Equity, Health and Prosperity - Women's Agenda

Equity, Health and Prosperity

Moves towards gender equality have reached a new high water mark. This was foreshadowed in Betty Friedan’s publication The Second Stage which focuses on radical change in how we do family, issues that are increasingly being spoken about in terms of ‘unpaid care’. This is work that has been privatized and gendered through the male breadwinner – female carer roles. The more recent ‘independent worker’ wage fixing model has been upheld by couples relying on a mix of family support and a commodification of housework and childcare; note here the urgency to derive systems that can accommodate the use of nannies. The single most significant development in the second part of the twentieth century has been changes to gendered roles and this early twenty-first century calls for significant institutional change to accommodate care; that is care for infants and children, but also the infirm aged, and the disabled who require carer support. We need to promote communication and equity within families, particularly in those early years when couples negotiate complex care arrangements, and we as a society need to support young families; remembering the adage – it takes a village to raise a child.

UN Women recently drew attention to the launch by G20 leaders of a new engagement group to advance the economic empowerment of women W20. This group will work to promote women’s involvement in financial decision-making, while monitoring G20 commitments to, among other priorities, entrepreneurship, employment and education of women. Both government and business have recognised the skills and talents that women have to offer with mounting reports calling for change. This is required across the institutional framework, but I want to focus here on the Transition to Parenthood and the early years services.

In 2006 the European Commission released an extensive eight nation study titled Gender Parenthood and the Changing European Workplace . The study identified the Transition to Parenthood as a ‘critical tipping point on the road to gender equity’. The argument is that the vast majority of couples aspire to a form of equal or egalitarian family, and yet after the birth of an infant there are significant trends towards gendered roles. The institutional framework is holding back cultural change. There is a need for workplace change, and practices at schools are outdated, but further to this, our health and welfare systems need to assist and support these ‘brave new families’.

Furthermore, the critical nature of the early years on the developing baby brain has led to calls for increased funding for early years services and family support. The Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth (ARACY) released a report Better Systems, Better Chances in which they argue that in the early years of a child’s life the foundations are laid for health and well-being. The report cites the work of James Heckman who is an economist and Nobel prize winner advocate for early intervention and support for families with young children. The ARACY report identifies antenatal health as particularly important saying:

There is a strong and compelling case for the creation and systematization of a comprehensive and holistic universal child and family service platform.

There is also a need for increased support for parents, valuing their role as first teachers. A call for improved early years health services has been echoed in submissions to the Victorian Royal Commission into Domestic Violence and the recently released Queensland report on DV.

This is the unfinished business of the women’s movement that has stalled through governments harking back to the so called good old days that relied on notions of gendered roles. Early twenty-first century couples, however, aspire to do things differently which calls for leaders who can envisage new ways of doing care while dismantling barriers to change.

×

Stay Smart! Get Savvy!

Get Women’s Agenda in your inbox