2007 breaks upon Australia and the world with various political, social and economic pressures vying for the lime-light. There’s the fact that the opinions of Americans are against further involvement in Iraq – and the Australian Government is still supporting “The War on[/of] Terror”. The Queensland Government have changed disability funding and people with disabilities no longer have access to Adult Lifestyles Support Package funding, which assessed and funded people to live independently in the community. Instead, the Beattie Government has moved towards “capacity funding” and is building 20 “bed” institutions. If everything else is cyclical it seems that institutionalisation is too. First there was “De-institutionalisation”; now we witness a Labor Government annihilate individual choice/autonomy and trap people with disabilities in archaic models of support – such as group homes and institutions.
I tread the spun-silk line between myself and other, and choose to write about:
- an over-heard conversation,
- working women and
- the voice of dissent from a former Australian Government Minister
as they come together in a neat parcel and are still related to women, thought and how limiting or limited choices leads to marginalisation and - if you’re in a particularly dark and gothic mood – annihilation.
As annihilation is best to be avoided, this post will try to navigate a path that does not intersect with such ‘absolute’ finalities.
1) On New Year’s Day, I was sitting with my partner, overlooking the ocean in a Queensland coastal city, and over-heard two women with young babies discussing childcare options. It was quite clear that these women were part the growing number of couples who can only afford for one partner to be off-work for more than 6 weeks or a couple of months at the longest, as they have mortgages and loans to pay.
One woman was very organised and had booked in to childcare when she was only 4 months pregnant. I had this mental image of a foetus, in utero, lining up for mass produced bottle feeds. (I support childcare and women’s rights to work.) The other startling fact that this organised woman revealed was that she had been offered a full-time childcare place over others who were on the waiting list for part-time childcare. She observed that if you only wanted part-time childcare you probably just got pushed down the list in favour of those seeking full-time childcare and, therefore, being more lucrative option for providers.
The fear in the other, slightly less organised woman – who probably took a more organic approach to life, in that it was ok to actually be holding and bonding with the baby before seeking childcare – was tangible as she almost panicked about having an unsettled baby and a longer-than-expected wait for childcare.
1) Here we have the contradiction in the socio-political and economic ethos under which we live. Women have a right to work; to earn money; advance their careers and; attain professional, personal and financial goals. There was a brief time in the 1980s and 1990s when working women could ‘attain’ the “great Australian dream” of owning their own home.
This is rarely, if ever, the case now as it takes two salaries to sustain a mortgage and reasonable lifestyle. In this case, it can be argued that women are being socially and economically coerced into couple-dom to secure their financial future.
Yet, if women happen to have a disability, and be entitled to social security payments, they will be stripped of these entitlements upon becoming part of a couple. The point here is to highlight the connection between people with disabilities being forced back into institutions – out of sight, out of mind – and the disparity that fails to acknowledge people with disabilities as workers, part of communities, families and couples.
The muse is difficult to control today and keeps rambling off on tangents. Perhaps this is because there are so many interlinked topics vying to appear. And – I even tried using numbers.
Women who are in couples need to work to help sustain the economic progression of the couple. Yet, they are also expected, by the Prime Minister, John Howard, to be mothers of children and the netting that binds the family unit.
No wonder the talk of “double-duty” is growing louder. (One can hope…..)
3) And we finally move to the voice of dissent from a former Australian Government Minister. Bronwyn Bishop is quoted in The Sunday Mail as saying that the Prime Minister “is treating women like fools” in not implementing changes to childcare funding and places. Ms Bishop says “I was absolutely concerned with making sure women who are struggling for money were not worse off”.
As has been illustrated above, it’s a very steep and slippery slope that forms the continuum of worse off, maintaining equilibrium and advancing in a social, economic and political sense.
The questions that remain might be:
- Can women find time in their busy lives to work towards change?
- Can people see beyond the individualism being forced upon them to work towards collective change?
- And, will we ever see the cycle change/return to times when marginalisation and social justice issues are back on the political, and therefore, social agenda?
Or perhaps that should be, can we, the public, push them back onto the social and political agenda?
I’m not holding my breath!
References:
Weaver, Clair. 2007 “PM treating women like fools: Bishop”, The Sunday Mail, January 7, 2007: page 2.
