for overt misogyny. The comments below were all made in public spaces. I’ve just changed the names. From Brian: “Kate, we are all aware that you are a member of the female “rape” club.” And, to Margaret, Brian was equally charming: “Sweety, you are not staying the night… We are not going to have sex… What part of “no means no” do you not understand? I am not into rough violent sex and rape like you are … So you are not staying for breakfast and I am not cooking you waffles… We should have pics of the outside of your house soon!! Hunny Bun.”

    Facebook and RSMIG was fine with Dave sweetly suggesting of a woman that her punishment should include: “remove her priviges, send HER to jail, 2-3 time what he got. Castrate her. EDIT: also, remover her clitoris. And boobs as well. Fyi, false claims that Destroys ppls lives, make my blood boil so much”  (grammar and spelling are word for word).

    Darren was apparently well within his rights when he wrote: “Trans people aren’t real humans, and should be put down like that retarded guinea pigs.” And Frank was also good to go with: “That kind of talk will bring about a level of hostility that these fantasy dwellers aren’t even remotely prepared for. If they aren’t careful, men might just show them what they wanna see… and then they’ll know just how patient and nice we’ve really been the whole time. … If they keep it up they will force men to retaliate and they will land right back where they were a century ago. They have no idea what masculine wrath even is. Yet.”

    My question here is: Who gets banned and for what? To what extent is gender bias coming into play here? Like so much of life, these comments indicate we are swimming in such a sea of misogyny, that we we barely blink at it. And it’s clear to me that society’s offline prejudices – that women aren’t trustworthy, aren’t able to equally voice their opinions and take up space – are being applied liberally online.

    We certainly know that women face more abuse online. But perhaps they face more censorship too.

    So what happens next? You can appeal a banning, and a bot will review the request. If that is unsuccessful it is possible to request further adjudication, which you won’t necessarily get: few of these requests reach an actual human.

    I have asked Facebook executives in Australia who the company employs to review these requests, the nature of their training and whether it reflects contemporary secular values.

    The impacts of this silencing are not minor. These bannings happened when we were in Covid lockdown and many of us were profoundly isolated. I use Facebook for sharing life stories and life stories aren’t necessarily clean and tidy.

    Sometimes they are about childhood reactions “boys are gross” and sometimes they are about politics: “Christian schools shouldn’t mandate the objectification of women and to do so is stupid” (truth in defence). The language I use is that of the every day, and drawn from mainstream media. None of my comments advocated violence against men. None of them threatened doxing, a violent uprising, or accused anyone of rape.

    So I am left with more questions than I had to start. I’m wondering how the LNP legislation can possibly deal with the complexity of these engagements. But also wondering how Facebook will greet what appears to be an unworkable proposal. But more deeply, what kind of user Facebook really wants. What is best for the bottom line – fostering social good or fomenting hate?

    What kind of user does Facebook seek, exactly? I don’t have a good feeling about the answers. Not at all.

     

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  • The ecosystems of Parliament need urgent change

    With a Christmas tree behind him the Prime Minister unwrapped a recycled theme years in the making and painful in its unpacking — the findings of the Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Kate Jenkin’s report Set the Standard. It was a standard, if it ever existed, that had been slipping for decades and Mr Morrison could only lament the obvious, the issues were not new and the culture giving rise to them didn’t just appear.

    Even so, it took Brittany Higgins’ extraordinary courage and the storm of pressure it unleashed to trigger the review and to lead the Prime Minister on Tuesday to acknowledge that “[w]e all share in the ownership of the problems and we all share in implementing the solutions.”

    He also acknowledged the breadth and extent of the bullying and harassment that besieged workplaces everywhere and thus making it particularly shocking that the very seat of government, perhaps the nation’s most prestigious workplace, had not been setting the standard for others to aspire to.

    But with the Jenkin’s report now released, the focus is on Parliament to look deeply at itself, and for the major parties to accept that the people elected to it are key to ensuring we are able to make real and meaningful change.  A more diverse Parliament, committed to using the far-reaching levers that Parliament has the power to draw upon, will ensure a greater chance of enabling our society to do better on gender equality and on all areas of public policy.

    On this, the Commission’s report provides confronting testimony on what needs to be addressed, hearing how gender inequality and a wider lack of diversity entrenches power within one group, devaluing women and, consequently, fostering gendered misconduct.  Multiple participants spoke about the lack of women in senior roles. ‘[B]y crowding out women at the most senior levels of staffing, a male-dominated and testosterone-fuelled culture dominates’ as well as instances of everyday sexism,” the Report explains.

    This absence of equality in leadership drives the 50/50 by 2030 Foundation to focus its research and activate policy to ensure that we have women and diverse leadership equally in all areas of public life. Moreover, it is clear that changes are needed in three key areas that contribute to the current ecosystems in all peoples’ lives. To address any change in the public sphere we must make changes in the private spheres of our lives.

    As Sam Mostyn, President of Chief Executive Women noted in her national press club address, the caring work done, both outside the home and inside the home, provides the fundamental infrastructure to all our lives, and must be valued.  We are thus led to examine the economic framework underpinning this infrastructure and see in turn the influence it has  on gender norms about what is valued and on power structures that so far have not yet enabled women and people of diverse backgrounds to be truly represented.

    Gender norms need budging in the home and in the traditionally identified ‘private’ spheres that impact on women’s experiences beyond the home. Parliament can and should address what must be done in the home to shift and challenge those norms. Government must address the role it can play in assisting in the sharing of the load of unpaid care work that COVID so clearly amplified was and is disproportionately carried by women. This demands greater attention to paid parental leave for men and women, that is affirmed in the workplace and government must better address how child- care fits in this paradigm.

    The links between the economic structures in society and equality are stark. When it comes to gender this has been evident in the context of the gender pay gap, the gender segregated workforce, the tax system, and public policy generally not being attentive enough to the differential impact of public policy, including fiscal policy, on different groups in society. Work must be undertaken in these areas, to consider what reforms are needed to embed equality in our economic structures to enable people’s lives to be lived to the full and to enable women to equally share the power and contribute to better public policy.

    But ultimately, Kate Jenkin’s report tells us that political and governance structures need changing to assist in the project of embedding equality in all public leadership in Australia.  Part of this project requires that we seriously address the style of politics currently on show in Parliament – where men stand over women, or attempt to do so, and the whole atmosphere is one of intimidation, dominance, put-down, humiliation and aggression. It is not one of respectful engagement to tease out and resolve countless wicked problems besieging the health of our nation.

    Kate Jenkins’ landmark report Set the Standard should be a seminal marker in our nation’s story, on the road to a healthier and stronger society.  The 28 recommendations should be engaged with immediately and carried forward by this and the next Parliament, due to be elected by 21 May 2022.  Let’s see if it has an immediate influence on the number of women pre-selected in safe seats around the country, as well as joining the numerous women standing up as Independents around the country, committed to ensuring a safe and equal society for all men and women, wherever they live.

    Feature image: Sydney, Australia – March 15, 2021 – Thousands of Australian women protest against Crime and Sexual Violence in a Women’s March 4 Justice rally. Photo from Shutterstock.

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  • Will the Jenkins review fix parliament’s toxic culture?

    In the wake of Brittany Higgins’ shocking allegations about being raped in a ministers’ office by a colleague, Prime Minister Scott Morrison initiated multiple inquiries.

    Arguably, the most significant was the independent review into parliamentary workplaces, headed up by Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins and supported by Labor and the crossbench.

    The review has been underway since March, speaking to current and former MPs and employees at parliament house and its associated workplaces – such as electorate offices and the press gallery. On Tuesday, the 450-page report, Set the Standard, was released.

    As Jenkins observed, parliament house should be something “Australians look to with pride”.

    This report represents a wholesale change strategy, and calls for leadership and accountability across a diverse parliamentary “ecosystem”. This new roadmap is grounded in the testimony and experiences of more than 1,700 contributors, including 147 former and current parliamentarians.

    What did the report find?

    The report included a survey of current parliamentarians and people currently working at parliament house (such as staffers, journalists and public servants). More than 900 people responded.

    It found more than 37% of people currently in parliamentary workplaces have personally experienced bullying in a parliamentary workplace. As one interviewee noted:

    Frequently, like at least every week, the advice was go and cry in the toilet so that nobody can see you, because that’s what it’s like up here.

    It also found 33% of people currently in parliamentary workplaces have personally experienced sexual harassment in a parliamentary workplace. As one interviewee reported:

    Aspiring male politicians who thought nothing of, in one case, picking you up, kissing you on the lips, lifting you up, touching you, pats on the bottom, comments about appearance, you know, the usual. The point I make with that… was the culture allowed it, encouraged it.

    The report notes a devastating impact on people as a result of these experiences. This included an impact on their mental and physical health, confidence and ability to do their job, as well as their future career, “these experiences also caused significant distress and shame”.

    Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins

    Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins has been working on the parliamentary review since March.
    Dan Himbrechts/AAP

    The drivers behind this behaviour

    A critical part of the report looks at the drivers which contribute to misconduct in parliamentary workplaces. Participants also described risk factors which interact with these drivers to endanger their workplaces.

    The drivers include:

    • power imbalances, where participants described a focus on the pursuit and exercise of power as well as insecure employment and high levels of power and discretion in relation to employment
    • gender inequality, including a lack of women in senior roles
    • lack of accountability, including limited recourse for those who experience misconduct
    • entitlement and exclusion, or “a male, stale and pale monopoly on power in [the] building”

    The risk factors include:

    • unclear standards of behaviour, leading to confusion about the standards that apply
    • a leadership deficit, such as a prioritisation of political gain over people management
    • workplace dynamics, a “win at all costs” and high-pressure and high-stakes environment
    • social conditions of work, including “significant” alcohol use and a “work hard, play hard” culture.
    • employment structures and systems, such as a lack of transparent and merit-based recruitment.

    Recommendations

    There are 28 recommendations in the report.

    They include a statement of acknowledgement from parliamentary leaders, recognising people’s experiences of bullying, sexual harassment and sexual assault in parliamentary workplaces, targets to increase gender balance among parliamentarians and a new office of parliament staffing and culture.

    Former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins.
    Former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins was briefed on the report before it was made public.
    Lukas Coch/AAP

    The report also wants to see the professionalisation of management practices for parliamentary staff and a code of conduct for parliamentarians and their staff. An independent commission would enforce these standards.

    The report also calls for a new parliamentary health and well-being service.

    Where to from here

    Two key press conferences – from Morrison and Jenkins – accompanied the release of the Set the Standard report. But the change expected by the report requires much more than words – it requires concerted action.

    Parliament now needs to endorse and implement a number of key accountability mechanisms to ensure that, as an institution, it ensures all building occupants are safe and respected at work. These include the office on parliamentary staffing and culture and independent parliamentary standards commission.

    In addition, the report calls on the parliament itself to continue reflecting and thinking through appropriate changes. For example, the parliamentary work schedule is shown to drive a workplace culture that values “presence and endurance” over remote working and flexibility. Sitting in the chamber at 9pm does not necessarily equal productivity, particularly when it is propped up – among political staffers – with alcohol.

    There is no simple solution here. Some argue long hours in parliament house mean longer periods away from parliament, in the electorate, with families. Others argue the work day should end – as it does in other workplaces – before dinner. Jenkins recommends parliament does its own review of the sitting schedule. Hopefully this will create “buy in” from parliamentarians, but reviews like this have been undertaken before (and have not led to cultural change).

    For this report to lead to meaningful change, everyone in all the many, varied parliamentary workplaces has to take responsibility for the systemic inequality that drives toxic workplace behaviour in the building.

    Responsibility is not equally distributed though. Morrison may call for a bipartisan approach, but he currently leads the government responsible for instigating the inquiry and implementing its recommendations.

    His challenge will be in convincing the electorate he means it when he says he wants to fix this “very, very serious problem”.

    If you or someone you know is impacted by sexual assault, family or domestic violence, call 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732 or visit www.1800RESPECT.org.au. In an emergency, call 000. International helplines can be found via www.befrienders.org.The Conversation

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

    • Feature image: Lukas Coch/AAP

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  • Gender and office housework: Who cleans the microwave?

    Think about the microwave that sits in your office. Who cleans it? Also, think back to your last office birthday party. Who organized the party? Who brought a birthday card and cake? Were they women? Have you noticed that women end up doing those office housework tasks more often than do men? If so, you are not alone.

    According to Grant and Sandberg writing in the New York Times back in 2015, women tend to perform more office housework behaviours such as these in the workplace than do men.

    Further, as office housework requires the expenditure of time and energy, women are expected to experience more burnout than do men. However, while office housework is undoubtably necessary for office functioning (imagine what the microwave would look and smell like without it?), engaging in these behaviors may negatively impact the individual performing them.

    Specifically, while performing office housework, people may miss opportunities to participate in activities that are more directly related to career success indicators such as job promotions. This can create an inadvertent pathway through which the careers of women may be adversely harmed by their greater engagement in housework compared to men.

    However, while these claims were put forth, they had not been formally tested. Thus, our research team investigated the topic of office housework with empirical data. In our study, we first defined office housework as “menial administrative tasks that keep an office running.”

    Then, we created specific items to measure office housework and collected data from over 1,000 full-time workers. Results revealed that women performed more office housework than did men, as previously speculated.

    However, contrary to the popular press claim, results showed no significant relationship between office housework and burnout, and women did not necessarily experience more burnout by performing more office housework, providing no evidence that housework harmed individual health.

    Yet, there were career outcome differences between women and men related to housework.

    Despite the fact that women performed more office housework, men received better career outcomes such as more promotion from performing office housework than did women.

    Such findings highlight the unequal expectations and performance regarding office housework and their different career consequences for men and women; more specifically, we posit that these findings emerged due to gender stereotypes related to who should perform housework with men receiving greater rewards because this behavior was viewed as going above and beyond their expected behaviors at work, whereas women were expected to do this and were simply seen as doing what they were supposed to.

    In the article, we assert that supervisors need to be aware of this unequal work distribution of office housework between men and women and try to ensure that office tasks that can be considered as “housework” are evenly distributed across genders. For example, bringing in the office birthday cake could be rotated across all employees.

    Moreover, organizations should seek to create and maintain a fair and equitable culture related to performing these non-productivity related behaviors that are necessary for organisational functioning.

    In a culture of this kind, women and men should be equally rewarded for comparable behaviors. Furthermore, we recommend HR practitioners be cognizant of this potentially unequal career compensation between men and women and provide equal career compensation for equal performance of office housework regardless of the gender characteristics of employees.

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  • Stop applauding the launch of initiatives for women

    It’s way too easy to launch an initiative supporting women. It’s a lot harder to fess up to whether they worked, which is maybe why no-one does. Applause should be linked to results, not empty platitudes.

    Another Monday morning, another big announcement by a big company launching their program to champion women in the workforce. It’s a story we hear often but it is no longer inspiring. It’s annoying.

    The recent Women in the Workplace 2021 Report reveals the many ways that working environments are still not equitable for women. Which is why companies running female support programs should commit to providing full transparency of outcomes. Not top line vanity metrics like the number of women involved or how much they each feel they benefited. We need to measure the impact of the program on company culture.

    We should be tracking the true measures of success. We should be tracking our progress towards never needing to run one of these programs again.

    Imagine where we would be today if we had this information for the multitude of women’s initiatives run over the last 25, hell it’s more like 50 years!

    Frankly I find most of these programs underwhelming and patronising. Women don’t need charity. We don’t need to be treated with kid-gloves. We don’t need special help. We are not the problem.

    Statistics, that are more accurately collected and reported every year, confirm this. Having women involved in any business venture and especially on boards increases the likelihood of success. We are nailing it!

    Initiatives designed to mainstream this success are not. The mechanics that sit behind them appear flawed. Correcting this requires the systematic and transparent tracking of results, followed by thoughtful analysis. Imagine the impact, for example, of data that substantiated that initiatives targeted directly at women were counterproductive. It’s likely.

    If we look hard enough we may find analysis on the outcomes of bigger female support initiatives hidden in a few annual reports somewhere, but that’s not much good to anyone. Results need to be published wherever the big announcement of the flashy initiatives are published. Ideally they need to completely replace them.

    If we are serious about nailing this once and for all we need to change the emphasis from fancy launches to in-depth, ongoing evaluations and results.

    As quickly as possible because everyone is getting so fatigued by decades of good but, if we are still needing to run these programs, feeble intentions.

    Please note: Feature image is a stock photo

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  • When misogynist cyberhate turns you into international news

    QAnon is a far-right conspiracy movement, which revolves around false claims made by anonymous individuals, much of it online.

    In this edited excerpt of her new book ‘QAnon and On’ Van Badham details misogyny and gendered hate within this cohort. 

    Anita Sarkeesian was a graduate student at York University in Canada. Her research critiqued the representation of women in genre tropes across popular culture, and she maintained a website with a YouTube channel, Feminist Frequency, that documented her work.

    In June 2012 she launched an online Kickstarter fundraiser to make a series of videos that extended her analysis to video games. ‘I love playing video games but I’m regularly disappointed in the limited and limiting ways women are represented,’ Sarkeesian wrote in her pitch asking for contributions.

    To make Tropes vs. Women in Video Games, she needed six thousand dollars to cover production costs.

    ‘[T]its or back to the kitchen, bitch,’ came one comment.

    ‘LESBIANS: THE GAME is all this bitch wants,’ came another.

    They continued: ‘You are a hypocrite fucking slut’; ‘I’ll donate $50 if you make me a sandwich’; ‘She needs a good dicking, good luck finding it though’; ‘I hope you get cancer :)’; ‘Back to the kitchen, cunt.’

    And more. Thousands and thousands more, across all platforms where Sarkeesian had a presence – two thousand within a week on her YouTube channel alone.

    A post on Feminist Frequency reported that a ‘coordinated attack’ had mobilised, trying to get Sarkeesian’s accounts banned, sending her torrents of abuse – including rape and death threats – even editing her Wikipedia page to describe her as a ‘cunt’ and transforming her profile picture to porn. On her Tumblr, Sarkeesian identified that ‘a dozen or more different people were working together to vandalize’ the Wikipedia entry alone.

    The abuse of Anita Sarkeesian was so intense, it became an international news story.

    French website Madmoizelle pegged the blame for the attack squarely on ‘a bunch of 4channers doing everything on the Internet to destroy her’.

    It seemed that someone had brought Sarkeesian’s Kickstarter to 4chan’s attention, as they had abuse victim Jessi Slaughter and so many other targets before.

    The joke at the time was that 4chan did more to resource a feminist critique of gaming than Sarkeesian could have ever managed on her own. In the wake of publicity about the abuse, donations made in solidarity with Sarkeesian flowed into the Tropes vs. Women in Video Games fundraiser. She had asked for $6000. She received $158,922.

    The videos got made but laughs for the woman herself were thin on the ground.

    Anita Sarkeesian’s life was transformed: the engaged and eager 28-year-old academic became a woman made famous for her public abuse, because that abuse didn’t stop when she surpassed her fundraising goals, or even when she made her videos. The attention from 4chan had made her into a new kind of internet celebrity: the online feminist folk villain.

    Over the next few years, the abuse and death threats continued, and there were ongoing attempts to hack her accounts, shut down her sites and dox her. The attention had made her videos hugely popular, but while she was provided with international platforms in the media and at conferences to discuss her work, she was subjected to bomb and mass shooting threats at public appearances. She was falsely reported to the FBI and IRS for investigation.

    Cover - QAnon and On

    In QAnon and On, Van Badham delves headfirst into the QAnon conspiracy theory, unpicking the why, how and who behind this century’s most dangerous and far-fetched internet cult. 

    She was sent images that depicted video-game characters raping her and had a video game made about her. It was called Beat Up Anita Sarkeesian, and in it the player punches an image of her face until it is misshapen, cut and bloody.

    She was also the subject of conspiratorial, crowd-funded amateur documentaries. Two men behind these films, Jordan Owen and Davis Aurini, worked sometimes together, sometimes apart, but shared a mission to prove Sarkeesian was a fraud and manipulator.

    Their most infamous project was a crowd-funded documentary called The Sarkeesian Effect.

    Aurini self-identified as an ‘intellectual’ and shared propheavy white nationalist opinions on a YouTube channel and on Reddit. He was rumoured to hang out on 4chan’s /pol/ board.

    Owen was also a YouTuber, as well as a gamer, and a composer of ‘modern orchestral dance music’. Both men were enraged that Anita Sarkeesian had been recognised for her feminist advocacy at events like the Game Developers Choice Awards and denounced her in The Sarkeesian Effect as ‘a bully like [the video game industry] had never encountered before, a bully that used guilt and political correctness to have her way’.

    Their films and public comments repeated the online myth that her stories of harassment were a lie – a pity-eliciting grift to propel her to fame and riches – even as their own projects actively harassed her.

    For all the exuberance of their attempts to have Anita ‘cornered’, the only major revelation of Aurini and Owen’s film was that she got her correspondence delivered to a post-office box rather than a street address. An insistence of Aurini’s that she had lied about reporting her harassment to the police turned out to be incorrect.

    When the police located her harassment reports, Aurini retorted online that this news merely ‘compounded’ his questions rather than answering them. His reasoning for this was without explanation.

    Writer David Futrelle from the anti-misogynist website We Hunted the Mammoth followed the story of the Sarkeesian films and blogged about it. He saw a genuine desperation within these projects for ‘the terrible things people say about Sarkeesian to all be proved true’.

    For a start, there was the issue that they were sourcing money from people on a promise to validate the energy ‘half the internet’ had put into hounding her.

    There was also, Futrelle observed, a monstrous, sometimes admitted, envy of Sarkeesian among these people. She was able to raise more money from her projects than they could for theirs. She was invited to game industry parties when they were not. Her work was influencing a mainstream conversation.

    Futrelle described a pressing, psychological need he saw in Jordan Owen to delegitimise her. Any suggestion that Anita Sarkeesian may not be the creature Owen wanted her to be, wrote Futrelle, ‘actually seemed to plunge him into something close to an existential crisis’.

    Around these men, their projects, the online movement against Anita Sarkeesian and forums like 4chan, a new ecology was growing. The internet is the technology that offers the vastest storehouse of humanity’s learned truths in all our history, yet the accessibility of internet communities, their global reach and the rapidity of their communications were creating spaces where participants could affirm and reaffirm wilful myths to any audience that was eager to believe them. Years later, this phenomenon would be called post-truth’.

    When it came to the likes of Anita Sarkeesian, the scheming ‘SJW’ villain her antagonists wanted her to be was a far more compelling story than the video-game-playing feminist academic she really was. The same keyboards and screens used to demonise her as an agent of a ‘politically correct’ conspiracy were ones on which a mere few clicks could establish she was not a demon at all. The very proximity to empirical evidence made the deliberate choice to ignore it more conspicuous – and disturbing.

    Feature image: Anita Sarkeesian” by theglobalpanorama is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

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  • The NDIS is letting women with disabilities down

    You’d think that the National Disability Insurance (NDIS) scheme would be equally as accessible to men and women. But our new research suggests this isn’t the case.

    Only 37% of participants in the NDIS are women and girls, even though they make up about half of people with disability under 65. There was also some evidence (p. 49) from early in the NDIS roll-out that women were more likely to have unmet support demands than men (e.g. they were funded for supports that they then couldn’t access).

    So, women are underrepresented in the NDIS and may also be less likely to get the supports they need once they are on the scheme.

    For example, Deaf Aboriginal woman Nellie told us:

    I’ve also experienced a lot of gender issues with the NDIS. I’ve never had one woman contact me, ever. They’ve all been men, and I’m not completely comfortable with that. I mean it’s fine, but if you had a white hearing man, then the power is there, and they don’t understand disability on top of that, I feel very uneasy and passive and it’s a little bit like they become the aggressor and I retreat.

    Nellie’s experience – and many of the other women we spoke to – is consistent with international evidence that women with disability tend to be a particularly marginalised group when it comes to health and social care.

    According to the NDIS, female underrepresentation is due to the scheme supporting a lot of younger people with autism, developmental delay and intellectual disability – and those things are most likely to be diagnosed in men and boys. But that only covers who gets onto the scheme, not what their experiences are like once they have been accepted.

    Women’s disability advocacy agencies have been concerned for some time about gender equality in the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). But we couldn’t find any academic research about gender and the NDIS, so we interviewed 30 women from the ACT and Victoria, with a range of ages and disabilities, about their experiences with the NDIS.

    Our study

    Most were on the scheme already, but some were applying or had thought about applying. All the names in this article are pseudonyms.

    We found that some women had a great experience on the NDIS, or felt that the good significantly outweighed the negative. When it works, the NDIS can be truly transformative.

    However, many women had experienced significant difficulties in applying for the NDIS, interacting with the NDIS, or using their plans once they were on the scheme.

    Others had thought about applying but were too discouraged from what they had heard about other people’s experiences.

    Gendered barriers to the NDIS

    There were lots of barriers that women talked about, including the burden of NDIS administrative processes and how difficult it can be to learn how the scheme works, but we have just published an article exploring some of the most gendered barriers.

    Firstly, dealing with the NDIS can be difficult for people – especially for women – because as a personalised funding scheme it requires participants to know what their needs are and to articulate them and advocate for them on an individual basis. But from what we heard, the system is not very flexible in accounting for participants’ varying experience of self-advocacy and service navigation.

    We know that getting the right services on the NDIS requires a lot of individual effort because women used words like ‘push’, ‘fight’, ‘battle’, ‘struggle’ to talk about their experiences. Marjorie said that “everything I’ve gotten from the NDIS I have had to push for”. While some felt confident to self-advocate (Daphne said she had “more front than Myer”), more than half the women mentioned difficulties with self-advocacy, said they didn’t feel disabled enough to be on the scheme, or felt it was more important to put others before themselves.

    This is gendered because women are socialised or expected to be more selfless than men, to be the care providers, and can be penalised more than men for speaking up for themselves. For example, Peta told us: “I just think like being a woman …just this idea that you just kind of have to accept to some degree, you just have to put up with it. You know, you’re conditioned to care and just put up with shit that comes along or to not speak up if someone offends you.”

    Some women also felt that NDIS system actors (such as planners or disability service providers) react differently when men with disability self-advocate – for example being more likely to give men what they want, or being more intimidated by male anger, or more likely to label women who self-advocate as stubborn and difficult.

    Several participants felt that self-advocacy was compromised by caring roles. Dianne was particularly concerned about this in the context of women with disability caring for children with disability: “I know of cases where women have been advocating for a child with a disability or an adult child with a disability, and they’ve had to fight all those battles, and then they’re literally too exhausted to fight their own NDIS battle. And if like me, if they’ve hit a brick wall at some point with what they’ve asked for, they’ve just gone oh, I can’t do this. So they’ll actually go without, rather than continue trying to advocate for themselves.”

    Other difficulties with caring responsibilities included feeling like the NDIS did not recognise and support their mothering roles, that it tried to keep their disability needs separate from those of their children (which did not work in practice), or that it did not recognise caring responsibilities for extended family members.

    For example, Melissa said, “My motherhood gets completely thrown out the window”. Nellie, who is an Aboriginal elder, had significant caring responsibilities for her extended family and community, but had not been given support to carry out these responsibilities. She told us:

    “I don’t believe that the NDIS themselves really have any sort of clue of what it means when you’re talking about the Aboriginal context and you’re talking about women within the Aboriginal context.”

    Lastly, some women talked about the types of diagnoses that men and women are more likely to have, and the fact that it’s easier to get NDIS support for male-dominated disabilities than female-dominated. As January (who had ME/CFS) described it: “The things that women are more likely to be diagnosed with, which are overwhelmingly autoimmune conditions, chronic illness-based conditions, these are the things the NDIS spends a really enormous amount of energy trying to convince you that you can’t use NDIS for.”

    There is also a growing evidence base that autism is diagnosed more in males for gendered reasons, and not because the condition genuinely occurs in three times more men and boys than women and girls. So, there are likely to be many girls with autism that are missing out on the support they need because it is harder to get a diagnosis.

    What action is needed

    We were only able to scratch the surface in our exploratory study, but from talking to these women about their experiences, we think that the NDIS should do more to support women and girls to participate fully in the scheme.

    Advocacy groups have been recommending an NDIS Gender Strategy for years. We also think there needs to be better integration between the NDIS and existing women’s services – for example, building a system interface between the NDIS and critical women’s services such as specialist domestic and family violence services, sexual and reproductive health services, and parenting and carer support services.

    And women’s disability advocacy organisations need to be better resourced to create information pathways and peer networks to support women in getting more fair treatment in the NDIS, as well as to help the NDIS improve at a systemic level.

    Please note: The feature photo is a stock image. 

     

     

     

     

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  • Systemic pressures keep Joey ‘dirt poor’ and homeless

    Joey King, a community services professional and student living with mental illness, details the systemic pressures that keep her ‘dirt poor’ and homeless.

     I googled the term “dirt poor”. I know it comes from a time when people couldn’t afford to have flooring or even straw in their homes, but I wanted to see what it might mean here, in Australia.  Many dictionaries said “suffering extreme poverty” or “very poor”, but Dictionary.com states: “lacking nearly all material means or resources for living”. This resonates for me, a 52 year-old woman living in Australia in 2021.

    I am part of the fastest growing demographic for homelessness and poverty in Australia. I have had a severe and persistent mental illness for most of my life and I have been living in my car outside Perth, in the south west of Western Australia, for the past two years.

    I do not have the material means or resources to secure viable safe housing or employment. I do not have choices that will help me move on from where I find myself. I do not want to be this person but cannot see a way things will change.

    In Perth, homelessness has risen almost 60% in 2021. It is not going to stop until people that the Government is prepared to listen to speak out loud and demand true action, not the token efforts of events the rich are invited to participate in that raises money for a few or one week in a year of marketing to remind people that people have mental illnesses, experience homelessness and live in poverty. We are desperate and real change needs to occur – or the chasm that exists between rich and poor will continue, and ever more people will be living in poverty.

    I’m educated, articulate, and used to be involved in my community through work and volunteering, yet I have lived out of my car since July 2019.

    Have I asked for help? Yes!

    I used to work and teach Community Services, and I know how to research to find and ask for help.

    Have I been helped? No.

    I am looking at least another two years before public housing becomes available.

    My Jobseeker payments are approximately 38% below the recognised poverty line in Australia. I miss meals, juggle my medication, have no social life, and wonder how I can be expected to look for employment when I might go days without a shower or have been awake all night because I’m in fear of my surroundings? I am one of the 40% of women my age who live in poverty. I am ‘dirt poor’.

    I am constantly stressed, afraid and triggered. My mental health has been further destabilised because of my financial and housing situation. Women like me experience (in no particular order): uncertainty, fear, loneliness, truly being cold, vulnerability, mental and physical health decline, risk of being assaulted or being moved on by police, discrimination, judgement, assumptions you are an alcoholic or drug addict or that you chose to be homeless.

    I’m not what people assume homeless people should look like, therefore not considered desperate enough to be helped.

    As a 52-year-old woman without children, I am the lowest priority for both government and social services – as I was informed by WA Department of Housing staff. I tell people I’m homeless and they just shrug likes it’s no big thing. I wonder: when did the wellbeing of some of the most vulnerable people in this country become so dismissed? When did homelessness and poverty become normalised in people’s eyes? When did people stop caring?

    This year, West Australian Premier Mark McGowan has delivered a record budget surplus of about $5 billion. This money has the potential to end all street homelessness in Western Australia – and also build 15,000 social/public houses, end all public housing waiting lists and all other forms of homelessness, like couch surfing. The WA Government has pledged to spend $884m to build 3,300 social housing properties – far short of the required number. Luke Henriques-Gomes, Social affairs and Inequality Editor at Guardian Australia, wrote last week that 44 homeless people have died so far this year in Western Australia. These people didn’t need to die. They died because they were “lacking nearly all material means or resources for living”. They, like me, were “dirt poor”.

    Poverty is a national and state problem that needs the support of business, community, and government leaders across Australia, to ensure we are heard, supported, and given choices so that we can be part of a community, gain back what we have lost and be seen again.

    The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.” – Thomas Jefferson

    You can listen to Joey speak about living on Jobkeeper on the Full Story podcast, and read more about her perspective on welfare in the Guardian.

     

    PLEASE NOTE: Feature image is a stock photo

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  • Is a world without men a dystopia or a utopia?

    It is a remarkable coincidence that both New Zealand black comedy Creamerie and American post-apocalyptic drama Y: The Last Man have arrived on our screens in the middle of a global pandemic. Both are shows about the aftermath of plagues that kill off the male population.

    Both were well into production by the time COVID-19 hit, the latter adapting a critically acclaimed DC Comics series by Brian K. Vaughn and Pia Guerra. Both are led and entirely directed by women – a strong statement in a significantly male-dominated industry.

    And as dystopian narratives, they also tap into some significant areas of current social and political interest. These include anxieties about gender roles, and how we deal with loss and grief at a global scale.

    Dystopian stories are very effective at exploring the fractures and inequities in our everyday lives by throwing up scenarios in which dreams of a better world have become nightmarish. They take present conditions and challenges and extrapolate them into a society that is deeply recognisable, but more extreme than our own.

    Whether they are horrific or comedic, they expose and often satirise the real-world conditions, such as political trends or environmental inaction, that already facilitate oppression and destruction. They act as both thought experiment and warning.

    Apocalyptic narratives, too, foreground the best and the worst of us. Although the “end of the world” might be triggered by a sudden calamity – plague, war, a supernatural event – these stories are more concerned with what happens next.

    They ask: what happens when the things that structure our everyday lives are stripped away? How can we learn to live in these new conditions? And are we as much of a threat to one another as the catastrophe itself?

    Both TV shows engage with these questions, although to different ends and with very different tones.

    Divisions and the ‘double shift’

    The sudden death of all mammals with a Y chromosome in Y: The Last Man is only the first in a series of rolling disasters – not least the logistical problem of dealing with the physical remains of half the population.

    The series is very interested in the ripple effects of gender inequality, especially in the workplace. This exposes how much our societies remain structured along roughly binary lines, despite significant attempts to move towards a more equitable and egalitarian society.

    Olivia Thirlby as Hero Brown in Y: The Last Man, which tells the apocalyptic narrative of a world after the sudden death of all mammals with a Y chromosome.
    IMdB

    In early episodes the former Congresswoman and newly minted President Jennifer Brown (Diane Lane) struggles to govern. The United States’ critical infrastructure, which was staffed almost entirely by men, has collapsed.

    Without water, power or food, people are beginning to riot, but there aren’t enough police or military personnel to keep the peace. Because men still dominate decision-making roles, a skeleton crew of female politicians and civil servants is left to salvage civil society.

    In a moving scene, Brown tries to persuade one of the only remaining female nuclear engineers to help restore the power grid. Brown reminds her how hard it has been to always be the only woman in the room – and the burden that she now bears because of this.

    The cover of an issue of graphic novel version Y: The Last Man, created by Brian K. Vaughan and published by Vertigo, later DC Comics.
    Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

    But power struggles swiftly emerge. The overnight erasure of gender privilege only exacerbates other sources of inequity, such as race and class. There is also an ideological clash between Brown and more politically conservative women, notably the Machiavellian former First Daughter Kimberley, played by Amber Tamblyn.

    Their insidious emphasis upon the importance of traditional gender roles and so-called “family values” sits uncomfortably against scenes, pre- and post-disaster, where women struggle to deal with their domestic and professional roles. We are reminded that social inequity is deeply tied to child-bearing and rearing.

    Far from critiquing women’s professional ambitions and reproductive choices, the series’ domestic scenes illustrate powerfully the damaging “double shift”: the large amount of invisible, underappreciated and unpaid domestic labour undertaken by women.

    This is a problem not just for women, but society at large – made worse when the survival of the species relies on sperm banks and willing mothers.



    Read more:
    Are we living in a dystopia?

    A feminist utopia

    Reproduction is also central to Creamerie’s satirical project. Eight years after the emergence of the virus – illustrated through a gory, slo-mo montage set ironically to a dreamy cover of What A Wonderful World – we seem to be in a feminist utopia.

    The new society is overseen by blonde, charismatic Lane (Tandi Wright), leader of a hyperfeminine, Goop-like organisation. Education and healthcare are free, and menstruation leave is mandatory. Thanks to the survival of sperm banks, women enter a lottery to be artificially inseminated so they may re-populate the world with their daughters.

    Rebel Alex (Ally Xue), grieving mother Jamie (JJ Fong), and perky rule-follower Pip (Perlina Lau) live together on an organic dairy farm. Crisis hits when Pip accidentally runs over a man – potentially the last man alive. He believes there are other survivors, which would upend this new way of life.

    In New Zealand comedy Creamerie, the new world sans men is run by the leader of a hyperfeminine, goop-like organisation.
    SBS on Demand

    The premise inverts many of the tropes laid bare in the reproductive horrors of The Handmaid’s Tale and its many imitators, which similarly foreground natalist policies.

    Instead, Creamerie is wickedly funny and playful. Its bougie wellness cult operates with silken voices, performative kindness, and what appears to be the veneration of female collectivity.

    However, we soon witness the classist, racist, heteronormative, and individualistic tendencies at the heart of this new society, which satirises the predatory nature of the wellness industry.

    We are also faced with difficult questions about the fate of those men who might remain – how they too might be objectified and commodified for their reproductive potential.



    Read more:
    The Handmaid’s Tale: no wonder we’ve got a sequel in this age of affronts on women’s rights

    A world grappling with cataclysm

    Although they differ considerably in tone, both shows are united in their exploration of loss and trauma. This reflects the rising number of recent series, films, books and games that feature inexplicable mass casualty events and ecological cataclysm.

    In a world grappling with a climate disaster, and now a brutal pandemic, it is natural to turn to art to explore how we might live when our lives are braided with inconsolable grief.

    Ultimately Creamerie and Y: The Last Man ask us how we suffer losses that are too great for words, and whether we cope with tears, connection, or gallows humour.

    Creamerie is available to stream on SBS on Demand, and Y: The Last Man is currently streaming on Binge.The Conversation

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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  • No women involved? You can count me out.

    My great Auntie Rita grew up in an Australia where being Aboriginal, with dark features, saw her dismissed, degraded, and all but shut out of society.

    My beloved late Aunt told me that growing up in country Victoria in the 1940s and 50s, she had to learn to fight at school because of the level of bullying she faced. She ate her lunch in toilet cubicles by herself, to avoid the taunts from other students.

    Dan with his Aunt Rita

    Dan with his Aunted Rita circa 2008/09. Picture: Supplied

    Getting a job was just as hard. Auntie Rita was forced to say she was Indian, in order to be shown some respect, and get a job.

    On top of that, Auntie Rita told me being a woman made life even harder in the workplace, as it was trying to find somewhere to live. She told me of being turned away from rental properties she wanted to inspect, because she didn’t have a man to chaperone her.

    Given all of this – which is only a snapshot of some of what she faced – you could understand if Auntie Rita felt resentful to her country, and those who bullied, harassed, or dismissed her.

    But she wasn’t.

    In fact, she was positive, even optimistic, with a killer sense of humour. She told me that she was encouraged by the enormous change she had seen – in recognition and respect of First Nations Australians. But she added there was much more still to be done.

    And when I asked her about how she didn’t hold on to the anger about how she was treated – in her typically pragmatic way, she pointed to me. She told me that the fact I had the opportunity to share people’s stories and talk about big issues, spoke to the changes in Australia. She believed my generation was where there would be the greatest change.

    Auntie Rita faced the worst kind of exclusion throughout her life – it’s why she encouraged me to always think about inclusion.

    Inclusion is something I think about every day.

    Taking a stand

    As ABC Canberra’s 7pm Newsreader, a senior ABC presenter, and non-executive director on a number of boards, I am often asked to speak to groups, facilitate panels and discussions, and host events.

    I also regularly speak about my Indigenous heritage, and about being gay and part of the LGBTQIA+ community. Diversity and inclusion are topics I regularly speak to.

    These are fantastic opportunities – particularly when I am helping to navigate through tough or confronting issues or topics – with respect and care.

    When I’m asked to speak or host, I have Auntie Rita’s calls for inclusion ringing in my ears.

    That’s what drove me to take a stand.

    I won’t host any panel discussions or events that don’t include women. I just don’t agree with it and won’t be a part of it.

    (And I certainly won’t agree to sit on panels, as a guest or panelist, that don’t have women on them either.)

    Dan WIM event

    Dan, centre, at a Women in Media event on cultural diversity in the media at National Press Club earlier in 2021. Also pictured (left to right) are journalists Aarti Betigeri, Shalailah Medhora, Gabrielle Chan, Paula Kruger. Picture: Ginger Gorman

    Nor will I host events about groups of people, if they are not part of that conversation. Meaning, I won’t facilitate a panel about Indigenous Affairs, without other Indigenous people on the panel; I won’t facilitate a discussion about a group of people, without that group of people filling the panel.

    This may seem relatively simple. But it’s seen me walk away from leading high-profile discussions and events. It’s the first question my manager asks when approached for me to host or be involved in events.

    For me it’s simple – I have a public profile and have a platform when I speak. And to me, it’s important that I use that profile and platform to make a point about diversity and inclusion. And I call on anyone with some kind of platform to do the same.

    At the start, I didn’t know if it was having any impact, other than anecdotal comments from event organisers and those sitting on panels. But after a number of years of doing it, I know it makes event organisers stop and think, and it definitely cuts through with the audience.

    Ngunnawal Elder here in Canberra, Auntie Caroline Hughes wrote after one event I hosted: “What a wonderful ambassador for our people you are Dan! Well done,” Auntie Caroline wrote.

    This feedback is so heartening. It’s not what drives me – shifting the conversation is!

    Conversation is the change maker

    I was recently asked to host a panel about communicating with Indigenous Australians.

    Before my manager could ask his first question, he was told it was a panel of all women, and most of them Indigenous.

    Danika Davis is a writer and editor, and was part of that panel. She later wrote to me: “The audience came away feeling informed and empowered to improve their work with First Nations communications, which is the best result we could hope for.”

    I agree. It’s all about listning and changing our perspectives. Feedback from others in the crowd centred on the importance of the diverse lived experience and perspectives.

    The media

    There are significant challenges when it comes to the media, bore out in the 2020 Media Diversity Australia report: Who Gets To Tell Australian Stories.

    The report was confronting, but not surprising. It spoke to structural, systemic, and cultural issues.

    The report raised red-flags about the dramatic lack of culturally diverse women and men in the media as journalists and presenters – but also highlighted the lack of cultural diversity of commentators, case studies, and those highlighted in the media.

    I’ve recently been doing a lot of backfill hosting on ABC News Channel from my home in Canberra – to help ease the pressure on colleagues in Melbourne and Sydney, while we were all in lockdown.

    I’ve been fortunate to work with a fantastic team, who I work closely with to get a range of views and perspectives on air.

    In writing this article, I asked about the breakdown of talent – those that we picked to discuss specific topics – over September and October, while I’ve been backfilling the Afternoons show.

    I was thrilled to see women making up 58% of guests in September, and 52% in October.

    Indigenous guests made up 14% and 20% respectively across those months, while guests who were culturally and linguistically diverse were 17% and 16% across those months.

    I’m proud of the different perspectives that I’ve helped to bring to air – but know that I, and all media leaders, have much, much more work to do.

    There is also much to consider about building trust with communities that have lost trust in the media because of what’s happened in the past.

    The task for all media companies, is to look at their diversity on air, and ask themselves if it reflects the country they are communicating to.

    Language on air

    I’ve saved this for last, because I want to leave you with a sense the importance of language.

    In 2019, ABC Canberra colleagues and I embarked on a series of conversation with Canberra’s Ngunnawal Elders, through the United Ngunnawal Elders Council, and the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies.

    Dan with Canberra’s Ngunnawal Elders. Picture: Supplied.

    Dan with Canberra’s Ngunnawal Elders. Picture: Supplied.

    We wanted to explore options to build greater relationships with Elders and the Ngunnawal community, while seeing if there were appropriate acknowledgements to their heritage and story across ABC Canberra.

    It began with Ngunnawal Elders, welcoming listeners across ABC Radio Canberra programs, in their language and English.

    That grew to be an acknowledgement behind me as I read the 7pm News each night – where I begin and end the bulletin by using Ngunnawal language – ‘yuma’ means hello and ‘yarra’ means goodbye.

    For the first broadcast, we invited the United Ngunnawal Elders Council into the studio to see and hear it.

    There were tears from Elders, as they told me they never expected to see and hear their language on the news.

    And the Elders have told me they love hearing Canberrans using their language – and say it’s what will help to preserve and protect the language for future generations.

    Acknowledgements like this have now spread far and wide across the ABC – with different approaches in different cities after discussions with the local Elders.

    It’s now commonplace to hear ABC Canberra presenters use Ngunnawal language on air, to see presenters on News Channel acknowledge the Indigenous people of the land they are broadcasting from, while Landline includes the name of the Indigenous people next to the name of the town at the start of each report.

    I’m so proud to be part of the team to lead this work.

    Recently Channel 10 presenter, Narelda Jacobs began using her Noongar language from her country, on air, and pointed to our work as the inspiration to do this on her network.

    And the more it happens, the more we will see and hear of language and culture on air – that’s something I’m really proud of.

     

     

     

     

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  • How and why women become homeless

    Coming Home is a narrative and political podcast about women’s homelessness, made in conjunction with Juno, a women’s homelessness service. It tells the story of three women from Melbourne’s northern suburbs, from their childhoods, through to facing homelessness and eventually finding home. Along the way it explores the history and policies of Australia’s broken housing system, and the politics of women’s lives. 

    As I’ve previously reported, older women are the fastest growing group of homeless Australians. Therefore, it seemed crucial to get in touch with independent audio producer Kate Lawrence, to ask her a few questions about the pod. 

     

    Kate, the first thing I noticed when listening to this podcast is how compelling the personal stories of the three main characters are. What can you tell us about those characters and how you decided to approach their stories? 

    The three women – Kiara, Mary and Keen – are clients or former clients of Juno, a women’s homelessness service in Melbourne’s northern suburbs. The recruitment process was carefully undertaken to ensure the women understood what was being asked of them. It was always envisaged that they would not be in a housing or domestic violence crisis at the time of the interview, but had passed the crisis stage and able to share and maybe reflect.

    It was also important that the women knew they were in charge of their story at every stage: they listened to the edited recordings and the final episodes and could ask for anything to be changed. They could also withdraw their story and their recordings at any point. Support, communication and follow up was ongoing through out.

    In terms of approach, one of the goals was for listeners to ‘meet’ and know the women as whole people, not just through their housing crisis, and to share their full stories, to draw us in and along, wanting to keep listening to know how it will all unfold.

    For women – and especially older women – homelessness is a national crisis in Australia. But it’s also an issue often ignored in public discourse. What approach have you taken to keep people’s ears and minds stuck to this critical issue?

    The whole series is dedicated to showing how and why women become homeless, including older women, and the systemic reasons there is a crisis in Australia.

    There are many points throughout the podcast where we highlight why women’s homelessness is often invisible and why we need to broaden our conception of homelessness from rough sleeping, which will always be a much more dangerous option for women, and for women with children, it is often seen as not an option at all.

    The structure of the podcast is to follow the course of these three women’s experiences, with narration, commentary and analysis inserted in and around the stories. to explain and highlight the history and systemic issues that are impacting them, particularly in relation to housing, economic disadvantage, gender gaps in employment and family violence.

     Some of the things these women discussion – like childhood sexual abuse, family neglect and domestic abuse – are really hard to hear (even for me as a social justice journalist  who has reported on these topics for years!). Why did you feel it was important to include these aspects in the pod? 

    A key purpose of the narrative structure was to allow the women’s character to show through their stories, their hopes and dreams, heart and humour, so that listeners can relate and not ‘othered’, and to better illustrate how culture and systems conspired to create their housing crisis.

    So the women’s childhoods’ were important, really important for us to understand and connect to them, and to draw us into their worlds, to know who they are. It was also important for the tellers themselves as one story teller said ‘…I will not be silenced any more…this is my way to put it to rest”. So for them it is about justice for their experience.

    That the stories contained childhood sexual assault or domestic violence was the fact of it, and to sanitise their lives by deleting this would be to again silence women.

    It is through these and other experiences that we can see and introduce the issues that relate to the way women are treated in our culture and how this disempowers us and leaves women vulnerable to homelessness because the system is profit driven, not human rights driven.

    Kate Lawrence

    For audio producer Kate Lawrence, story is her “passion and tool of choice to change the world.” Picture: Supplied

    There are many compelling moments in your podcast series – both personal stories and opinions and facts. But which incident or interaction sticks in your mind and why?

    Moments from the women’s stories that stand out to me are:

    Neen as a child, running away at night and lying on top of a child’s grave and asking God to not let her wake up in the morning.

    Kiara driving round and round on Sunday afternoons, with three kids in the car waiting for her parent’s visitors to leave, so she didn’t bring shame on the family because she’d left her abusive husband.

    Mary deep pain at realising our system just did not care about her and her toddler when she was homeless.

    Realisations that stand out for me are:

    • The basic unpaid and invisible nature of women’s work, bearing and raising humanity which leads to significant economic disadvantage which of course affects housing options.
    • The realisation that of course you are unlikely to see women rough sleeping because it is so dangerous, so women’s homelessness is largely invisible.
    • Finally and hugely the understanding that housing is a fundamental human need on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, more essential than health care and education and a host of other things we spend buckets of money on, that are seriously exacerbated by not tending to the more fundamental need of shelter. 
    Without giving away too much about the podcast, what did you learn about homelessness in Australia that you didn’t know? What solutions and hope for the future did you find?

    In terms of the future, in a practical sense housing is a totally solvable problem and has been successfully dealt with in Australia in the past, and there are great examples overseas, cities like Vienna. The issue in Australia is a lack of political will and changing that requires all of us to push and pressure and demand action from our political system.

    • Please note: The feature image is a stock photo  

     

     

     

     

     

     

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  • I’ve suffered gender discrimination. Now I fight it.

    Picture this: a young mother, struggling across the road with a cumbersome contraption that appears to be two cheap strollers screwed together. A pair of male police officers watch her, amused. They don’t offer to help her over the curb, instead making mocking comments about her: Serves you right. She is 21, but looks younger, and has two kids under the age of two in those strollers.

    That young woman was me. Growing up as a 10-pound Pom in the low-socioeconomic status northern suburbs of Adelaide, I’d moved out of home at 15 and married at 18. There were certain expectations or assumptions about me that were reinforced by people in authority, like these two police officers. These limiting assumptions – being a teenage mum, being poor, being female – also stood in the way of one of my daughters receiving appropriate medical treatment when she suffered an aneurism at eight months old.

    When we presented at hospital and the medical staff noticed a small bruise on her arm, the immediate assumption was one of child abuse. When I tried to explain that the was the result of a recent vaccination, they didn’t believe me.

    Niki, age 19, with daughter Kyla.

    Niki, age 19, with daughter Kyla. Picture: Supplied

    When I tried to explain the symptoms and that my baby who could usually crawl was now unable to sit up, they ignored me. As a young woman, I had become used to people not taking me seriously but never in a situation like this.

    How could these medical professionals, people who were charged with caring for my daughter, refuse to consider information from the child’s parent?

    Would they have treated me the same way if I was older? If I was wearing more expensive clothing?  Or if I was a man? It was when I became a parent that I realised how unequal the world was, and this experience reinforced it.  It took days – and finally a neurosurgeon – before the medical team could see past their bias and listen to me. I have never felt so powerless and frightened.

    These two incidents are not the only time I’ve experienced discrimination based on my gender, age, or socioeconomic status, but they illustrate how these factors intersect. Academic Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term “intersectionality” to describe how multiple aspects of discrimination and disadvantage stack up. Identity characteristics do not exist independently but intersect to create complex forms of oppression, inequality, and exclusion. For example, recent figures show that Aboriginal people, LGBTIQ+ people, young women, people with disability and those on lower incomes are much more likely to experience workplace sexual harassment.

    Niki's PhD graduation and second university medal age 51.

    Niki’s PhD graduation and second university medal age 51. Picture: Supplied

    My own experiences of discrimination and sexual harassment were compounded – and it didn’t help that my husband had an affair that led to our marriage breakdown.

    As a single mother of four young children, you can imagine the kinds of assumptions people made about me. I could easily have become disengaged from my education and career possibilities, facing an impossible juggle with caring responsibilities, but a positive workplace experience changed it.

    By now, I’d completed a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in Psychology.  I’d been getting straight distinctions, but because I was caring for my children and working part-time to run the family building company, rather than spending time with other students, I didn’t realise this wasn’t the norm.

    I carried all those limiting assumptions with me – just like the police officers and medical staff – I looked down on myself.  It was not until a notice arrived in the mail informing me I was to receive the University Medal for my academic performance that I realised I was smart, and probably had important contributions to make to the world (in addition to trying to be a good parent). This recognition changed my outlook completely and I gained the confidence to apply for a role in an academic centre.

    By chance, another student overheard me talking to a university librarian about the job and approached me to say she was also considering applying but couldn’t take it on full time as she was still studying. Even though we’d only just met, we decided to apply together, and the lead professor agreed to a job share, which was very innovative in the mid-90s (my job-share partner and I are still close friends to this day).

    I felt supported at work, but caring for my children, going through a marriage break up and being promoted to work on a challenging research project involving illegal drug users began to stack up. My boss recognised this and said: “I don’t care when or how you work, as long as you keep meeting the deliverables.”

    The flexible working arrangements meant I could work around school drop-off and pick-up times, work from home if I had a sick kid or after hours when the kids were asleep. Not only did this flexibility help me succeed at work, it also set up my approach for how I would lead my organisations in the future.

    I went on to establish the Leaders Institute of South Australia and run the Governor’s Leadership Program, where I noticed a lack of diversity among participants. Where were the women, the people of colour and those with a disability?

    Niki with granddaughter Imogen

    Niki with granddaughter Imogen. Picture: Supplied

    Too often when people talk about diversity in leadership, they take a binary approach, simply replacing white men with white women, and failing to apply an intersectional lens. Tu Le and Molina Asthana recently wrote about the ‘double-glazed glass ceiling’ they face as women of colour. As an experienced board director, Molina has described her efforts to increase diversity only to be told that the mandate is for gender equality only – which can further marginalise women of colour and mean they are overlooked for leadership roles.

    We needed to bring more diversity into the Governor’s Leadership Program, so I set up scholarships for women, people with disability and Aboriginal leaders – as well as leaders from rural and regional areas.

    It was through this work in SA that I came to know and admire the work of the Equal Opportunity Commissioner for South Australia. When the job was advertised, I thought: why not? It was an opportunity to continue the work I had started, channeling my passion for equality that began when I was a young mother, struggling to be heard. That role then led me here to Melbourne as Victoria’s – and Australia’s – first gender equality commissioner, where I continue to draw on my own experiences and those I saw around me.

    My family now includes 18- and 21-year-old stepchildren and a foster daughter (now 18, but who has been part of my family since she was 13).  I also recently welcomed my 10th grandchild (remember, I had my kids young!).

    Too many new parents still don’t have access to the workplace flexibility I had 25 years ago.

    Niki with daughter Tami and granddaughter's Charlotte and Poppy. Picture: Supplied

    Niki with daughter Tami and granddaughter’s Charlotte and Poppy. Picture: Supplied

    Consequently – as we’ve seen during COVID – outdated gender norms around parenting are re-enforced when women step back from work to care for their children because the juggle of working, home schooling and everything in between has largely been women’s burden to bear.

    But it doesn’t have to be this way.

    As parents know (but employers seem to routinely forget) kids don’t operate on a timesheet. I’m heartened by organisations making changes to break down gender stereotypes around parenting. For example, South East Water has removed the definition between primary and secondary carer, allowing all parents access to flexible parental leave. For one new father, that allowed him to change his part-time working hours to accommodate his child’s challenging sleep schedule – and ensure both he and his partner got their own sleep in. Bass Coast Council has also made this change, as well as paying super on parental leave and making it the default for parents to work flexibly or part time.

    I hope to see more organisations following this lead and breaking down these tired gender stereotypes and assumptions that can limit people in life.

    I’m a product of what can be achieved when we remove bias, offer flexibility, and empower employees.

    But we still have so far to go to make this a mainstream experience – and we can’t sit back and wait for this to happen. In fact, based on the current pace of change the World Economic Forum estimates it will take another 135.6 years to achieve global gender equality.

    But not if my team and I have anything to do with it!

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