Socialist Party Australia International Womens' Day Statement
Date: Sunday, March 07 @ 04:01:09 CST
Topic: Gender issues


The Howard Government is trying to reverse all the gains made by the women’s movement in the 1970s and 1980s. Although never perfect, accessible child care, gender neutral benefits, free education and health care, and permanent fulltime or part-time jobs are all under threat today.

The ideal family of capitalist ideology is a unit based on the economic dependence of “non-productive” members of the household on an individual wage earner, traditionally the man, who has been identified as the head of the household.

Financial burden borne by family
The obvious implication of this, very useful to capitalism, is that the full financial burden is borne by the family without recourse to the state. The family, of course, does not have the material or psychological resources to carry such burdens. The isolation of women in the home with sole care for pre-school children is a major source of depression and nervous problems. Although some alleviation was brought about by the welfare state, the Prime Minister is doing his best to reverse it.

Howard wants child rearing outsourced to the nuclear family where women do the vast majority of work (eg only 7% of male welfare recipients are receiving payments as carers, parents or partners and in married couples where both the man and woman work, women do 72% of unpaid work). Howard has eased up pressure on recalcitrant non-custodial parents making life more difficult for single mothers.

Child care cuts
Child care cuts since Howard came to power in 1996 have stopped 160,000 women from working. A family has to earn less than $610 a week to access full government assistance. Howard still opposes decent maternity leave and his baby bonus is only received in full if the mother stays at home for five years!

His splitting of family payments between separated couples has cut family support income to overwhelmingly women primary carers by 22%.

Parent payment recipients with children between 13-15 now have to do 150 hours of job search activities, despite the fact this increases work prospects by only 0.6%.

Labor little better
(Labor’s Latham is little better. Latham talks about ‘family contracts’ which, if breached, could see cuts to their benefits. He talks benignly of home reading to children, fine in itself, but part of a policy of privatisation of education and a turn away from social or collective responsibility for education.)

When women enter the workforce they are usually faced with economic disadvantage. They get mainly casual jobs on low pay and even lower job security. Despite equal pay legislation, women earn on average 65% of male income.

The marginal tax rates they face are amongst the highest in the world. Mothers returning to work up to 20 hours a week lose more than 80c in the dollar! If they have three children they lose $1.08 – working becomes a charity for the boss and government!

This is the reality of life for millions of women on low incomes or on benefits. Capitalism offers a future of spending cuts, casual work and a barrage of family values propaganda.

What We Say
The Socialist Party rejects the sexist, profit-driven, and reactionary policies of the Government and employers.

We demand maternity and paternity pay as a right; free child care; and a total overhaul of the tax system and benefits system.

We fight for a $20 an hour wage rate for all workers and - through the new Unite organisation – we fight against the exploitation of Australia’s 2.2 million, mainly female, casuals.

This capitalist system and the parties that represent it must be challenged by women and the trade union movement. We call for the establishment of a new workers’ party to take up these issues.

Get involved in the struggle for real change, contact the Socialist Party now.





This article comes from Socialist Party Australia
https://socialistpartyaustralia.org

The URL for this story is:
https://socialistpartyaustralia.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=355