Quote of the Week

 

“ I don’t want to believe our government is using the pandemic to shove women, especially mothers, back into the kitchen and back into financial dependence of their husbands, I really don’t. But when you put it all together, it’s hard not to reach that conclusion. Whether this is part of an ideological belief that women should be at home, looking after the kids, or just an inability to see or care about the fate of 51% of the population, the long-term consequences for the current generation of women are dire. Whether they want to think about it or not, younger women are now facing at least as high a risk of a desperately poor old age as their mothers and grandmothers did. Not thanks to Covid, but thanks to government policy.”  [Jane Caro, writing in The Guardian, 123 November 2020]

Yes, Scott Morrison really said that!

 

IMAGE: Scott Morrison, The Guardian, May 2020

[Women who speak out about deficiencies in Budget 2020-21 are among] "the voices of division that will undermine the future economic prosperity of all Australians." [Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, press conference, Australian Parliament House, 8 October 2020]

What one woman from Australia intends to tell the United Nations about the Morrison Government's war on low income women with young children

“We know that poverty is unpleasant; in fact, since it is so remote, we rather enjoy harrowing ourselves with the thought of its unpleasantness, but don't expect us to do anything about it. We are sorry for you lower classes, just as we are sorry for a cat with the mange, but we will fight like devils against any improvement of your condition. We feel that you are much safer as you are.”  [George Orwell, 1933, “Down and Out inParis and London”]

If ever Australia’s captains of industry and, those elected members of the two conservative political parties they support. ever knew a period of poverty it is now so long ago that an abundance of personal income has driven all thought of it from their memories.

Thus it takes a lone woman to bring to the notice of the United Nations some of the economic and human rights injustices perpetrated by Prime Minister Scott Morrison & Co on single mothers with young children. 

The Sydney Morning Herald, 1 March 2019:

Imagine having to get someone else to provide proof you aren’t shagging anyone on a regular basis and that even if you are, you aren't getting financial support. Your own word isn't good enough any more.

That’s what happens to single mothers in Australia if they want to be eligible for welfare.

There’s a lot that goes wrong for single mums in Australia. They already have difficult lives, managing kids, jobs and life on their own. And on top of all that, there are a whole range of compliance tasks in order to get benefits, from signing endless forms to applying for a ridiculous number of jobs, a huge task all on its own.

It's a miserable life for a single mother on welfare in Australia, so hard that one woman, Juanita McLaren, has decided to take her complaint all the way to the United Nations. She says the way Australia treats single mums breaches human rights and now, the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, will be hearing from her directly at a UN Women’s conference in New York next week.

In fact, he will be presenting by her side. Huge honour and some of us might have put that on our credit cards. She had to crowdfund to get there.

McLaren, who has also had to get proof she’s not in a financially-bound relationship in order to be eligible for Newstart, worked full-time when her kids were little. Then her husband, who was the primary carer, left the family and now lives overseas.

“I just hit a wall and headed into casual work because there was always something happening with the kids.”

She had to ditch her part-time studies because she couldn’t manage financially on Newstart even though her studies were a pathway to getting better work.

Benefits were erratic and in one case, took eight weeks to arrive – finally some money arrived on Christmas Eve. She entered the wrong year on a form (who else has mixed up their birth year with the current year?) and was told it couldn’t be corrected over the phone.

It was all the little things on top of the poverty that motivated her to make a complaint.

In some respects, McLaren is fortunate. She’s had steady part-time work for a couple of years now, which is slightly seasonal. She remains registered for Newstart because of the off-season.

But it’s the constant battle with Centrelink, with managing her family and money, with being forced to apply for hopeless work she doesn’t want, that forced McLaren to turn to the UN. So far, it’s the Australian government and the UN in a deadlock about what’s harmful to single mothers.

For years now, Terese Edwards, the CEO of the National Council for Single Mothers, has campaigned for better financial support for her members. Edwards helped McLaren write her complaint, which was the first individual complaint using the optional protocol of the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women; and will be at her side when she speaks at the conference…..

Cassandra Goldie, the CEO of the Australian Council of Social Services, says single mothers are easy to target and easy to vilify.

She says it’s not just impoverishment that has been relentless, it is the way in which both autonomy and agency have been removed from single mothers in direct contrast to what’s happening in the aged care sector. And she’s not just talking about the ridiculous requirement to get someone else to guarantee your relationship status.

Here’s some shocking news: One in three sole parents and their children are living in poverty according to the latest ACOSS-UNSW Poverty report. In just two years, the rate of poverty amongst unemployed single parents rose from 35 per cent to 59 per cent.

Hopefully, the United Nations will also examine the Morrison Coalition Government's punitive ParentsNext policy.

Canberra Times, 3 March 2019:

“I don’t know how you do it!” we say to them, and in the next breath: “Here, let me make it harder for you.”

This attitude is stitched into the heart of a welfare program called ParentsNext, which can require some single parents on the parenting payment to report to the state that they have taken their children to improving activities, such as swimming lessons or story time at the local library.

If they don’t comply, they can have their payments cut off, often with no notice, and no clear line of appeal. The arbiter of complaints is also the provider, the company privately contracted by the government to administer the program.

Some mothers have reported being asked to provide photographs as proof they have attended the child-focused activities. Others report the provider phoning the library, or the local pool, to verify their attendance.

Librarians as monitors, swimming instructors as social police: it’s a level of surveillance and control that would make Orwell twitch.

The program has faced a barrage of criticism from welfare groups, and was the subject of a Senate inquiry last week.

Peter Davidson, senior adviser to the Australian Council of Social Service, says the program was previously "less heavy handed”.

I spoke to one single mother-of-three this week, 32-year-old Sarah, who had a positive experience of the program in its previous incarnation. She had a good case worker who helped her into a small business course, assisting her to set up her own florist’s business. Now she is earning some income and intends to get off the parenting payment as soon as possible.

But in July 2018, the Coalition government (then led by Malcolm Turnbull) extended the program from a smaller pilot to about 70,000 single parents, 95 per cent of them women. In its expanded form, the “targeted compliance framework”, which applies to other payments such as Newstart, was imposed on ParentsNext. It is language that would make Orwell’s fingers itch.

Davidson says about a fifth of single parents on the program have had their payments suspended.

Parents are put on participation plans, ranging from vocational training to taking their children to a playgroup or "story time". This muddies the waters between the practical objective of helping women back into work after the child-rearing and the insidious policing of their parenting.

The result is bureaucrats invigilating parents from a moral, child-welfare stance, making payments dependent on proof that parenting is being done correctly.

This is a qualitative difference from other “mutual obligation” welfare requirements, because it is not about getting people off taxpayer money. It is predicated on the assumption that parents (read: mothers) on welfare must not be as “good” as other parents.

These measures assume that the poor have different social standards than the middle class, who know the correct way to nurture children, with story time and swimming classes.

They are also cruelly detached from the chaotic reality of raising small children, where leaving the house with everyone fed and clothed is itself an achievement, but one that almost never runs to time. Some days, the bad days, it doesn’t happen at all.

This kind of compliance-and-penalty system stems from the belief that the poor are not just unlucky, but they are fundamentally different from other people; that they lack the correct values, and the rectitude to pull themselves up. This is not so far from the Victorian-era belief that Orwell upturned with his memoir: that poverty is a moral failing.

This attitude can exist only when you wilfully ignore the fact that the majority of Australians will rely on government support at some stage in their lives, with millions of us slipping in and out of the safety net as our circumstances change.....

Australian Parliament, Senate Community Affairs References Committee, Inquiry into ParentsNext, including its trial and subsequent broader rollout, public hearing, Melbourne, 27 February 2019, excerpts:

Ms Edwards [Chief Executive Officer, National Council of Single Mothers and their Children]: It is unfettered power. It is shown up in a lot of ways, even as to participants' knowledge about signing a participation plan. The participation plan is like the blueprint for the engagement. You have your goals on your participation plan and then, from that, you have the flow of your activities that are meant to support those participation goals. In theory, you're allowed 10 thinking days after meeting and developing your participation plan. What we discovered in our survey which supported what women were telling us was that they would sign it in that meeting, and they would sign it because they were so compliant because the person they were sitting in front of had the power to affect their life, in terms of their payment but also in terms of their commitments. What is not well known by participants is: there is no minimum weekly activity requirement, like mutual obligations. But, because women are so aware of those mutual obligations, they start thinking that they have a similar sort of level that they must do, and they won't upset the provider because the provider can determine the activities; they can breach them—and, as Jenny said, in the blink of an eye they can breach. If the participant disagrees with the breach, the person who umpires that is the provider—they decide whether they have operated appropriately or not. There is not one independent body that manages or oversees that process. So that is why women are compliant—they're in this, and it's like they've gone down this slippery slope into hell and the only way they can come out is if they sign and do what's required. They won't upset a provider.

Ms Davidson: They don't even know about that 10-day period. With the lack of information that people are provided, they don't know about the 10-day thinking period.

Senator WATT: The way the system is supposed to work is that people are supposed to have 10 days to have a think about the proposed plan before they commit to it.

Ms Edwards: Which implies that it's two people having a mutually equal conversation about: 'What would actually help you get to where you need to go?'

Senator WATT: Yes, but, in fact, many people feel pressured to sign there and then?

 Ms Edwards: Yes, and then what else is happening, which is where the providers are working outside of their guidelines, is that they will unilaterally change activities and times. 

Senator WATT: The providers will?

Ms Edwards: Yes. And they will do that in writing, they will do that in phone calls and they will do that in texts......

Ms Buckland [Private capacity]: I'll give you an example, and it's a complicated one, because there are many issues with it, but I was contacted by a woman who had a newborn baby—she'd had it the day before. She should be exempt from ParentsNext—

CHAIR: It's supposed to apply at the very most when the baby's six months.

Ms Buckland: Yes. So it's from 34 weeks pregnant to the child being six months that there's an exemption. She wasn't able to speak to anyone about her exemption. She was still expected to mark her attendance at an activity; she was expected to attend an appointment one-week post birth. I think that there are obviously inherent issues with that kind of system. Her payments were suspended.

CHAIR: With a newborn?

Ms Buckland: With a newborn baby......

Prof. Croucher [President, Australian Human Rights Commission]:….

The commission's submission identifies five key problems with the compliance framework of ParentsNext. I will briefly remark on two of these problems. First, the detrimental effect of punitive compliance can be unjustifiably harsh. Many of Australia's most valuable parents and children rely on the parenting payment to afford basic day-to-day essentials. This includes single mothers living on or below the poverty line. Yet, under ParentsNext, these struggling families face automatic payment suspensions. This can happen for a single instance of noncompliance with a program requirement, despite having a reasonable excuse like a sick child. In the worst cases, their parenting payment can be reduced or cancelled.

Without money to provide adequate food, clothing and shelter for your family, how can human rights be realised? How can there be human dignity? Poverty erodes the enjoyment of many human rights, such as access to education, health care and participation in public life. The current operation of ParentsNext risks further entrenching poverty and inequality in Australia. It already risks reducing a parent's resilience to the complex challenges they already face, including homelessness, domestic violence and mental illness.

The commission is also concerned that there are insufficient safeguards to prevent inappropriate compliance action. For example, some punitive financial measures are automatic. Others can be made by private commercial service providers rather than by public officials.

Secondly, the claimed success of ParentsNext is not appropriately evidence based. On the basis of the evaluation of the program to date, it is not possible to conclude that the program is achieving its aims or that it has had a positive effect which outweighs the detriment of undermining the right to social security. For example, the department's evaluation of the trial program relied heavily on a survey of participants, but it didn't disclose how many people participated in the relevant survey, and it's unclear whether the sample size was statistically significant. The design and methodology of the survey were not disclosed. The department's evaluation also draws many positive conclusions about the efficacy of the program—for example, that it increases chances of employment. However, many of these conclusions are based on the opinions of survey participants rather than on objective data.

Lastly, the commission is seriously concerned about the discriminatory impacts of the program. ParentsNext is only applied to a small and targeted proportion of people receiving the parenting payment. Women and Indigenous Australians are disproportionately affected, with women comprising approximately 96 per cent of the 68,000 participants and Aboriginal and Torres Islander people approximately 19 per cent.

The human right to social security should be enjoyed equally by all, regardless of sex, race or age. Australia's domestic legislation, such as the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 at the Commonwealth level, also protects the right to equality and nondiscrimination. It is unfair that the parents who are required to participate in ParentsNext are at risk of losing essential support, while the majority of parenting payment recipients can access their social security without meeting the additional onerous obligations of ParentsNext.....

International Women's Day, 8 March 2018

A voice I am listening to on International Women's Day 2018.....

IndigenousX, 7 March 2018:

“Racism is one that all women in the women’s movement must start to come to terms with. There is no doubt in my mind that racism is expressed by women in the movement. Its roots are many and they go deep.” – Pat O’Shane

Those words were written by former magistrate, First Nations woman Pat O’Shane more than two decades ago and yet still represent an uncomfortable truth for mainstream feminism. Similar criticisms have also been made by First Nations women like Jackie Huggins, Judy Atkinson and Aileen Morton-Robinson and are revived and re-spoken by younger feminists like Larissa Behrendt, Celeste Liddle, Nayuka Gorrie and many more who continue the fight to hold mainstream feminism to account.

The roots of racism within mainstream feminism are still there, under the soil. But that’s not to say there haven’t been changes in the mainstream feminist movement. Rather than outright denial on racism and how race impacts gender, an even more damaging phenomenon has taken hold: co-option.

Intersectionality, grounded in critical race theory, is now used by many white feminists but has been watered down to a buzzword: a superficial display of “inclusiveness” whereby it is used to deflect rather than interrogate the way race impacts the lived experience of gender, class, gender identity, sexual orientation and disability.  An example of this, is the way Aboriginal women are consigned to a footnote with no context in articles about domestic violence, aligning the staggering statistics with the continuing colonial portrayal of the Aboriginal ‘other’ as inherently violent.

Much like International Women’s Day, which has become a day for corporates and fancy breakfasts that few women outside of the upper and middle classes can attend – the term has been re-purposed to fit into a limited type of white feminist thought.

Over the years, I’ve spent a lot of time being angry at the failings of white liberal feminism, largely because it is the type of feminism that finds the loudest voice in mainstream media. Because it has this voice it has become synonymous with ‘feminism’, despite the movement itself being a broad church. I even questioned whether to continue calling myself a feminist.

I have realised that as an Aboriginal feminist, I don’t have to continue reacting to these failures. There is already a foundation built by brilliant black women which allows us to continue developing an Aboriginal feminism. And the reason this is so important is because the unique experiences of Aboriginal people, the way racism impacts our lived experiences as women, brotherboys, sistergirls and non-binary peoples, is a matter of life and death.

While the national conversation around domestic violence and sexual assault is undoubtedly important, often Aboriginal voices are bypassed altogether. An example of this was the recent Our Watch media awards, where a white male journalist was given an accolade for reporting on “the violence no one talks about”. Aboriginal women have been talking about violence for decades – the ‘silence’ is not the issue. It is that no one listens unless it is spoken in a way that bypasses the role of white Australia, and places blame right back onto Aboriginal people themselves. 

That is why arguments about Aboriginal culture being inherently violent are so appealing. There may have been instances of violence in pre-colonial Aboriginal society –   but from my perspective, if Aboriginal people were participating in the level of violence we see now in many communities, we would not have survived for tens of thousands of years, and we would not have developed a sophisticated system of land management, astronomy and science that intertwined with our spirituality.

But the cultural arguments around Aboriginal violence find an audience in a white Australia that denies its continuing role in the current circumstances affecting our people. And white feminists can often be complicit in the perpetuation of the myth, particularly when it comes to ‘saving black women and children’ from the hands of Aboriginal men. The fact is, Aboriginal communities are not inhuman – we care deeply about violence and the impact on our people, particularly our children. But the conversation has become dangerous due to the centring of white outrage and the appetite for black pathology which borders on pornographic.

Meanwhile, Aboriginal women are painted as depraved for this perceived silence. Like the colonial images that rendered Aboriginal women as uncaring ‘infanticidal cannibals’ who did not love their children, we are again caricatured as powerless and unconcerned about our children. This is the real silence: the silencing of the strong Aboriginal women all across the country who have worked day in and day out on this problem in the face of continual slander. …..

Full article can be read here.

Australian workplaces still hostile territory for women

“When asked about a range of job attributes, women placed most value on having a job where they would be treated with respect (80%), where their job was secure (80%), where the job paid well (65%), was interesting (64%) and offered the flexibility they might need (62%). The majority of women viewed their job as being useful to society (69%) and felt that their job allowed them to ‘help others’ (73%). Two in five working women (43%) said they felt stressed at work, with it more likely being an issue for younger women, those still in education, and those in lower paid or casual roles. One in five women (20%) said they felt isolated at work, particularly those self-employed and working at home. Two-thirds of women said they received paid sick (67%) and annual leave (65%). Fewer received paid parental leave (42%) and paid carers leave (43%), and one in five women were unaware whether or not they received these entitlements at work.” 

[Marian Baird et al, 2018, Women and the Future of Work: Report1of The Australian Women’s Working Futures Project, p.4]

University of Sydney, News and Opinion, Significant gaps between working women's career goals and reality, 6 March 2018:

First study to examine women and future of work

Australian workplaces are not ready to meet young women's career aspirations or support their future success, according to a new national report by University of Sydney researchers.

“We are talking more about robots than we are about women in the future of work debate – this must change,” said co-author of the report, Professor Rae Cooper.

Launched today, the Women and the Future of Work report reveals the gaps and traps between young working women’s aspirations and their current working realities.

“There are significant gaps in job security, respect, access to flexibility and training,” said Dr Elizabeth Hill, co-author of the report.

“Government, businesses and industry need to step up and take action so that our highly educated and highly skilled young women are central to the future of work.”

The team of researchers from the University of Sydney’s Women, Work & Leadership Research Group, surveyed more than 2000 working women aged 16 to 40, who were representative of the workforce nationally.

The report is the first of its kind and found that young women were generally not concerned about job loss as a result of automation and economic change.

“Almost two-thirds of the women we surveyed said they didn’t fear robots coming for their jobs in the future,” Professor Cooper said.

“Our national debate about the future of work is too often a hyper-masculinised, metallic version of work.

“For young women, their picture of the future workforce is quite different: they see themselves balancing family and work commitments, and having long, meaningful careers. For this to be a reality, we need mutually beneficial flexibility in all workplaces.”

Respect and access to flexibility critical for women

The survey found being treated with respect and having job security were critical to ensuring young women’s future careers.

Despite 90 percent of women identifying access to flexibility as important, only 16 percent strongly agreed that they have access to the flexibility they need.

“Young women workers are generally optimistic about work and ready to contribute,” Dr Hill said. “But they find themselves caught in gaps between what they need and what the workforce offers.”

The majority of working women report that developing the right skills and qualifications is important for success at work (92 percent). However, only 40 percent said they can access affordable training to equip them for better jobs.

“Public policy settings, while improving, remain inadequate,” Dr Hill said. “Projected growth in feminised, low-paid jobs in health care and social assistance suggests an urgent need for government action to ensure these jobs meet the criteria of decent work.

“Current trends toward fragmentation and the contracting out of employment are undermining many of the criteria of decent work, making this a pressing policy issue for gender equality in the future of work,” Dr Hill said.

More women than robots in future workplaces

The survey also indicated young women often feel ‘disrespected’ by senior colleagues and supervisors because of their gender. This was the case both for highly paid professionals and low‐paid workers.

Ten percent of respondents said they were experiencing sexual harassment in their current workplace. Some groups of women reported higher rates of harassment including:

* women currently studying (14 percent compared to 8 percent who are not studying)

* women living with a disability (18 percent compared to 9 percent not living with a disability)

* women born in Asia or culturally and linguistically diverse women (16 percent compared to 8 percent who are not culturally or linguistically diverse).

“Employers need to commit and act to create workplaces where women are respected and valued for their expertise,” Professor Cooper said.

“There will be more women than robots in the future of work. It’s time that households, government, businesses and employers listen to them.”

Dr Hill said: “We are urgently calling on the government to facilitate and implement a public policy framework that supports young women’s career aspirations.

“We need to work towards a future where women are valued in the workplace and for their work.”

The study was funded by the University of Sydney’s Sydney Research Excellence Initiative 2020. It was authored by the Co-Directors of the University’s Women, Work & Leadership Research Group, Professor Marian Baird and Professor Rae Cooper, with Dr Elizabeth Hill, Professor Ariadne Vromen and Professor Elspeth Probyn.

The data collection and analysis for this research focused on working 16-40 year old Australians, and was undertaken by Ipsos Australia. It was collected in September-November 2017, and includes: a nationally representative online survey of 2,100 women; a survey of 500 men; a booster survey of 50 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women; and five in-person focus groups of working women.

Full report can be found here.

“At the time of study, women with the following characteristics were found as being less likely to be working (noting that the first of these characteristics may be age-related):

- Those who have only completed secondary school (70% compared to 86% of those who have completed tertiary education, for example);

- Those living at home with parents (71% compared to 84% of those living in their own home);

 - Women with disability (74% compared with 82% of those without disability);

- Culturally and Linguistically Diverse women (75% in comparison to 82% of women who are not Culturally and Linguistically Diverse); and

- Low-income earners (70% of those earning below $40,000 as opposed to 88% of those earning above $80,000, for example).”  

[Marian Baird et al, 2018, Women and the Future of Work: Report1of The Australian Women’s Working Futures Project, p.18]

Will all working women in Australia ever achieve equal pay?

Most Australians appear to understand that gender-based discrimination against women is a fact of life females of all ages have to cope with at some point in their lives - often at multiple points in their lives.

This poll gives a clear indication of the level of community awareness of this issue.

Essential Report, Sexism and Discrimination Against Women, 5 December 2017:

A majority of respondents think there is a lot or some sexism in the media (64%), politics (60%), advertising (60%), workplaces (57%) and sport (56%).

Women were more likely than men to think there is a lot or some sexism in all areas – but especially in workplaces (women 67%, men 46%) and politics (70%/49%).

There has been some small changes in these figures since this question was asked in January last year – sexism in workplaces has dropped 4%, in the media up 6%, in sport down 4% and in schools up 8%. However, there has been more significant change in the differences between men and women on some issues. On sexism in the workplace the gap between perceptions of men and women has increased from 12% to 21%.

Despite society knowing that gender-based discrimination against women exists, institutions put in place by government to allegedly mitigate inequality and ensure fairness still manage to entrench such discrimination.

The shorter version of the observations and conclusions set out below is that if you are a female worker on minimum wage working in an industry sector which employs significantly more women than men, then you still cannot reliably look to either the private sector or the Liberal-Nationals version of the Fair Work Commission for the equal pay first promised by the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission in 1972.

Excerpt from Barbara Broadway & Richard Wilkinson, Melbourne University (October 2017), Probing the effects of the Australian system of minimum wages on the gender wage gap, pp.3-4:

In Australia, minimum wages are binding for a large part of the labour market: in 2014, 24% of all employees were paid the applicable minimum wage. Based on the above studies, one would therefore expect minimum wages in Australia to reduce the gender wage gap substantially. However, somewhat unusually, the Australian labour market contains many different minimum wages arising from industry and occupation-based ‘awards’ made by an industrial court. These awards specify legally binding minimum rates of pay, which vary considerably across occupations and industries, applying not only to the low-pay sector of the labour market, but to occupations of all levels, including high-skilled, high-paid jobs such as airline pilots, university professors and medical practitioners.¹ The effects of these many minimums will therefore depend, in quite complex ways, on how men and women are distributed across occupations and industries and how minimums are distributed across occupations and industries.

The industrial court does not set different wages for men and women. However, it could, in principle, produce a gender wage gap by setting lower minimum wages in occupations and industries in which women are relatively more concentrated. A gender wage gap caused by legally set minimum wages could therefore be greater than or less than the gender wage gap created by market wages.

Indeed, the raw median gender wage gap among full-time employees in Australia is, at 18%, in the middle range of all OECD countries (Figure 1)², providing a hint that the minimum wage system does not reduce the gender wage gap as much as might be expected given the high proportion of employees that are paid the applicable minimum wage. This is reinforced by the finding that the raw mean gender wage gap among full-time employees is approximately 20% (and indeed the gap has persisted at this level since the early 1990s (ABS 2016), despite relative growth in female educational attainment and work experience)…….

We therefore doubt that the observed job-femaleness penalty is actually derived from compensating differentials determined by the Fair Work Commission. Rather, what seems more likely is that the award-wage decisions have been influenced by observed “typical” wages in industries and occupations, and male-dominated fields have benefited from a long history of strong unionisation that led to higher average wages.

In any case, irrespective of whether non-skill-related differences in award wages are justified by other job characteristics, what is clear is that the gender wage gap among minimum-wage employees is greater than it would be were award wages neutral with respect to the gender composition of jobs.

Indeed, the gender wage gap within the award system would probably be negative if minimum wages depended only on the skill requirements of jobs, since the observed human capital of female minimum-wage employees is on average greater than the observed human capital of male minimum-wage employees…..

Comparing mean wages of award-reliant men and women shows there is indeed a gender pay gap among award-reliant employees, although it is considerably smaller than among non-award-reliant employees. The mean wage is $20.74 for men and $18.63 for women, corresponding to a mean gender pay gap of approximately 10%, compared to 19% among non-award employees.

1 These minimum wages are, however, less likely to be binding in high-paid occupations, where greater proportions of employees receive a salary that is above the applicable award rate.

2 Note that the OECD estimates are not entirely comparable across all countries because of differences in the way the median gender gap is calculated. For example, the wages variable may be measured over an hourly, weekly, monthly or annual time-frame. Figure 1 nonetheless provides reasonable indicative information on where Australia fits relative to other OECD countries.

Destroy the Joint turned 5 this month

facebook.com/destroythejoint

Meet the NSW members of parliament who voted to keep abortion a crime in their state

“We came up against the mistruths and the misinformation put out by the Catholic Church, the Australian Christian Lobby and other anti-abortion groups. But these deeply conservative institutions can’t hold back the movement that has started. Religion, whether it is mine or anyone else’s, should not deny someone their rights and choices.

Young people overwhelmingly supported this reform because they can see the hypocrisy. No amount of scare campaigns can hold back the tide. This was about putting abortion access on the political agenda. We succeeded in that and we will continue the campaign.

I particularly think of rural and regional women today, who are the most impacted by abortion being in the Crimes Act, which keeps it scarce, expensive and privatised. I think the members of the Legislative Council who voted against the bill and against the reproductive rights of their constituents have a lot of explaining to do.

Ultimately, the provisions in my bill are operating in various parts of Australia effectively. MPs that voted against this bill need to explain why they think women in NSW deserve fewer rights and fewer protections than women in Victoria, Tasmania or the ACT.” [Dr. Mehreen Faruqi MLC, media release, 11 May 2017]

Facebook, Greens MLC Dr. Mehreen Faruqi, 11 May 2017:

Your body, their choice.

I'm sorry to announce that the NSW Legislative Council has voted 14-25 against taking abortion out of the Crimes Act and providing safe access. Not a single Liberal or National MP voted in support (and only one made a speech). 

I first gave notice of the bill two years ago and the bill has been carefully crafted with doctors and lawyers. This has been an inclusive, consultative and collaborative process. 

But the genie is out of the bottle now, more people than ever are awakened to this injustice and I am confident that under a less conservative parliament, less dominated by conservative men, abortion will be taken out of the Crimes Act and women and all people seeking abortions will be able to access reproductive health clinics without harassment in future.

I'm proud of the campaign that we have run over the last few years and it will continue. Talking to the community, women, doctors and nurses across NSW from Byron to Bega, from Albury to Newcastle and across Sydney, one thing is for sure, there is an overwhelming appetite in the community for a woman's choice and for abortion to be taken out of the Crimes Act.

It is a truism that politicians are completely out of step with community expectations but they have reaffirmed it once again. The community campaign will continue. This is not the end, we are just getting started.

Members of the NSW Upper House who voted against the bill:

Lou Amato (Liberal), David Clarke (Liberal), Catherine Cusack (Liberal), Scott Farlow (Liberal Party), Scot MacDonald (Liberal), Natasha Maclaren-Jones (Liberal), Shayne Mallard (Liberal), Taylor Martin (Liberal), Don Harwin (Liberal), Greg Pearce (Liberal), Peter Phelps (Liberal), 

Niall Blair (Nationals), Rick Colless (Nationals), Duncan Gay (Nationals), Trevor Khan (Nationals), Sarah Mitchell (Nationals), Bronnie Taylor (Nationals), Ben Franklin (Nationals),

Shaoquett Moselmane (Labor), Greg Donnelly (Labor), and Ernest Wong (Labor),

Robert Borsak (Shooters, Fishers and Farmers), Robert Brown (Shooters, Fishers and Farmers),

Paul Green (Christian Democratic Party),  Reverend Fred Nile (Christian Democratic Party).

Members of the NSW Upper House who voted for the bill:

John Graham (Labor), Daniel Mookhey (Labor), Peter Primrose (Labor), Adam Searle (Labor), Walt Secord (Labor) Penny Sharpe (Labor), Mick Veitch (Labor) Lynda Voltz (Labor),

Jeremy Buckingham (Greens), Mehreen Faruqi (Greens), Justin Field (Greens), Dawn Walker (Greens), David Shoebridge (Greens),

Mark Pearson (Animal Justice Party).

Something to remember when NSW goes to the polls on 28 March 2019.