On International Women’s Day 2019, in an insight into the Coalition’s mindset, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said, “We want to see women rise. But we don’t want to see women rise only on the basis of others doing worse.”
This year’s budget goes above and beyond to prove this ethos. Advocacy groups have slammed it, saying the paltry $240.4 million allocated to benefitting women over five years does nothing to address inequalities in Australia’s culture and economy.
This total, as analysts have pointed out, represents a tiny fraction of the $500 billion budget spend. It amounts to about $40 per female worker, or $8 a year, until 2025.
It took Treasurer Josh Frydenberg around 20 minutes to even mention women in his budget speech.
Here are five things getting more money than gender equality:
- Recycling: $249.6 million
- Murray-Darling Communities Investment Package: $270 million
- Personal protective equipment (PPE): $3.2 billion
- Australian Federal Police: $300.2 million
- Defence: $34.4 billion.
Following criticism from Labor, Morrison defended the budget, arguing women also benefitted from boosts to business, tax relief, and better roads.
“This budget, above all, is a budget for all Australians,” he said.
Decades of progress in female employment lost
As noted in Frydenberg’s budget speech, women make up the majority of those who lost their jobs during the pandemic. He also noted 60% of jobs created by May have been filled by women — though failed to mention 12% of women were underemployed in August compared to 10.4% of men, an increase of 30% since the same time last year.
Australia Institute senior economist Alison Pennington told Crikey that without real investment and change, the effect of these losses would be felt for years to come.
“This will potentially erode decades of progress,” she said.
Most of the funding is given to organisations to boost female participation, including more than $100 million in grants for leadership programs, mentorships and STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) cadetships — though STEM placements are limited to 500.
“What they’re proposing is moderate, tokenistic funding to leadership bodies to encourage women into male-led professions,” she said.
“Job creation measures are 500 cadetships. It’s a drop in the ocean in the scale of the unemployed.”
The $2.1 million across three years to address sexual harassment in Australian workplaces was also woefully inadequate, Pennington said.
“This will do nothing to address the structural inequalities.”
There is also no specific plan to help close the superannuation gap at retirement.
No support for women with children
While free childcare was offered as a temporary solution during lockdown, it was quickly cut back (though there is $314.2 million to support Victoria’s childcare services for the next year). Of Australian households using childcare, 60% said one parent would be forced to reduce working hours when full childcare fees returned. In 68% of those households, that parent was a woman.
“The government has prioritised profit-led childcare over the participation of paid women. The combination of inaction on the childcare burden and total inadequate job creation efforts, means women are locked out of work,” Pennington said.
Instead, ParentsNext — a mutual obligation payment scheme for out-of-work parents which has been dubbed “punitive” and “manifestly inconsistent” with Australia’s human rights obligations by the Human Rights Commission — has been extended, with $24.7 million over four years.
Modelling has found spending $5 billion on universal early learning would deliver $11 billion in increased economic activity by helping women back into the workforce.
Little for women escaping family violence
Women escaping family and domestic violence have largely been left out of the budget — and women on temporary visas have been ignored altogether.
The bulk of the $150 million to reduce domestic and family violence had previously been announced in response to the pandemic.
Women’s Safety NSW CEO Hayley Foster told Crikey advocacy groups had been calling for a $1 billion yearly investment in the sector to address critical service gaps and drivers of violence.
“There is an extreme risk of family violence due to the economic crisis. There’s an escalation of violence and risk, financial distress, unemployment, and we’re also seeing reduced ability by women to seek help and escape and live safe and independent lives,” she said.
Unemployment makes it harder for women to leave their abusers. Foster says organisations within her network had been rejected for funding, with some refuge centres turning away half the women and children received.
“We haven’t seen any additional investment in affordable accommodation, which is the number one barrier to seeking sustainable safety, but we’ve seen nothing,” Foster said. “It’s mind boggling.”
The silver lining, however, is extra funding into the family court system. A four-year, $132.1 million allocation will hopefully expedite family law matters in the Federal Circuit Court, which Foster said she hoped would speed up hearings for families in dangerous situations.
Our footie loving suburban dad, Prime Minister, aka Scotty from marketing, has a very committed life view which goes something like this.
Be born into a middle class Christian family. Grow up, meet “sweetheart” at school. Marry “sweetheart” and have two children. Wife stays at home like a good , obedient and devoted Christian wife to raise the children in like manner with the same expectations.
This eliminates the need for child care and reduces the unemployment rate and un worlderemployment. It achieves an outcome which fits the beliefs of Pentecostal Christians and reduces the size of the economy by a considerable amount. It also solves the problem of University funding. The “good wives” don’t need a degree. It also solves the need for funding for domestic violence which only occurs when the female is not obedient and subservient. Welcome to Scotty’s wonderful world
I’m reasonably sure they have no understanding of economics, so a reduced economy should not be a problem till it is a problem which is about now.
Marian Arnold
They believe in money and misogyny. Full stop.
But the Old testament says women should be barefoot and pregnant and we can’t argue with a three thousand year old book of fairy tales can we?
Are we shocked that the government led by a man who has decided to name a bunch of chickens after former Prime Minister wives isn’t doing anything to help women?
It’s not just a cliche, but women make up the majority of arts based degrees. It is a strength of women to be attracted to subjects concerned with humanity, culture, history, creativity, society, politics, and every other thing. Deep understanding of how the world works, how narrative and perception is articulated, manipulated, and presented are critical skills for the community, for educators, for parents, for a healthy democracy.
This government in cahoots with the brilliant intellectual, Pauline Hanson, have just doubled the cost of arts degrees because this government does not believe that those skills are valuable in a workplace, in a school, in life, in general. This decision is ideological, misogynistic and narrow minded. It was made without evidence to support its assumptions, and it was made without acknowledging the enormous contribution to the “precious” economy that skills in humanities and the arts make.
The attack on universities during this pandemic where thousands of academics- a very large number of whom were women_ haven’t seen the statistics, but its almost certain- have already gutted arts departments around the country.
What do we think the intention is of the government?
My thoughts? I think they look at the states and just salivate. They would love nothing more than to reduce this country to the heartless, bigoted, cruel society that America has become where there is a class war- and its the rich working as hard as they can to crush the poor, shame them, turn them into serfs. And women? Women?
The sooner these visionless, shameless ideologues are driven out of governance, the better for this country. I do not like one thing about them. They are in thrall to the think tanks that speak into their ears from America and here at home.
Snd they always leave the economy in worse shape when they leave office than they found it. On purpose.
the 5 things listed actually do deserve more money than a gender splash. The list actually involves women as a group. So the budget actually is very proportionate