Hopeful anthology about the gender war

Gender-based statistics are removed in several countries. Women are renamed womb carriers or pregnant people. Yvonne Hirdman, who launched the word “gender” in Sweden, reads a new anthology and reflects on what has happened to gender research.

The book I promised to review is called, Women’s Rights Gender Wrongs. The global impact of gender-identity ideology , and is an entry in this war.

It is an anthology (ed. Kath Aiken & Sally Wainwright) which is divided into two parts. The first consists of essays/reports from women around the world about the impact “gender-identity ideology” has had in each country – for example in terms of legal systems, social policy, education and health systems.

The second part contains short reports from 35 countries around the world on how the country in question lives up to the Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights, a declaration that requires CEDAW, the Women’s Convention, to be confirmed. 1

So what is the book about? The title trumpets its thesis: that women’s rights – as women – are threatened or have already been curtailed or sidelined by an ideology that does not recognize biological sex as a basis for rights, but replaces this with an experience, a sense of identity.

[S]o the core of this movement that leads away from woman/sex to gender according to the book’s author: to de-biologize motherhood, to be able to become a “generic” mother or father.

“Exploitation of reproduction is at the core of the post-queer agenda and appropriation of women’s reproductive capacity is at the core of patriarchy”.

Neither Beauvoir nor we (at least I) ever denied the existence of sex: the vagina, the breast, the X-chromosome. What we denied was that these biological characteristics created collective female characteristics. This attribution of stereotypical gender characteristics emanates directly from biological functions: if you have a vagina, you are predestined to scrub toilets – the kind of idiocy that has kept women under the tyranny of the cutting blankets. So simple.

Source: Parabol | Hoppfull antologi om genuskriget

Women’s Legal Services Australia calls for Federal government funding in gender equality push | Australasian Lawyer

Women’s Legal Services Australia has called for increased funding from the Federal government in a push for commitment to fighting back against gender inequality in the country.

Women’s Legal Services Australia chair Elena Rosenman explained that the availability of specialist legal services for Australian women has not increased significantly across most jurisdictions in spite of funding commitments made in prior budget cycles.

The organisation analysed 2023 data collected by all 13 Women’s Legal Services and found that over a five-day period, Women’s Legal Services had to deny 1,018 women who needed legal assistance – equating over 52,000 Australian women per year.

Rosenman added that the 2024/25 budget provided an opportunity to “break this devastating cycle of unmet demand for women in crisis”.

Source: Women’s Legal Services Australia calls for Federal government funding in gender equality push | Australasian Lawyer

Inquiry into Women’s Pain

Key messages

  • The Inquiry into Women’s Pain will provide recommendations to inform improved models of care and service delivery for Victorian girls and women experiencing pain in the future.
  • Submissions for the Inquiry into Women’s Pain open 30 January 2024.

Chronic pain affects a higher proportion of girls and women than men around the world; however, women are less likely to receive treatment. Research has also shown that women generally experience more recurrent pain, more severe pain, and longer-lasting pain than men.

Medical gender bias routinely leads to a denial of pain and therefore, lack of pain relief and associated treatment for women. This occurs for various health conditions, including cardiovascular, neurological, reproductive, and autoimmune conditions.

We will consult broadly through:

  1. Written submissions from consumers, clinicians, and health service organisations from 30 January to 12 March.
  2. Engage Victoria survey in late March 2024 to hear from those with lived experience of pain, and healthcare workers who provide pain services, care and treatment.
  3. Focus groups in mid-2024 with healthcare workers, people with lived and living experience of pain, and key stakeholders.

Source: Inquiry into Women’s Pain

Flemish film awards under fire after men win most prestigious gender-neutral categories

The Flemish film and television awards are facing calls to temporarily do away with gender-neutral categories amid concerns that the switch has left women routinely shut out of the top awards.

At the Ensors awards on Saturday male actors cleaned up the categories for best lead and supporting actors. It was an echo of 2022 – the first year that the awards ceremony axed gendered categories – when men also walked away with each of the four awards recognising the best actors.

The results prompted calls to temporarily revert back to the traditional format.

Source: Flemish film awards under fire after men win most prestigious gender-neutral categories

‘Horrifying numbers’ of women and girls will die because of UK aid cuts, say MPs | Global development | The Guardian

British aid cuts have had a “devastating” effect on women and girls around the world, forcing sexual and reproductive health programmes to be cancelled, according to a new cross-party report by MPs.

Nearly 300,000 women died during pregnancy and childbirth globally in 2020, according to the parliamentary committee, which said aid should be used to combat this problem, especially in sub-Saharan Africa where 70% of the deaths happened. It also said 2.4 million children died in their first year – most of them in sub-Saharan Africa or central and southern Asia.

Sarah Champion, the IDC chair, said: “A girl in South Sudan is more likely to die in childbirth than to finish secondary school. Even here in the UK maternal deaths are at their highest level in 20 years, but almost 95% of maternal deaths globally are in poorer countries.”

An analysis of the potential impact of government policy on disadvantaged groups, known as an equality impact assessment, presented to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office in July 2023, warned that the cuts could mean nearly 200,000 more unsafe abortions were performed in Africa.

The UK cut its official development assistance (ODA) from £11.7bn in 2019 to £7.6bn in 2022. Funding for sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) was cut by a third.

Source: ‘Horrifying numbers’ of women and girls will die because of UK aid cuts, say MPs | Global development | The Guardian

Pay gap transparency to benefit women, men and companies

From next month, workers around Australia will find out if there is a gender pay gap in their workplace.

Experts say the change is necessary for progress to be made.

The Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) will publish the gender pay gaps for every Australian employer with 100 or more employees on February 27.

The findings will be available to the public on WGEA’s Data Explorer.

“Pay secrecy basically holds down wages for women,” she said.

“We know that gender pay gap actually applies within organisations where men in jobs with similar skills requirements … do earn more, and if that’s not known … that gives people less capacity to actually challenge that.”

The Australian Bureau of Statistics estimates the gender pay gap is 13 per cent.

Meanwhile, WGEA found the average total remuneration gender pay gap, which encompasses all employee types including part-time and casual workers, sits at 21.7 per cent.

This means women in Australia are earning an average of $26,393 less per year than men.

Women are also set to retire with a much smaller nest egg than men, with 2023 research by The Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work finding women earn $136,000 less in superannuation over their working lives than their male counterparts.

Lower pay and smaller retirement savings could be a factor behind women aged over 55 being one of the fastest-growing homeless demographics in the country.

Australian women spend 81 per cent more time doing unpaid domestic and care work than men, Centre for Future Work found.

Source: Pay gap transparency to benefit women, men and companies

Australians will finally see how men and women are paid in the workplace

Federal laws passed in March require the Workplace Gender Equality Agency to release data for private businesses with more than 100 employees – which covers about 5 million workers – from February 27 and for Commonwealth public sector employees next year.

While the agency has been collecting this data for almost a decade, until now it has published only anonymised information about industry sectors. In the first release, the agency will publish employer gender pay gaps by median as well as the gender composition and average remuneration per pay quartile of every large company.

Australians will finally be able to see how men and women are paid in the workplace.

Wooldridge, chief executive at the Workplace Gender Equality Agency, hopes holding businesses to account will spur them to meaningfully address the gender pay gap, which has fallen to 13 per cent, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Source: https://www.smh.com.au/business/markets/australians-will-finally-see-how-men-and-women-are-paid-in-the-workplace-20231215-p5erqb.html

 

The Pink Test is a feel-good story, but does it help where it’s really needed? | The New Daily

Every year at the New Year’s Test match at the SCG, tens of thousands of cricket fans don pink and give money to the McGrath Foundation to fund free breast care nurses to support individuals and their families who are experiencing breast cancer.

The charity, founded by the famous bowler Glenn McGrath and his wife Jane before she died of breast cancer, is almost universally lauded and raises millions for its cause.

But its own financial accounts raise questions about whether it is an efficient way of providing essential health care.

In terms of the money the McGrath Foundation receives from individual and corporate donors, it spends more on fundraising, marketing and administration than on funding breast care nurses.

Last year, it spent about $8.8 million on “foundation-funded breast care nurses”, but more than $9.1 million on fundraising and marketing, and a further $2.2 million on administration.

It claims that last year “68 cents in every dollar spent went directly to our nursing program”.

But that figure hides more than it reveals.

The 68 cents in the dollar figure is only true when you include government funds, which pay for most of the breast care nurses the McGrath Foundation provides.

Government grants are the McGrath Foundation’s largest source of revenue, accounting for nearly 40 cents of every dollar the charity gets, and it is contractually obliged to spend all this money on breast care nurses.

Strip out the government funding, though, and the share of revenue the charity spends on breast care nurses doesn’t look nearly as healthy.

In effect, the McGrath Foundation is an outsourced government service provider, linked to an expensive charity arm with large overheads.

Certainly, philanthropy has its place – but not in allowing charity to supplant the state in supplying essential services, especially when government can do so cheaper and more efficiently.

Source: The Pink Test is a feel-good story, but does it help where it’s really needed? | The New Daily

Who will benefit most from the stage three tax cuts? Wealthy, older men

There’s no getting around it, it’s wealthy, older men who will benefit most from the stage three tax cuts.

Costings from the Parliamentary Budget Office show that by 2032-33, men will get $160 billion from the cuts, while women will get $82.9 billion.

Largely, this is because the people who are going to benefit most from the tax cuts are high income earners, and men are much more likely to earn higher incomes in Australia. Australia still has a significant gender pay gap. The Workplace Gender Equality Agency recently released its update to the average total remuneration pay gap between men and women, with it sitting at 21.7 per cent in 2023.

A report, published in February last year by the Australia Institute shows that men are set to benefit twice as much as women from the stage 3 tax cuts.

While women get 33 per cent of the tax cut, men get 67 per cent of the tax cut. This means that for every $1 of the tax cut that women get men get $2.

Source: Who will benefit most from the stage three tax cuts? Wealthy, older men

We won’t get real equality until we price breastmilk, and treat breastfeeding as work

The Australian Women’s Economic Equality Taskforce delivered a major report last month drawing attention to what it called the “motherhood penalty” – the 55% cut in earnings for Australian women in the first five years after having a child.

The report makes many good recommendations, including extending paid parental leave to 52 weeks and providing universal high-quality affordable early childhood education.

Yet it mentions “birth” only twice, and “breastfeeding” not at all.

Women everywhere do disproportionate amounts of unpaid or informal work, meaning they generally work longer hours and have less time for rest and leisure than men.

The approach the Taskforce report adopts is a standard one to “recognise, reduce, and redistribute” the care work done by women.

But in a paper just published in Frontiers in Public Health we argue that breastfeeding is different from other care work: it can’t be redistributed, and shouldn’t be reduced.

We contend that breastfeeding ought to be recognised as a special category of “sexed” care work that should be supported rather than reduced or reallocated to others. We argue that to undermine women’s breastfeeding is profoundly sexist.

At present, a drop in breastfeeding rates that leads to increased commercial formula sales is counted as an increase in measured GDP – making it look as if it has made society better off. The cost to women’s health, children’s health and development and the environment is ignored.

The Mothers’ Milk Tool developed at the Australian National University is a step toward counting breastfeeding in the national food supply, as Norway does, and making it easy to calculate the value of the milk mothers and countries produce in gross domestic product (GDP).

The contribution that women make through breastfeeding is important. Brushing it under the carpet as part of a drive for equality in paid work harms them, their children and society more generally.

Source: We won’t get real equality until we price breastmilk, and treat breastfeeding as work