Category: Inequity

Jane Caro: Why Cashless Welfare Cards Are A Slap In The Face

It is the good girls of my generation, the girls who did as they were told and put other people’s needs ahead of their own, who have ended up facing financial disaster.

It’s pretty simple to work out why if you bother to think about it. These are the women who left work to care for their children and who returned to the workforce part-time so they could continue to put their families first. If anyone in the family had a disability, guess who left work to care for them? And when parents grew frail and needed care, it was also daughters who were expected to step up. And what was happening to their superannuation while they took time out to care for others? Not a lot. That is why women retire with an average of half the super of men and fully one-third of us leave the workforce with no super at all.

Source: Jane Caro: Why Cashless Welfare Cards Are A Slap In The… | 10 daily

Women aren’t better multi-taskers than men — they’re just doing more work

Public opinion persists that women have a biological edge as super-efficient multitaskers. But, as this study shows, this myth is not supported by evidence.

Source: Women aren’t better multi-taskers than men — they’re just doing more work – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

How to drive cultural change to shift stubborn gender roles

KPMG’s 2018 report The Cost of Coming Back: Achieving a Better Deal for Working Mothers found that it would cost some professionally qualified working mums almost $30 a day in tax, lost payments and out-of-pocket childcare expenses to increase their working days from three to four per week.

Other working mothers would lose almost $80 a day by moving from four to five days per week of work. Outcomes like this are at odds with the Government’s intention to boost women’s workforce participation as part of increasing our national productivity.

It is also worth considering whether Australia should follow the UK and various other countries who have introduced laws or codes banning sexism in advertising.

In June, the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority banned ads that feature gender stereotypes (such as men lying around while women do all the cleaning or women having difficulty parking the car), following a report that found that gender-stereotypical imagery and rhetoric “can lead to unequal gender outcomes in public and private aspects of people’s lives.”

Source: How to drive cultural change to shift stubborn gender roles

Sorry men, but we are still the slackest of the sexes

One of the biggest holes in any economic discussion is the lack of accounting for unpaid work.

Housework and taking care of your children does not bring a wage, nor appear in the GDP figures, yet of course were you to pay someone to do those tasks it most definitely would. The latest Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (Hilda) survey, released on Tuesday, shows that this work is overwhelmingly done by women and at levels that really should shame men in this country.

Source: Sorry men, but we are still the slackest of the sexes | Greg Jericho | Opinion | The Guardian

Voluntary super: a good way to increase women’s dependence on men

Making super contributions voluntary for people earning less than $50,000 a year, as proposed by Senator Andrew Bragg, would be a backward step for women.

And most women have much less super than most men.

In 2017, the median super balance for women aged 60-64 was $36,000. For men it was $110,000.

This is partly because women are much more likely than men to take time out of work or to work part-time to care for children and other family members, and partly because of the persistent gender pay gap.

The gender pay gap means women contribute less to superannuation and, as a result, are much more likely than men to experience poverty and hardship in retirement and will have to rely on the pension anyway, regardless of super.

Source: Voluntary super: a good way to increase women’s dependence on men

India probes as no girl is born in three months in 132 villages

New Delhi, India – Officials in a northern Indian state are investigating whether sex-selective abortions have been conducted after government data revealed not a single girl was born in 132 villages in the last three months.

Source: India probes as no girl is born in three months in 132 villages | India News | Al Jazeera

Saudi Arabia to ‘ease’ male guardianship law restricting women’s travel

Saudi Arabia is reportedly planning to relax its strict male guardianship laws to allow women to travel without requiring permission, in what would be the biggest reform yet to women’s rights in the ultra-conservative kingdom.

Male guardianship laws related to women’s right to marry, work, leave prison and a number of other rights, however, would still be in place.

Women, even as adults, can be prevented from doing anything from travelling, marrying, renting, and working without permission.

There is even a government app that helps alert male guardians if female relatives try to check in at any of the kingdom’s airports.

Source: Saudi Arabia to ‘ease’ male guardianship law restricting women’s travel

Indonesia’s top court jails woman sexually harassed by her boss

JAKARTA: Indonesia’s Supreme Court has jailed a woman who tried to report her employer for alleged sexual harassment, in a ruling that rights groups said on Friday risked turning victims of sexual abuse into criminals.

The Supreme Court on Thursday found Baiq Nuril Maknun, who was a teacher on the island of Lombok, guilty of violating strict anti-pornography laws. It overturned her acquittal by a lower court and jailed her for six months.

She was also ordered to pay a 500 million rupiah (US$35,383) fine. The Supreme Court’s decision cannot be appealed.

Maknun had complained of getting lewd phone calls from the principal of a high school where she worked from 2012, court documents showed.

She recorded some of the phone calls without the knowledge of the headmaster and gave a recording to a third person, and distributed it on an electronic device, which resulted in the principal losing his job, the documents showed.

Source: Indonesia’s top court jails woman sexually harassed by her boss