New figures show primary carers will gain little to overcome entrenched tax disadvantages in this year’s election
Source: Ninety per cent tax for a day’s work: The battle facing Aussie mums
Category: Inequity
‘It’s soul destroying’: the stress and stigma of being a single parent on welfare
On census night in 2016, there were about 959,000 single-parent families in Australia, 82% of which were single mothers. The majority of single parents with children under four years old are not in paid work. Instead, they are three times more likely to be living below the poverty line. Their median income of $974 a week is about half that of all households. All up, about one-third of sole parents and their children live in poverty, according to the Australian Council of Social Service.
Most observers point to the Howard government’s decision during the mining boom to move those with children eight and older off parenting payment (now $384.25 a week) and onto Newstart ($297.55 a week) as the starting point to a new, more punitive approach to welfare payments for single parents.
“I think that is so dark in terms of the financial context we were in,” says Terese Edwards, the chief executive of the National Council For Single Mothers and their Children. “Everyone was getting a pat on the back, a hand up … Except if you were a single mother. And then, bang, you became officially unemployed.”
Exacerbating the situation, Edwards says, is Australia’s $1.5bn child support debt, the cost of child care and the fact that governments are focused on a “deficit model” that blames parents for their predicament.
Once the child turns six, parents face the same job search requirements as everyone else. The problem, McLaren says, is that well-paid jobs with child-friendly hours are “very thin on the ground”. “That means you are having to sign up to casual work,” says McLaren, who has studied Australia’s ‘Welfare to Work’ policies. “They give you lots of flexibility to be with your kids, but you don’t get sick leave and holiday pay and all those kinds of allowances. That’s the exchange.”
Women Die From Heart Attacks More Often Than Men. Here’s Why
The good news is that 80% of heart attacks and strokes can be prevented by lifestyle changes, but when heart attacks do occur, fewer women than men survive the first attack. That’s largely because heart-disease symptoms in women can be different from those in men—and even some physicians misread the subtleties.
Several large heart-disease studies excluded women, and it wasn’t until the Women’s Health Initiative began in 1991 that it started to become clear that the body of knowledge that did exist was applicable mostly to men. Sometimes that knowledge worked when applied to women, and sometimes it didn’t.
Women can even have different symptoms of heart attacks and heart disease than men. They tend to experience slightly more nausea, vomiting and shortness of breath than men do when they’re suffering from heart disease, and when they have a heart attack, women are less likely to have the classic feeling of chest pain that’s associated with the event. Often, they describe a more subtle pressure or tightness, not full-blown chest pain, according to the Mayo Clinic, because their smaller arteries are more likely to be affected. These variations may be why doctors can miss signs of heart distress in women.
Source: Women Die From Heart Attacks More Often Than Men. Here’s Why | Time
Former judge appointed to oversee unification of Family, Federal Circuit Courts
While the Senate has rejected the merger of the Family Court and Federal Circuit Court, former judge the Honourable Dr Chris Jessup QC has been engaged to oversee development of unified family law processes.
Source: Former judge appointed to oversee unification of Family, Federal Circuit Courts – Lawyers Weekly
ParentsNext provider urged staff not to grant medical exemptions, ex-employee says
Exclusive: PeoplePlus told staff not to exempt those with medical certificates ‘but go easy on them’
What’s in the 2019 Budget for women? Very little which isn’t surprising
What the 2019-20 budget doesn’t include is telling. There is nothing in it to address the growing inequality in Australia and little for women.
Source: What’s in the 2019 Budget for women? Very little which isn’t surprising
A show of force: Record crowd watches Adelaide’s second AFLW flag
The crowd figure at Adelaide Oval for Sunday’s AFLW grand final – won by Adelaide by 45 points – is believed to be the largest attendance at a stand-alone women’s sports event in Australia.
The show of force was the latest demonstration of the increasing popularity of women’s sport – in Australia and abroad.
It eclipsed a mark that had stood since Boxing Day in 1920, when 53,000 rocked up to Everton’s Goodison Park to catch a glimpse of Dick Kerr’s Ladies playing St Helen’s Ladies.
Source: A show of force: Record crowd watches Adelaide’s second AFLW flag
Ed: The crowds at the Dick, Kerr Ladies matches were often bigger than men’s games being played on the same day. Less than a year after a match played before 53,000 fans packed into Goodison Park, the Dick, Kerr Ladies, as well as all the other women’s teams that had been established in England, lost their official recognition by the FA who banned the women from using fields and stadiums controlled by FA-affiliated clubs for 50 years (the rule was finally repealed in 1971). Ostensibly, this was due of concerns that women were not physically able to play football, however, it is widely purported that the popularity of the team threatened the men’s game. The grounds that were under the FA’s governance were the only ones that held enough capacity to meet the demand of the women’s games in the early 1920s. Because of the ban, women’s games were relegated to smaller capacity fields with less resources and exposure.[7] The women’s game in England was left on its own until 1993 when the FA took over its administration and funding
Source: Wikipedia.
Women’s Pain Is Different From Men’s—the Drugs Could Be Too
Men and women can’t feel each other’s pain. Literally. We have different biological pathways for chronic pain, which means pain-relieving drugs that work for one sex might fail in the other half of the population.
So why don’t we have pain medicines designed just for men or women? The reason is simple: Because no one has looked for them. Drug development begins with studies on rats and mice, and until three years ago, almost all that research used only male animals. As a result, women in particular may be left with unnecessary pain—but men might be too.
Source: Women’s Pain Is Different From Men’s—the Drugs Could Be Too | WIRED
Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights Tickets, Fri, Mar 15, 2019 at 7:00 PM
On March 15, the Women’s Human Rights Campaign is launching The Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights. The Declaration re-affirms that women’s human rights are based upon sex. It argues that these rights are being eroded by the promotion of “gender identity”, and that the inclusion of men who claim to be women in the category “women” undermines the whole notion and practice of women’s rights as human rights.
Source: Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights Tickets, Fri, Mar 15, 2019 at 7:00 PM | Eventbrite
‘I can’t help but worry’: Sydney woman’s battle to get out of ParentsNext
Lucy Timu learned she had been placed on the compulsory employment
scheme when she was five months’ pregnant.
Currently the subject of a Senate inquiry, ParentsNext is a compulsory pre-employment program for about 73,000 people who receive parenting payment. They must have children between the age of six months and five and be classified as “disadvantaged” by Centrelink.
Since it was rolled out nationally in July, ParentsNext providers and Centrelink have granted around 14,000 temporary exemptions from the program for reasons such as a pregnancy, medical incapacity or family violence.
As Timu has found out, the process to be spared from the program’s “mutual obligations” is not always easy.
