Category: Workforce Discrimination

Australia’s childcare cost among the highest in the world

There are calls to drastically overhaul the childcare sector to make it more affordable after parents were told they would have to resume normal fees.

Australian parents pay almost four times as much as their international counterparts for child care, forcing parents out of the workforce and leaving children without a head start in learning.

By international standards, Australia has one of the highest out-of-pocket child care costs in the world, behind the United States, United Kingdom and New Zealand.

Source: Australia’s childcare cost among the highest in the world

‘Makes no sense’: Government slammed for ending free childcare

The federal government has come under fire for scrapping free childcare before the policy’s scheduled expiry date in September.

Scrapping free childcare will push families into financial stress and cruel the economic recovery, economists have warned.

Source: ‘Makes no sense’: Government slammed for ending free childcare

After Robodebt, it’s time to address ParentsNext

Our research suggests ParentsNext needs also to be addressed .

It subjects more than 75,000 low-income parents of pre-school children, 95% of whom are female, to a compulsory, complicated and discriminatory “pre-employment program”.

In December 2018, 75,259 people were in ParentsNext: 95% women, 19% Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander, 21% culturally and linguistically diverse, and 12% with a disability.

ParentsNext continues largely unreformed despite the Senate committee’s recommendation that it cease in its current form.

It is consistent with a long Australian history of blaming, punishing and stigmatising welfare recipients and single mothers in particular.

Source: After Robodebt, it’s time to address ParentsNext

Landmark ruling sees employer deemed liable for an employee killed by her partner while working from home

A landmark court ruling has seen an employer deemed liable for an employee who was killed by her partner while working from home in NSW.

According to Cooper Grace Ward Lawyers, the evidence showed that Carroll was on-call from about 7.30am at home, her bedroom contained work files, she worked throughout the house and was expected to answer phone calls. She was performing employment related duties or on-call at the time she was killed.

Her de facto partner had paranoid delusions that related to the way Carroll performed her work duties at home. The evidence demonstrated a direct connection between his delusions, Carroll’s employment, and that she was killed by him.

This tragic case of domestic and family violence highlights that employers must consider much more than simple ergonomics when they have employees working from home.

Source: Landmark ruling sees employer deemed liable for an employee killed by her partner while working from home

Special report: As men’s sport clamours to restart, how women’s sport is being abandoned 

Across the sporting landscape, men’s sport is gearing up to resume, headlined by the return of the Premier League on June 17. Meanwhile, women’s competitions are being abandoned by governing bodies and sponsors alike.

“This pandemic has highlighted more than ever how women’s sport is underfunded,” says Sam Bird, the head coach at Superleague franchise London Pulse. “We do not have the luxury of being able to provide tests for players, or control over our own premises to provide a safe working environment.”

Source: Special report: As men’s sport clamours to restart, how women’s sport is being abandoned 

“At that point you want to get your two Academy Awards out and say: ‘I thought these were meant to stand for something?’”: Australian film legend Cate Blanchett on the huge gender pay gap in acting

Film star Cate Blanchett talks to Julia Gillard on A Podcast of One’s Own about the huge gender pay gap in acting and the arts.

Blanchett says that “back in 2008, and to this day, you still have to push to get paid a third of your male co-star – it’s a fact”.

Source: “At that point you want to get your two Academy Awards out and say: ‘I thought these were meant to stand for something?’”: Australian film legend Cate Blanchett on the huge gender pay gap in acting

Female Nobel prize winner deemed not important enough for Wikipedia entry

When the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm announced the Nobel prize for physics this week, anyone wanting to find out more about one of the three winners would have drawn a blank on Wikipedia.

Until around an hour and a half after the award was announced on Tuesday, the Canadian physicist Donna Strickland was not deemed significant enough to merit her own page on the user-edited encyclopedia.

The oversight has once again highlighted the marginalization of women in science and gender bias at Wikipedia.

Source: Female Nobel prize winner deemed not important enough for Wikipedia entry | Nobel prizes | The Guardian