During World Breastfeeding Week recently I was reminded of my first ever editorial, written on the topic of parenting and careers.
A key observation in the piece was that “having a job” and “building a family” were probably two of the most predictable activities that most humans are likely to undertake in their lifetimes.
Yet for 50 percent of the population, these two activities are often incompatible.
Sure, women are allowed to have jobs these days. And legally we can’t be discriminated against when we get pregnant, or return to work following maternity leave. Yay.
Yet reality paints a very different picture.
We have a funding dearth for female-led ventures, as well as informal manuals on “Fundraising While Pregnant” to avoid (already illegal) discrimination.
When returning to work, we have a motherhood penalty, dozens of reports of workplace discrimination against pregnant people, and ample tales of discrimination against lactating people.
And it all stings a little more when you learn about the fatherhood premium…
Yet it’s not even limited to the workplace. Just recently a woman was thrown out of a Victorian Court for breastfeeding. Sorry, bubs, court is in session. Please schedule your hunger outside of office hours.
But it’s 2023! No one is forcing women into the nursery.
Don’t most new mothers just choose to stay home and work on average 96 hours per week or the equivalent of $230,000 worth of labour for the neat little sum of zero dollars?
The myth of personal choice
Women – even mothers! – are fully autonomous, intelligent beings perfectly capable of making their own choices.
Except “personal choice” cannot be de-linked from the context in which it is exercised.
Is it really a woman’s personal choice to halt her career for child caring reasons when the gender pay gap and leadership gap mean her husband’s job is often simply the higher earner? And many fathers still don’t get parental leave? And societal norms still stigmatise both fathers and mothers when fathers are the stay-at-home parent? And the alternative of childcare is often unaffordable or unavailable?
Likewise, if women must choose between continuing to breastfeed and returning to work, is it really “personal choice” that dictates her next steps?
Not to mention the laughable assertion that becoming pregnant in the first place is a “lifestyle choice” women make, somehow in a void entirely absent of a father also pushing for said situation.
Anti-sexism efforts must holistically focus on changing a wide range of unjust social systems (both private and public), as well as influencing individuals’ minds and the hive mind of society.
But how do we even begin while sexism continues to permeate our very highest form of power – our political system?
A country run on exclusion
In writing my aforementioned first-ever editorial, I had the privilege of interviewing Jo Haylen, then Mayor of Marrickville, and now Labor Member for Summer Hill and the NSW Minister for Transport.
When the topic of abortion came up, Ms Haylen dryly commented that “if men needed to get them, they’d be available on every street corner”. We laughed… and then sighed.
Because it was true.
(I hope Ms Haylen doesn’t mind me putting this on the record now, given her years spent lobbying for greater abortions rights in NSW.)
The sinister truth underpinning this “joke” is that those in power determine the range of opportunities and limitations for those who are not.
When those in power do not share our interests – and are indeed sometimes deeply incentivised to withhold them from us – we are left with discrimination at a systemic level.
In Julia Banks’ brilliant exposé on the sexism saturating Australian politics, Power Play, she reveals a thoroughly hostile environment for women in politics.
Her own experience of indecent assault in the prime minister’s wing during a crowded function – while occupying a position of power herself – speaks volumes.
According to Ms Banks, “What kept me awake was more the thought of what he might have done or could do to other women. Younger women, less senior women. Women where there is a significant power disparity, whose job depended on men in power. Staffers or press gallery journalists.
“I kept thinking to myself over and over, If he was prepared to do that to me – a fifty-something, corporate lawyer MP – in that room, what must he do to women he has real power over?”
Indeed.
This incident was but one moment in many years’ worth of misogyny experienced directly or witnessed by Ms Banks during her time walking the halls of Australia’s political elite.
In such an environment – why would any woman want to join the ranks of Australian legislators? And, if they chose to do so, how could they bring topics of critical importance to women to the forefront?
And so it goes that even women in positions of power are put in their place. Exhausted. Bullied. And the fight for alignment between “having a job” and “building a family” continues for half the population.
Yet joke’s on the people holding us down! The ramifications of this extend far further than to the individual women experiencing it.
It’s the economy, stupid
We can’t just stop having kids. Just ask any economist passionate about the 2.1 children each woman needs to birth on average to maintain the population levels that will prevent our national economy from imploding.
So to bring it back to breastfeeding – which 96 percent of Australian mothers start out doing after the roughly 330,000 births that occur each year in Australia – this is not a niche “women’s” issue.
From a business perspective, studies show that mothers who wish to breastfeed may delay returning to work if their workplaces do not provide a supportive environment.
We also know that Australia’s productivity growth suffers when women – a scarce source of highly educated labour – are underemployed. And nationwide staff shortages mean we cannot afford to overlook any form of underemployment.
So if national productivity growth is to be maintained, the different life cycles of men and women must inform policy solutions and business practices for a thriving economy that benefits us all.
It is not just wildly unacceptable from a moral perspective that mothers are still facing such dilemmas in 2023, while fathers are not. It’s also deeply linked to our economic best interests.
So here’s hoping that this editorial ages poorly, the stats contained therein become redundant, and I don’t need to write it all over again in another 10 years’ time.