A much more likely approach to receiving such accolades is to pursue services to ‘business’ to ‘law’ and even to the “Anglican Church”.

For the second year in a row, a slightly higher number of women than men have been recognised in the general division of the Australia Day honours list, at 50.5 per cent. This continued progress is welcome. But at this rate, we still have decades ahead before the overall gender gap in who has been recognised since 1975 closes altogether.

Analysing words used in describing the services offered by the 739 Australians to be recognised this year, the word ‘care’ rarely comes up.

According to this analysis of the description fields, just one Australian has been celebrated for their work in childcare, with Louise Maiden receiving an award for her services to primary and early childhood education. 

Just two have ‘aged care” in their award description, including Deborah Parker, a registered nurse specialising in aged care now pursuing vital research work on palliative care for older people Not one recipient has the term ‘disability care’ in their award description, although there are others who have received recognition for their disability advocacy work, including Ellie Cole.

To put these figures in perspective, it helps to consider some of the more prominent areas highlighted. 

There are 36 individuals with ‘business’ in their award description. Another 25 have the word ‘law’ in their description, while 13 mention ‘media’. Science is also highly represented, with 26 mentions. 

There are twelve mentions of ‘church’, with ‘Anglican Church’ dominating this list with five mentions. 

While there are 76 recipients with the word ‘education’ in their award description, with most of their work being in academia or in offering education services to key industries – rather than in primary or second education, or in early childhood education.

One mention of childcare was the same as one mention of ‘for service to lawn bowls’.

The word ‘care’ is only mentioned eight times across the list of 700 plust Australians recognised, mostly this is related to healthcare. 

Overall, and as with previous years, the majority of the awards have been given for services to the Community, at 310, followed by medicine at 77, and then sport and leisure, at 58.

It should be noted that some recognition in this year’s list for supporting and advocating for key communities — such as multicultural communities, Indigenous communities and migrant communities — may not carry the word ‘care’ in the description of services but would incorporate care, including Dr Sabrin Farooqui, who we spoke to on her own a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for her services to community and multicultural affairs. There is also great work recognised in areas like reproductive rights and human rights.

None of the above is shared to suggest that those receiving awards for services to areas like business and law shouldn’t be recognised. Far from it.

Rather, sharing these figures highlights the opportunity for more diversity — among both the individuals nominated and ultimately recognised, as well as in recognising and celebrating the different types of work people do.

There is clearly a great opportunity to celebrate better and acknowledge the work of those in care-related fields: disability care, childcare, aged care, as well as primary and secondary school teaching.

Better recognising individuals for their work in care will not only grant them the recognition they deserve, but it will also go a long way in building up how we generally value anyone who works in these fields.

Plus, getting care work better recognised will have the inevitable affect also of seeing the overall proportion of women recognised going up too, given women still make up the overwhelming majority of those working in these fields.

Governor General David Hurley says there is a priority in ensuring the Order reflects the diversity of our community.

He said that “work continues to increase nominations for outstanding individuals from parts of our community that have been historically underrepresented, including women, people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

An approach to doing the above could and should include looking areas of ‘service’ that are underrepresented in these awards.

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The latest findings from the Australian Bureau of Statistics reveal key reasons that are keeping people out of work, and for preventing them from wanting to pursue a job.

The gender differences behind these reasons are stark.

Of those 3.2 million people aged 18 and over who did not have a job in the June 2023 quarter, 1.2 million did want a paid job, while 1.9 million did not want a job.

Fifty nine per cent of women aged 25 to 39 noted that the main reason was not wanting a job was “caring for children”, along with 31 per cent of women aged 40 to 54.

This was a significant uptick on what was reported in the previous March 2023 quarter, with 48 per cent of those aged 25 to 39 citing “caring for children” as their main reason for not wanting to work.

For men aged 25 to 39, the main reason cited was “long-term sickness or disability”, accounting for 61 per cent of men.

Interestingly, when it comes to the 1.2 million people who did want a paid job in the June quarter, 25 per cent of them were unable to take up a role within four weeks — with one in five women (21 per cent) stating that the main hindrance was “caring for children”.

The ABS also looked at some of the most important incentives to encourage people who didn’t have a job to encourage them into the workforce. For women aged 25 to 39, it found access to childcare and flexible work as key incentives.

While ‘finding a job that matches skills and experience’ came up the highest listed key job incentive, by 49 per cent of women who do not have a job, it was followed closely behind by ‘access to childcare’ (47 per cent), an ‘ability to vary start or finish times (47 per cent) and ‘financial assistance with childcare costs’ (46 per cent).

These results indicate thousands of women are finding their current care circumstances are making it difficult to get a job. While we don’t have a further breakdown to indicate if it’s young children and accessing childcare that is getting in the way, or perhaps difficulty accessing work that can be done around school hours or supporting older children, these results do show opportunities for policymakers and employers to do more to support this cohort of women.

These figures also only consider those who currently do not have a job. There are then other cohorts of the population to consider when it comes to how challenges accessing childcare and flexibility is preventing them from picking up more work hours, an extra day or work, or potentially promotion or other opportunities.

This being National Carers Weeks, it’s also important to consider those with care commitments who fall outside of the “care for kids” bracket. An estimated 2.8 million carers in Australia support loved ones who are sick, have a disability, are ageing or need care for other needs. The majority of these carers are women and they cross all age demographics. As recent research by Carers Australia found, the majority of these carers also take on the role unexpectedly and suddenly, and they didn’t have a choice about whether or not they would take it on.

There is clearly a large and untapped workforce available in women who cite caring responsibilities as a major factor in limiting their availability and desire to get a job. Currently, and even with the recent childcare package and minor amendments to Commonwealth-funded paid parental leave, the care support infrastructure available is not strong or accessible enough to significantly change these numbers.

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Teresa is an aged care worker. Her job, like thousands more aged care workers, is to look after Australia’s elders in the final years of their lives.

She’s exactly the kind of person we would all want looking after our loved ones. Teresa has built 20-year relationships with some of her clients who rely on her for their health, safety and dignity.  

100 days ago, she started receiving an extra $400 in her salary. This extra money has meant she no longer has to choose between paying her mortgage or visiting her four-year-old grandchild Jade in Queensland. Visits she previously could not afford.

And it’s not just Teresa – more than 250,000 aged care workers across the country saw their wages go up.

That’s because 100 days ago, the Albanese Government delivered a historic 15 per cent pay increase for these workers thanks to the Fair Work Commission and the 2023 Federal Budget.

It’s on the back of years of hard work and campaigning by these workers and their unions.

It’s the largest-ever wage increase the sector has seen. And when combined with the minimum wage increase, some workers saw their pay increase by 20 per cent.

We need to care about the care economy

Before entering Parliament, I represented working women like Teresa. I have continued to advocate for our care economy workers in Canberra.

It is a great achievement that these two words have been put together – care and economy. 

For too long, caring has been not valued, not spoken of, not measured and not part of the big national economic debates. 

For too long, our army of overwhelmingly female care workers has been an invisible one.  

Women make up 86 per cent of the residential aged care workforce and 91 per cent of the early childhood education and care workforce are women too.

They work in some of the lowest paid sectors in our country, despite being highly skilled, dedicated, and absolutely essential.

These are women expected to turn up every day caring for our elderly parents and grandparents, for pay so low they can barely provide for their own dignified retirement. 

Women who are expected to go to work every day caring for and educating our children during the critical stages of their cognitive development, without earning the wages they need to support their own. 

That’s why over the past decade we’ve seen more and more highly skilled workers turn their backs on the sector they love – because they simply couldn’t afford to stay.

A growing workforce

Last month’s Intergenerational Report found that we are going to need tens of thousands more of these workers to keep up with our population.

Over the next 40 years, Australia’s care economy will grow from eight to 15 per cent of our GDP. This is set to be one of the most prominent shifts in our society.

But we can’t build a strong care economy without a strong workforce.

Whether it’s health, aged care, or early childhood education – we’ll need to attract and retain a larger well-trained workforce to meet the growing demand for quality care.

And, if we want more women – and men – to fill our growing labour shortages, we must pay proper respectful wages.

That’s why the historic 15 per cent pay rise is so important. It’s the key to keeping and attracting the passionate and dedicated workers we so desperately need.

But the work isn’t over.

Multi-employer bargaining

We know care workers like our early childhood educators are still struggling on low wages in jobs they love too.

And as they keep telling me, “Love doesn’t pay the rent!”.

When we passed our Secure Jobs Better Pay Bill last year, early childhood educators were front and centre. Because low pay across this sector could not be solved one centre at a time.

The industrial relations system put up barriers to bargaining across multiple childcare centres and resulted in a race to the bottom on wages and conditions.

The previous government had even said at one point that low wages was a “deliberate design feature of our economic architecture.”

We’re putting an end to that.

I’m proud to be part of a government that has streamlined the process of making agreements and expanding access to multi-employer bargaining.

Now, early childhood educators have come together to take the first ever application for multi-employer bargaining to the Fair Work Commission.

Like our aged care workforce, the skills and commitment of these women has been overlooked for too long.

Valuing their work in their pay pocket will be critical to building the workforce our children and families need today and into the future.

Getting wages moving

We’re determined to make wage growth a deliberate design feature of this government.

And we’re proud to support our low-paid, essential and feminised care economy workforce.

We’re doing this through our aged care pay increases, multi-employer bargaining as well as additional reforms that are on the way to improve job security.  

They are reforms that will help ensure care workers are given the pay, conditions, and respect they deserve – while delivering for the economy and for the nation.

When low paid women gain economic security, they can better support themselves, their families, and their local communities.

It benefits our loved ones in their care – ensuring they’re looked after by a dedicated, respected workforce.

It provides a sustainable workforce for this growing sector, upon which our whole economy relies on to thrive.

For too long, we’ve associated good jobs with hard hats and high vis alone.

Our care workers might not build buildings, but they build our community and our economy.

That’s why we need to build a better future for care workers, so we can attract more people like Teresa.

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Climate change will cost Australia up to $423 billion over the next four decades, while the care economy will balloon from around 8 per cent of GDP to 15 per cent.

The sixth edition of the Australian Government’s Intergovernmental Report outlines what’s ahead for the future, and provides some extremely compelling reasons to throw everything at addressing the significant challenges like overburdened and female-dominated care sectors, as well as climate change.

The report examines current trends and data to forecast what the next 40 years will bring regarding the economy, population and workforce. The first edition, released 21 years ago, was slightly more optimistic than the grim reading the latest edition offers.

Releasing the report today, Treasurer Jim Chalmers said Australia is facing five big shifts on the economy, including a shift to renewables, from IT to artificial intelligence, from a younger population to an older one, from globalisation to fragmentation, and from an industrial-based economy to a care economy.

The horror climate bill the report forecasts comes as a result of things like reduced labour productivity and tourism, as well as an increase in the severity and frequency of natural disasters, which we’ve already seen evidence of over the past few years: more frequent droughts, more erratic rainfall patterns, heatwaves, and a drop in crop production.

Aged care will be a massive pressure point in the future, with the number of people aged 65 and over set to double and the number aged 85 and over to triple over the next 40 years. As the National Skills Commission recently projected — demand for aged care workers is expected to double by 2050.

Already, we’re unable to meet the demands of the care economy in early childhood education, healthcare, aged care, disability care and social support services. These are the industries, skills and jobs of not just of the future, but also of the right now. All these areas are heavily female-dominated and significantly underpaid. Given shortages already occurring now, how we could ever hope to resource these sectors and the demand ahead will require a significant rethink in how we value those working in such sectors.

As the Treasurer said on the various aspects of the care economy: “We’ll need more well-trained workers to meet the growing demand for quality care over the next 40 years. The care sector is where the lion’s share of opportunities in our economy will be created.”

Yet with all this, we’re failing to address these issues and concerns right now adequately — let alone as they ramp up increasingly into the next four decades.

Treasurer Chalmers claims Australia has gone from a “global embarrassment” to a “global reader” in responding to climate change, a comment likely made on account of the Albanese Government’s target to cut emissions by 43 per cent by 2030.

The reality is that Australia is not doing enough. Coal mines continue to be approved under the Albanese Government, and current reduction ambitions are nowhere near ambitious enough to contribute to global outcomes that can help prevent the extremes of climate change.

Across the Pacific, Australia’s neighbours are urging for their “big sister” to do significantly more. Just this week, there are reports that Pacific nations will delay supporting Australia’s bid to host the COP31 United Nations climate conference until Australia has made “concrete progress on ending support for fossil fuels.”

Australia is no leader in climate action. Just as it’s no leader on protecting, elevating and responding to the needs of the care workforce.

Despite repeated warnings about the shortages now and ahead for the care sector, Australia is not doing enough to acknowledge how these feminised sectors continue to risk further worker shortages due to burnout, poor pay and conditions. Surely, productivity begins with doing everything possible to support these workers now — to ensure they stick around for the immediate future, and can help inspire the next generation of workers to see how they are respected, paid and valued across all areas of society.

There are opportunities in being a leader on care and climate and addressing theses challenges, but they can only come from a political system that elevates individuals who are genuinely interested in their own legacy. We need bold policy reforms and ideas to not support in meeting the demands of areas like climate change and artificial intelligence and the care economy now.

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It’s a problem that’s contributing to the gender pay gap. It’s further cementing already entrenched ideas about which sectors and professions different genders can access and pursue, and creating limitations that can only worsen skill shortages. 

Is getting women into male-dominated professions like construction, mining and STEM-related fields, by creating more family-friendly environments, the answer? 

Such a shift will certainly help. But so too will placing greater value on sectors that are dominated by women: like nursing, aged care and early childhood education. These workers need more money and more recognition for the work they do. They also need more colleagues, given the chronic skill shortages that are affecting these areas.

How about pursuing ideas to get more boys inspired by such work, and more men crossing into these sectors? An ambition that could work alongside efforts to inspire more girls into STEM, and more women pursuing and staying in STEM-related fields?

Today, the Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) has called out their concerns about gender segregation, noting a number of key examples, such as where the proportion of women graduating from STEM areas has hardly changed since 2015. As for those that do graduate from such fields, men are more than 1.8 times more likely than women to still be working in STEM five years later. 

CEDA is warning that the segregation could further deepen, in its submission to the federal government’s Employment White Paper. As such, it’s made a series of recommendations it believes will help, including pushing for at least 40 per cent female representation on company boards, promoting gender-equal paid parental leave, and promoting hiring practices that screen out personal details in the initial stages. 

They see reducing the “motherhood penalty” as a key piece to increasing opportunities for women, noting where women drop out of inflexible workplaces, and citing the shocking stat that a woman’s earnings drop 55 per cent in the first five years of parenting, while an average man’s earning are unaffected. Meanwhile, 99.5 per cent of paid parental leave continues to be taken by mothers. 

CEDA has also pushed for a focus on transparency – which could also be a game changer, especially if we could see the public publishing of employer gender pay gaps, and women in STEM programs publishing evaluation data as a condition of their funding (Although on this, Australia’s Women in STEM Ambassador Lisa Harvey-Smith has already released a comprehensive STEM Equity Evaluation Portal in 2022). CEDA has also recommended for the focus on women in STEM programs to shift to mentoring and leadership.  

CEDA’s recommendations are an excellent start and could likely make a significant difference – especially when it comes to large employers creating more family-friendly policies in workplaces and encouraging more men to work flexibly, part time, and to take longer stints of paid parental leave. 

But the elephant in the room? The poor rates of pay continuing to plague female-dominated workforces – workforces that are typically centred around care and are experiencing significant skill shortages right now. We simply continue to undervalue feminised workforces that happen to centre around the care work that underpins everything else in Australia.  

And where are the programs to encourage and mentor men in care roles? 

CEDA hints at barriers facing men in care, but is mostly short on making key recommendations to address the issue. It notes a 2022 Australian study that found men receive 50 per cent more callbacks than women for jobs in male-dominated occupations, but then 40 per cent fewer callbacks for roles in female-dominated occupations. It says men are actively discouraged from entering female-dominated industries, like care-related roles, due to negative stereotypes and discrimination from patients and staff. It makes a general note about pursuing anti-discrimination campaigns, “that focus on men and tackle the stereotypical norm that care work is women’s work could have a positive impact”. It also makes a major recommendation around “blind” recruitment practices that can help in removing gender bias across all sectors.  

Encouraging more boys and men to pursue careers in care requires a significant cultural shift regarding who is best suited to this work. It requires flexibility, transparency, and gender-neutral paid parental leave, more diverse representation in leadership and across boards and recruitment practices that can help remove discrimination during the early hiring stage.

But the real silver bullet for pursuing more gender diversity in female-dominated care sectors? Ensuring these sectors are valued as they should be, and can therefore offer compelling opportunities for economic security for those pursuing care-related professions and careers.

Key stats from CEDA’s report: 

• Female participation has risen by 41 per cent since 1980 
• Just 31 per cent of primary temporary migration applications were women 
• Women’s earnings drop 55 per cent during their first five years of parenting, while the average man’s earnings remain unaffected. 
• 96.6 per cent of childcare workers were women in 2021-22, an actual increase from 1986-87
• Women made up 70 per cent of the Health Care and Social Assistance sector in 2018, up from 77.2 per cent in 1998
• The proportion of women enrolled in STEM-related courses at university has risen just one per cent since 2015 to 35 per cent in 2020
• Men continue to dominate in leadership positions even in female-dominated industries. Women make up 38 per cent of CEOs across female-dominated sectors and 7 per cent of CEOs in male-dominated sectors. 

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Sound like an impossible dream? It’s not beyond imagination, according to the Australian Council of Trade Unions.

The ACTU believes it could be achievable through a number of key initiatives: such as tripling paid parental leave, addressing pay and job security in the care economy, and progressively moving towards making early childhood education and care free and accessible.

The plan was released in a policy paper on Monday in line with this week’s Jobs and Skill Summit in Canberra, with president Michele O’Neill declaring: “We can fix the skills shortage if we take action to support women to win well-paid and rewarding jobs and careers.”

“There may be no greater measure to boost national productivity and economic growth than delivering respect and equity for women at work.”

The ACTU wants paid parental leave to be increased to 52 weeks by the year 2030 and offered on a shared basis between parents, with a jump from 18 to 26 weeks to be legislated more immediately. It wants superannuation to be paid during leave, and more incentives to encourage equal parenting and shared care.

Currently, new parents who are classified as “primary parents” and pass the employment eligibility test can receive up to 18 weeks of paid parental leave, at the national minimum wage. Australia is now only ahead of the United States among OECD nations when it comes to what’s on offer for parents in terms of government-paid parental leave.

The ACTU’s 14 recommendations also include its push to introduce multi-employer bargaining, which it says will increase access to bargaining for feminised industries like those in the care economy.

The ACTU has outlined the $111 billion target off the idea of getting another 893,000 women into the workforce, should the participation rate reach the same as men. They say that by getting even just half of that number into work – while also reducing the gender pay gap by half — women’s economic security, along with the national income, could be boosted by $111 billion every year.

Monday marked Equal Pay Day in Australia, noting the 60 days after the end of the financial year that women have to work in order to make up for the current 14.1 per cent gender pay gap between men and women working full time. However the ACTU notes the figure is much higher – coming in around 30 per cent or $472 a week, if you include all of the money that men and women actually earn, including overtime and bonuses.

A slight uptick in the gender pay gap this year comes as Australia has dropped from 15^th place on the Global Gender Gap index in 2006, to 43^rd place in 2022.

Equal pay was addressed by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese during his address at the National Press Club on Monday, which marked his first 100 days in office. He said the problem requires “cultural change” in addition to legislative change, which Albanese said will include a commitment to include gender pay equity in employment laws by the end of 2022.”

“After 30 years in which the gender pay gap has hardly budged, we need serious improvement in economic equality for women.”

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Mostyn promised to provide insights from “a relentless two years during which women had been trying to deal with the upheaval to their world caused by Covid”. And she promised to extrapolate from those insights some key lessons regarding “what Australia could – and should – look like as we emerged from one of the most disruptive and challenging periods in our history”.

Given the disproportionate impact the pandemic had on women, and given Australia’s relatively recent feminist re-awakening as women took to the streets to shout “enough” in numbers not seen since the height of second-wave feminism, it came as no surprise that Mostyn was offered such a prominent platform at the National Press Club to canvas these issues and chart a course forward.

What was surprising, however, was Mostyn’s laser-like focus on care, the so -called “care economy” and “care infrastructure” — and not the more traditional, let’s call it “corporate feminist”, domains of women in leadership and women on boards.

Mostyn spoke of the “deep tissue damage to one of the most feminised professions of all, nursing”. And she framed her remarks in terms of Australia’s iconic characterisation as a “Lucky Country”.

The gauntlet was thrown. The whole purpose of Mostyn’s speech, she said, was “to put care at the centre of the economy.”

Watching at home, I was blown away.

I was reminded of a 2021 essay in The New York Times by Anne Marie Slaughter, Chief Executive of the New America Foundation and the author of the 2012 viral Atlantic Monthly essay, “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All”. Slaughter had also offered a somewhat scathing observation about the lack of investment in a care economy and the extent to which it was not on the agenda of the usual “chief executive women” style groups. Entitled: “Rosie Could Be a Riveter Because of the Care Economy”, Slaughter’s essay scolded the more recent generation of so-called “corporate feminists” for not paying enough attention to care.

“The value and visibility of care goes far beyond the definition of infrastructure,” she wrote.

“It is the central question of 21st-century feminism, and one far too long ignored or downplayed not only by men, but also by many prominent women, particularly wealthy white women who have been able to leverage the privilege of race and class,” wrote Slaughter. “Care feminism has long taken a back seat to career feminism. Advocating for child or elder care may be less glamorous and newsworthy than breaking glass ceilings to become the first woman in a role traditionally reserved for a man, but both are necessary if we are ever to achieve true gender equality.”

Mostyn’s speech at the NPC, to my mind, represented the brave new vanguard of “care feminism” in Australia — and the extent to which it was fast displacing the more dominant neoliberal, corporate or  “career feminism” of Sheryl Sandberg’s “Lean In” generation.

The Morrison government, however, did not get the memo.

And it has either wilfully or negligently dodged this pertinent message from the vanguard of care feminism in Australia; this week’s Women’s Budget Statement was proof of that. The 2022 Women’s Budget is a #GirlBoss manifesto for “care feminist” times, and the disconnect is jarring.

To illustrate that point, I calculated that there’s a grand total of $348.5 million for various #GirlBoss initiatives designed to “train”, “boost”, “revive”, “support” and “checkpoint” women into leadership positions in “better paid” male dominated industries and entrepreneurship. And those are the “jobs of the future”, the Morrison government boldly proclaims. But there’s nothing – nothing! — to tackle the undervaluing of women’s work in female dominated caring professions, only an insultingly tiny initiative to tackle the ongoing childcare crisis, and a parental leave initiative that will actually cause more harm than good.

Firstly, and pardon my frustrated French, the Morrison government, which is trying to pitch itself as a better steward of the economy, has no f*ing idea what kind of jobs are the “jobs of the future”. They’re not in the declining, “better paid” male dominated industries like construction, they’re in the female dominated service industries where 90 percent of women already work, according to the Grattan Institute. That’s where the majority of jobs growth is predicted.

And — to Mostyn and many other economists point about the need to tackle the traditional undervaluing of women’s work in female dominated, mostly caring “service” professions – they need to become better paid and more secure. As the primary funder in many of these sectors, including aged care, early years education and care, and disability support services, the Morrison government could make that happen, but it hasn’t. That’s repugnant and should be called out.

The Morrison government can boost as many female founders as it likes, it can put countless women through their paces at women of the future type jobs academies as it likes, and it can revive as many mums’ careers as it likes (because, apparently, we still forget how to operate a computer when we have a baby), but at the end of the day someone will still need to do the caring work. Ignoring that reality won’t get us anywhere.

What’s more, while Australia still has some of the most expensive childcare in the OECD and numerous reports have indicated that it’s a drag on women’s employment, the 2022 Women’s Budget Statement offers further funding for just 20 new childcare services. Just twenty new services a few weeks after a new report found 35 percent of the population live in neighbourhoods classified as childcare desserts. Honestly, it’s like they’re spitting in the wind.

And, finally, the $346.1 million over five years on a new parental leave policy is a complete and utter waste of money. While it jettisons the previous “primary” and “secondary” carer categories (okay we did ask for that, thanks), without a use it or lose it provision for dads and anything like a payment at salary replacement rates, we all know no one will use it, or women will now use all of it. It will not do what the Morrison government claims on its’ tin: level the domestic playing field at home by unpacking the gendered divisions in unpaid caring work that take hold in the first few years of a child’s life. In fact, the new scheme will just further entrench it.

If anyone was optimistically hoping for a paradigm shift in this year’s budget for women, we didn’t get it.

As is my habit, I did my annual tally of the number of times the word “choice” appears vs. the word “discrimination”: “choice” 14 times vs. “discrimination” 7 times, 4 of those in Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins job title. This is still a government for whom gender inequality is down to women’s “choices”. And this is still a government married to neo-liberal, “Lean-In” corporate feminist “solutions” while maintaining utter indifference to the experience and needs of those on the margins.

Kristine Ziwica is a regular contributor. She tweets @KZiwica

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