However, any reforms that are designed to protect privilege and ensure the working class pay for the mismanagement and profligacy of the rich, will impact unevenly on women, whether its restrictions on aged care, pensions, health or education, in fact almost any area of public spending.

Just being female in Australia carries a greater risk of being impoverished by social structures such as fewer employment opportunities, gendered divisions of labour and lower paid work

Women make up the bulk of those in aged care; if they don’t have disabilities themselves, they are caring for those who do, either parents or children; they are the low wage earners or part- time workers, or subsisting on part-work part-welfare, or are on single parent benefits or are the majority of aged pensioners; they are the lowest category of superannuation recipients because of disrupted paid work due to child and family caring.  In almost all of the disadvantaged demographics women are over represented.  

As child bearers and carers women are dependant, as they should be, on community services.  They rely on good schools, accessible health care for themselves and their children, on affordable child-care.  Any cuts in public services whether it is child-care, health, education, disability support or aged care, impact on many aspects of women’s lives.

Any privatising or outsourcing of public services will benefit capital, but it will disadvantage women and raise the cost and limit those services on which low paid women and their children depend.

For single-parent women low-paid work, part time work, or no work means a continuous and debilitating struggle to pay rent, pay school fees or extra education costs such as excursions, camps or-out-of school sport or maintain a car, resources considered essential requirements for the average Australian family but from which many women and their children are locked out.  

Older women are amongst Australia’s poorest demographic and feature increasingly in homeless figures.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare quote a figure of 4800 Victorian women seeking homeless assistance an increase of 34% in 2012-13 over the previous year, a figure that can only be relieved by increased social housing, something we are not going to see any time soon.  

Another recent report “Older Women’s Pathways out of Homelessness In Australia” (women over 55) commissioned by the Mercy Foundation and conducted by Queensland University attributed their homelessness to the high cost of rental, unemployment, broken relationships or partner death or family violence but underlying all causes was lack of secure housing.

Australian house prices have risen by 150% whilst incomes have risen by 57%.  City rentals have risen by twice the rate of inflation and the report found there was a national shortage of around five hundred thousand houses.  At the same time, demand is rising. In the five years to 2011 the number of older women renting privately jumped by 70%.   All of this is compounded by women’s limited access to superannuation.   

The medium level of superannuation for women is $48,000 – if they have it at all.

Australia is a low taxing economy and spends less on social security than almost all similar economies.  In Australia we spend 8.6% of Gross National Product on social security compared to an OECD average of 13%.

The International Monetary Fund (2013) found that Australia collected between 70% and 74% of its tax capacity, so compared to others we (and primarily the rich and the corporations) are paying less tax than others and providing lower levels of social services for community well-being.  

A meaningful mining tax and a tax on banks and other super profits could help relieve the situation for the short term.  But we know that in all capitalist countries a trend that is going to intensify, according to almost all economists, is a continuing increase in the gap between the rich and the poor.  

In fact, fear of social unrest is driving bourgeois economists to write books about the dangers of too much inequality whereas social unrest to generate social action is just what is needed to drive fundamental social change and a redistribution of wealth to eliminate poverty and growing inequality.

" property="og:description" />

How the Commission of Audit targets women

Written by: on

 

by Verity M.  (May 2014)

There is no suggestion that the Commission Report is deliberately structured to discriminate against women. However, any reforms that are designed to protect privilege and ensure the working class pay for the mismanagement and profligacy of the rich, will impact unevenly on women, whether its restrictions on aged care, pensions, health or education, in fact almost any area of public spending.

Just being female in Australia carries a greater risk of being impoverished by social structures such as fewer employment opportunities, gendered divisions of labour and lower paid work

Women make up the bulk of those in aged care; if they don’t have disabilities themselves, they are caring for those who do, either parents or children; they are the low wage earners or part- time workers, or subsisting on part-work part-welfare, or are on single parent benefits or are the majority of aged pensioners; they are the lowest category of superannuation recipients because of disrupted paid work due to child and family caring.  In almost all of the disadvantaged demographics women are over represented.  

As child bearers and carers women are dependant, as they should be, on community services.  They rely on good schools, accessible health care for themselves and their children, on affordable child-care.  Any cuts in public services whether it is child-care, health, education, disability support or aged care, impact on many aspects of women’s lives.

Any privatising or outsourcing of public services will benefit capital, but it will disadvantage women and raise the cost and limit those services on which low paid women and their children depend.

For single-parent women low-paid work, part time work, or no work means a continuous and debilitating struggle to pay rent, pay school fees or extra education costs such as excursions, camps or-out-of school sport or maintain a car, resources considered essential requirements for the average Australian family but from which many women and their children are locked out.  

Older women are amongst Australia’s poorest demographic and feature increasingly in homeless figures.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare quote a figure of 4800 Victorian women seeking homeless assistance an increase of 34% in 2012-13 over the previous year, a figure that can only be relieved by increased social housing, something we are not going to see any time soon.  

Another recent report “Older Women’s Pathways out of Homelessness In Australia” (women over 55) commissioned by the Mercy Foundation and conducted by Queensland University attributed their homelessness to the high cost of rental, unemployment, broken relationships or partner death or family violence but underlying all causes was lack of secure housing.

Australian house prices have risen by 150% whilst incomes have risen by 57%.  City rentals have risen by twice the rate of inflation and the report found there was a national shortage of around five hundred thousand houses.  At the same time, demand is rising. In the five years to 2011 the number of older women renting privately jumped by 70%.   All of this is compounded by women’s limited access to superannuation.   

The medium level of superannuation for women is $48,000 – if they have it at all.

Australia is a low taxing economy and spends less on social security than almost all similar economies.  In Australia we spend 8.6% of Gross National Product on social security compared to an OECD average of 13%.

The International Monetary Fund (2013) found that Australia collected between 70% and 74% of its tax capacity, so compared to others we (and primarily the rich and the corporations) are paying less tax than others and providing lower levels of social services for community well-being.  

A meaningful mining tax and a tax on banks and other super profits could help relieve the situation for the short term.  But we know that in all capitalist countries a trend that is going to intensify, according to almost all economists, is a continuing increase in the gap between the rich and the poor.  

In fact, fear of social unrest is driving bourgeois economists to write books about the dangers of too much inequality whereas social unrest to generate social action is just what is needed to drive fundamental social change and a redistribution of wealth to eliminate poverty and growing inequality. 

 

Print Version - new window Email article

-----

Go back