by FIONA SUGDEN
My fellow feminists, I fear we made a mistake.
We assumed the days of the 1950s were over and that having a baby didn’t mean you had to say goodbye to your career. We assumed that we could make the choice to have a career and have children and share the workload of raising our children with our partners.
We were on track on for a while there. With the cheer leadings of “Lean In” and “You can have it all” the productivity rate of Australian women in the workplace has been rising for years.
Enter the draft report of the Productivity Commission Inquiry into Early Learning.
Haven’t heard of it before? Well the quick summary is this inquiry will result in an historic opportunity for the federal government to make the biggest changes to the childcare system we have seen in decades.
Last week the first draft was released and it recommended cutting the childcare rebate for families with a household income of more than $160,000 a year.
The childcare rebate is a productivity measure designed to encourage primarily women back into the workforce after having a child. It is universal, in that every family can access up to $7500 a year per child as a reimbursement for their childcare costs. Low income families can rightly access more.
The marvellous thing about this policy is that is has given many Australian women a choice. An empowering choice to be able to pursue a paid career and have a family if that is what they would like to do.
It’s a choice that means if you’d prefer to work in the home and look after your children full time you can take that path. It’s a choice that means if you would like to combine both work and child rearing you can make that happen.
If you cut the childcare rebate you remove that choice for thousands of Australian women and their families.
The childcare rebate is not welfare. It is a very effective productivity measure that has transformed Australian society and created more equality between men and women in the home and in the workplace.
You cut the rebate and the ramifications on Australian society will be far-reaching.
A national survey of parents conducted by The Parenthood found 75 per cent of parents would stop work or reduce their hours if they childcare rebate was reduced.
We have come so far as a society in the pursuit of equality for women. We say we want more women to be corporate boards, to enter politics, to run our businesses – well then we have to continue this critical productivity measure that helps to achieve these outcomes in Australia.
We have a long way to go to reach true equality for women but there is no doubt these cuts would take us backwards. They would take us back to the 1950s to when women had no choice about whether they could leave the home to work.
The Parenthood has today launched this national campaign advertisement:
Already 5000 parents have joined the campaign to stop the cuts. You can join to here.
Let’s not make the mistake of taking Australian women back to the 1950s and show our support for women keeping the right to this important choice.
To sign the petition click here.
Fiona Sugden is Executive Director of The Parenthood, a not for profit national advocacy body that aims to be a voice for all parents in business in government. Before this, Fiona was Press Secretary to former Prime Minister Rudd and is currently a media consultant and Mum in Brisbane. You can follow her on Twitter @FiSugden.
Top Comments
Here's a hypothetical Laura might like to write about next.
A single person (gender of your choice), works 10 hours a day, 7 days a week in a very important, highly-qualified job. They earn somewhere between oodles and a squillion. More than a kindy teacher but less than Gina.
But, in order to continue working like this, they have to hire a cleaner to maintain their home and get the clothing ready for next week. Plus they have to hire a gardener to stop the local council from condemning their property and sending in the bulldozers. Any more-serious maintenance at home simply has to be handled by a contractor because Person simply doesn't have the time to change tap washers (plus, it's illegal inmost states, I hear).
The country benefits greatly from having Person in the workforce, earning lots of money and paying lots and lots and lots of tax without receiving one cent in welfare benefits or even benefits that are welfare but which might not be described as welfare in some circles because they're "productivity measures" or something.
Should Person's domestic costs be:
A: Tax deductible (work-related expenses)?
B: Heavily subsidised (as "productivity measures")?
C: Person's problem - "deal with it"?
D: Solved by staying home more often?
E: Solved by getting married?
F: Other (please expand)?
To anyone suggesting high income earners do not deserve the rebate...
If they didn't receive it, which cuts would you like to see them make in their budgets so they can afford the outrageous childcare costs?
We could start with not paying for private health insurance, and add more strain on the already suffering public health system? This would nicely lead to further increases in the Medicare levy, or maybe the 'co-payment' could be $20 to see the GP instead of $7.
Or how about we stop making extra repayments into our superannuation? This way, when we retire our super will run out years earlier than it should and we will need to rely on the aged pension, again increasing taxes to pay for that.
The suggestion that those earning $160K do not NEED the childcare rebate is just as ludicrous as the suggestion that those who earn more money should have to pay more to send their kids to public school.
Not every family earning 160K has huge amounts of 'disposable income', and frankly my taxes are used to support other mothers who chose to stay at home, so why shouldn't they also support my decision as a mother to work?
We need to stop making this about who's the 'better' woman, a SAHM or a working mum. Both have a great value to our society and to our future generations.
Yes, we do need to stop making it about which is better, but the author opened that door by suggesting that "working" women are better for the economy and that stay-at-home mums (ie "not working") are stuck in the 1950s.
When feminists can bring themselves to stop attacking stay-at-home mums and actually start supporting genuine choice, these discussions might actually prove fruitful. Until then, stay-at-home mums have a right to defend themselves against these subliminal attacks.
The author is not suggesting that SAHM's are stuck in the 1950's. What she is referring to is that removing a woman's choice to work is taking us back to the 1950's. A time when women didn't have the choice to be a stay at home mum or a working mum.
Unfortunately sometimes women are each other's worst enemy and worst supporter.
"Unfortunately sometimes women are each other's worst enemy and worst supporter."
Indeed they are. They are being used as political footballs and refuse to accept it and deal with it sensibly because it might involve compromising core principles. The feminist "women-in-careers" brigade disparage stay-at-home mothering as economically damaging, unworthy of government support or recognition and, yes, as outdated. While that continues, stay-at-home mums will fight back as they have in this comment thread.
For years I participated in lobbying for a family-based tax system, where families would be treated equitably for tax and welfare based on their family income, not on their domestic arrangements. I was shouted down by fundamentalist-feminists (Greens and Democrats mainly) on the basis that "income-splitting" favours the rich. It doesn't, but that was their argument against it.
Now, however, those very same people are demanding childcare rebates for the rich and, worse, Paid Parental Leave for millionaires on a "the more you earn, the more you get" basis and they wonder why some of us refuse to accept their arguments
Until the feminist lobby genuinely recognises the value of stay-at-home parents, and ceases to see them as the enemy of womanhood, this "us against them" debate will continue and neither side will truly win for any useful length of time.