Why
feminism in the care sector can help transform Australia's economy instead of
professional feminism?
This
piece is an excerpt from Kristine Ziwica's upcoming book, Leaning Out, which
will be published in September as part of The Crikey Read series.
Sam
Mostyn, an independent business director, a longtime supporter of equality for
women, and the current leader of the advocacy group Chief Executive Women,
arrived at the National Press Club on November 11, 2021, to give what would
later be heralded as a groundbreaking speech.
Mostyn
stated that she will share her observations after "a relentless two years
of women trying to deal with the upheaval to their world created by
COVID." The important lessons about "what Australia could — and
should — look like as we emerged from one of the most disruptive and hard
periods in our history" will be extrapolated from those observations, she
pledged.
It
came as no surprise that Mostyn was given such a prominent platform at the
National Press Club to discuss these issues and plot a course forward given the
pandemic's disproportionate impact on women and Australia's relatively recent
feminist awakening that culminated in the March4Justice rallies across the
country.
The
topics of women in leadership and on boards, which have dominated the corporate
feminist agenda for more than ten years, were presumably what many listeners
were expecting to hear in a speech from Chief Executive Women. But Mostyn had a
radical surprise in store: she would have a laser-like focus on care, the
so-called "care economy" and "care infrastructure," in
particular the low pay and subpar working conditions that are the
distinguishing features of the care industries, which are predominately
dominated by women and include aged care, early years education and care, and
disability support services.
Mostyn
phrased her comments in reference to Australia's reputation as a fortunate
nation. Australia likes to refer to itself as the "Lucky Country... and
yet among our many natural resources, the unpaid (and low-paid) work of women
has perhaps been the most underappreciated, undervalued, she remarked. We have
been fortunate to profit from that for such a long time.
Mostyn
continued, "We hardly ever hear how prosperity, economic performance, and
care go hand in hand. "They are the cornerstone of our future success and
are intimately intertwined."
The
challenge was laid down. Mostyn's speech, according to her, was intended to
"place care at the centre of the economy." At home, I was astounded
while watching.
A
"care feminism" that grappled with the crucial role that cares, and
care infrastructure, play in our economy—it is the work that makes it possible
for other women to work—represents a shift from the lean-in, "career
feminism" that had dominated mainstream Australian feminist discourse for
nearly ten years. Mostyn's speech marked this transition.
Numerous
economists also claim that it is becoming a bigger and bigger portion of the
economy every year. The Grattan Institute estimates that over the next five
years, job growth will primarily occur in the services sector, primarily in the
healthcare sector, where 90 per cent of women are already employed. In
addition, it is anticipated that there will be much fewer jobs in the
traditionally male-dominated sectors of agriculture, manufacturing,
construction, and mining. Even though the economy has been shifting right in
front of our eyes, it appears like some people haven't noticed.
In
plain sight
Mostyn's
argument was that this was the direction of the economy and that promoting a long-overdue
change in the way we view care would be beneficial from both a social and
economic standpoint. The Australia Institute calculated that a $1 million
public investment in education, health, and construction would result in a
small (1.2 jobs) employment growth in contrast to the female-dominated health
sector (10.2 jobs). For the same amount of stimulus expenditure, there are 10
employments in education and care compared to one in more conventional
"infrastructure." However, the Coalition government kept funnelling
all the fiscal stimulus toward conventional hard-hat/high-vis businesses at the
height of the pandemic, leaving women out. There certainly didn't seem to be a
scarcity of hard heads wearing hard hats in the Coalition government.
Mostyn
was also interested in delving into the horrifying way that our society
undervalues the crucial caregiving labour done by women just because it is done
by women. The social dividend of improved community wellbeing and the human
capital development and productivity dividend, which would increase long-term
productivity by allowing more individuals, typically women, with care duties to
work, are opportunities we are not taking advantage of. She was aware that
compassionate women might not be interested in "leaning in" to the
business leadership posts that are often held by members of her organisation.
Thank God they did not adhere to that one particular concept of
"success" in the workplace for women. Because without our caregivers,
our society would not offer our elderly and disabled loved ones even the most
basic levels of care or the best possible start in life for our kids.
It
was past time for women in leadership positions to demonstrate their support
for the predominately female care workforce. In my opinion, some traditional
feminist solidarity was long overdue.
Where
are we now?
Anne
Marie Slaughter, CEO of the New America Foundation, made a similar, damning
conclusion about the care industry and care infrastructure in a 2021 column for
The New York Times, focusing on how little executive women have prioritised
them. Slaughter's NYT article, "Rosie Could Be a Riveter Because of a Care
Economy," berated the more recent generation of corporate feminists for
not emphasising care enough.
Care
has value and visibility that go well beyond what is typically considered
infrastructure. The core issue facing 21st-century feminism has been far too
long downplayed or disregarded by prominent women, particularly wealthy white
women who have been able to take advantage of their privilege due to race and
class, according to Slaughter. "Career feminism has historically been
prioritised over care feminism. While breaking down glass barriers to become
the first woman in a traditionally male-dominated position may be more
glamorous and newsworthy, both are essential if we are ever to achieve true
gender equality.
Mostyn's
lecture was a much-needed diversion from the prevalent career feminism and the
bold new vanguard of care feminism in Australia. Finally, the crucial topics of
the worth of providing care and the worth of women's paid and unpaid caregiving
were moved from the periphery of the discussion to the centre. And it was
symptomatic of how mainstream care feminism was quickly becoming and the
potential influence it may have that this clear statement was coming from the
president of Chief Executive Women, a group normally associated with career
feminism.
But
as there always are, trailblazers helped pave the way for this time, both in
Australia and other parts of the world.
Those
who came before
Decades
before Mostyn spoke, feminists were advancing the cause of valuing women's
unpaid and paid care work in policy and economics circles. This work—childcare,
senior care, cooking, cleaning, shopping, and domestic logistics—was initially
referred to as "reproductive labour" but is now more commonly referred
to as the "mental load." Basically, all the tasks that women perform are
unpaid or for meagre compensation in their own homes or care facilities.
The
idea was first put forth by Italian Marxist feminist Silvia Federici, who in
1972 launched the Wages for Housework movement. Federici founded the American
chapter of Wages for Housework and wrote her own seminal essay, Wages Against
Housework, in 1975. Both women were influenced by another Italian feminist,
Mariarosa Dalla Costa, and the American activist Selma James, who argued that
by working for free in the home, women were creating the labour force that
capitalism exploited for profit.
In
his essay, Federici stated that "to declare that we demand salaries for
housework is to reveal the truth that housework is already money for capital,
that capital has manufactured and earns money out of cooking, laughing, and
fucking." In addition, it demonstrates that we have cooked, grinned, and
fucked over the years—not because it was simpler for us than it was for anyone
else, but rather because we had no other option. The constant smiling has
deformed our faces.
Federici
was harsh in his response to the claim that women should perform this labour
for free as "labourers of love" since they are inherently better
suited to caregiving. She argued that it was not "natural" for care
to be the sole domain of one gender or for some people to be oppressed by an
economic system that benefited a select few; rather, they were simply
conventions of an all-encompassing economic system that had grown to be so
prevalent that it was difficult to imagine an alternative.
Marilyn
Waring, a New Zealand economist, took up the cause and wrote the groundbreaking
book Counting for Nothing: What Men Value and What Women Are Worth, which was
released in 1988. The book examined how "life-sustaining" unpaid
labour, or the "reproductive labour" that Federici and her generation
spoke about, is excluded and rendered invisible by mainstream economics and the
structures on which current estimations of gross domestic product (GDP) are
based.
In
1978, Waring was chosen to lead the Public Expenditure Committee of the New
Zealand government. This encounter made her aware of how marginalised and
invisible women's experiences were in the policy-making process, despite the
fact that as half the population, they had a significant impact on the powerful
committee's spending decisions. Waring wanted access to data from all
government agencies regarding the effects of gender on spending choices. She
also questioned a Treasury representative about the exclusion of women's unpaid
employment from GDP. The System of National Accounts of the United Nations
served as the foundation for GDP calculations.
According
to a 2018 profile in The Monthly, Waring commented, "Right, I want to see
the regulations." However, it turned out that neither Australia nor New
Zealand had a copy of the UN's National Accounts. Waring told The Monthly,
"So, all these countries were using the United Nations System of the
National Accounts, these rules that run the entire data that everyone uses,
without anyone having read them.
Later,
Waring visited New York to learn more about the System of National Accounts.
She read a 1953 edition that carelessly disregarded women's unpaid work as
being "of little or no consequence," and it was a soul-destroying
moment. According to her, GDP is built on "an ideology of applied
patriarchy" because it excludes the unpaid labour of one gender. The
meaning of important human actions is lost.
Despite
Waring's work leading to revisions to the System of National Accounts in 1993
and 2008, the exclusion of women's unpaid work persisted despite the National
Accounts' inclusion of a series of satellite accounts that valued women's
unpaid labour while always sitting alongside GDP.
It
has been calculated that Australia's unpaid care work is worth $650.1 billion,
or 50.6 per cent of GDP. As a result, it is bigger than any other industry in
the official economy in Australia. Three mining industries' worth of value is
represented by that.
Others
have made this subject the focus of their entire careers, such as US-based
Nancy Folbre, professor emerita of economics at the University of Massachusetts
Amherst Political Economy Research Institute. Folbre was awarded a MacArthur
Genius Grant in 1998 for her research into the care sector, which she
characterised as business conducted in homes and markets, and how it was an
essential component of the economy while functioning differently from other
sectors. Folbre stated in a 2021 interview with The New York Times that
"you can't assess the efficiency of a daycare centre the way you would,
say, a car plant... the incentives are nothing alike." "The
profits don't just go to the proprietor of the centre. Instead, society as a
whole, together with the parents of the children, benefits.
Ai-jen
Poo, an American labour activist and the director of the National Domestic
Workers Alliance, used the term "infrastructure" in her 2015 book The
Age of Dignity: Preparing for the Elder Boom in a Changing America, nearly two
decades after Folbre received the Genius Grant.
Poo
remarked, "We should be able to develop appropriate care options for
everyone if we can deliver water and power to every home in the country. What
could be more essential if the definition of infrastructure is that which
supports commerce and economic activity?
The
book lays forth a plan for how America might become a more compassionate
country, offers fixes for the ailing healthcare industry, and creates chances
for women, immigrants, and the unemployed. Poo's book, which was a best-seller,
introduced the concept of care and care feminism to the feminist agenda of the
present. She declared, "Care is the path and the answer to a better future
for all of us."
By
2019, people were paying attention to those who had long raised the alarm about
the care crisis. The four female senators who campaigned for president included
the care economy in their platforms, drawing attention to the problem before
the pandemic brought it into even clearer focus.
The
newly elected Biden administration's pandemic recovery plans for 2020 tightly
woven care as "infrastructure." As part of a $2 trillion package he
presented in March, President Biden included funding for home-based care for
the elderly and the disabled under the heading of infrastructure. The following
month, he proposed $225 billion for childcare, universal early education and
care, and increased money for paid family leave. The Care Economy Business
Council, a coalition of nearly 200 companies from a variety of industries, was
established by Time's Up in May with the goal of reimagining the nation's
caregiving infrastructure so that people could go back to work and create a
stronger, more resilient economy. This initiative received the support of
business leaders.
Governments
and businesses could now recognise the need to actively engage in the care
sector and, as a result, valued the sector more highly, viewing it as a crucial
component of the economy rather than just a side job that women do because they
enjoy it.
This
change has been greatly aided here in Australia by Elizabeth Hill, an associate
professor of political economy at the University of Sydney and co-convenor of
the Australian Work and Family Policy Roundtable.
Hill
informed me, "It is really incredible that we have arrived here. We used
to be a voice in the wilderness, but today we have so many friends and
colleagues of all ideologies who share the points we've been making for a very
long time. and creating them using strong methods and extremely strong
platforms.
It
is enlightening, said Hill. “See? All along, we were correct.
However,
I could think back to a time not too long ago when this was unquestionably not
the case and the terrifying predictions of what would happen—and did happen—if
we did not change course.
Caring time
bomb
More
than ten years ago, when I was still employed by the UK's Equal Opportunity
Commission, a policy officer presented a study to me on the underappreciation
of women's labour. She hoped that since I was in charge of the media at the
time, I could garner some attention for this bland-sounding yet crucially
significant feminist problem.
About
one-fifth of the gender wage difference in Australia is attributable to
undervaluing women's labour, yet this topic is rarely brought up outside of the
most serious policy circles. Similar circumstances existed at the time in the
UK. The EOC report issued a warning that the underappreciation of women's
labour was fueling "a caring time bomb." Since then, those words and
that stern warning have stuck with me.
The
fact that industries with a female preponderance are regarded less than those
with a male preponderance is exactly what is meant by the undervaluing of
women's work. Working in a field where women predominate can result in wage
reductions of up to 9%. Nowhere is it more evident than in the helping
professions, where we have for far too long expected women to labour menial
jobs as "labourers of love" for pitiful wages. As our aged care
facilities, early childhood sector, disabilities sector, and nursing struggled
to manage every day throughout the epidemic, the devastating results of that
were apparent.
The
"caring time bomb" that the EOC paper had forewarned of more than a
decade earlier had reached the end of its fuse. Moreover, the results have been
horrifying.
According
to research from 2021, Australia was on the verge of an elderly care workforce
crisis due to low pay, stress, and unnecessary paperwork. According to the
survey, 65 per cent of employees plan to leave the residential aged care
profession during the next five years, signalling a "mass exodus."
Those
ominous forecasts came true by the summer of 2022, during the Omicron wave. In
light of the shocking reports of neglect brought on by understaffing and the
fact that more aged care residents died from COVID-19 in January 2022 than in
the entire prior year, industry groups and unions jointly made an appeal to the
federal government for assistance in resolving the severe staffing shortages.
The proposal for the federal government to send the military to residential
nursing homes is the most obvious indication of this desperation.
The
January 2022 Omicron wave was also having an impact on the daycare industry.
Due to COVID-19, 420 childcare facilities across Australia had to close, and
more were issuing closure notices due to staff shortages and declining
enrollment. In order to resolve the situation, it was suggested in February
that the federal government inject $1 billion into the industry. More than one
in eight daycare centres operated for at least a year without complying with
legal staffing requirements thanks to waivers from the sector's quality
regulator. As a mom of two children, I personally dare not consider the potential
consequences of understaffed childcare facilities. It's just too upsetting.
To
demand better pay and working conditions, thousands of disgruntled nurses in
New South Wales went on strike for the first time in more than ten years in the
75 per cent female-dominated healthcare industry. They marched against the
Industrial Relations Commission's directives to stop the action because their
feelings were so strong. Keep clapping for the caregivers, was their message.
More is required than that.
According
to Mostyn, Australia was a "fortunate country" to have taken
advantage of these women's willingness to work for little to no compensation,
as she stated in her speech at the National Press Club. But it was obvious that
Australia's good fortune was now running out.
People
in Australia were able to make a more direct connection than they had
previously been able to between the undervaluing of women's care work and their
own lives, the lives of their children, the lives of their elderly relatives,
and the lives of their disabled friends and family.
The
unlikely coalition of Women for Progress in early 2022, a group of well-known
women from various backgrounds and experiences, was a blatant indicator of this
change and new momentum towards care feminism. Their goal was to highlight the
role of women and girls in the COVID-19 recovery as a crucial policy issue for
the government. Members of the committee included former foreign minister Julie
Bishop, an icon of the Australian women's movement, Wendy McCarthy, ACTU president
Michele O'Neil, and Business Council CEO Jennifer Westacott. Notably, Sam
Mostyn of Chief Executive Women was also a part of it.
One
of their demands was unprecedented investment in Australia's infrastructure for
caring, including more funding for early childhood education and fair
compensation for those (mainly women) who performed crucially, dare we say
critical, care labour.
The
transition from career feminism to care feminism was well underway by the
beginning of 2022, which was long overdue. It goes without saying that a large
number of caregivers, both paid and unpaid, should not have had to endure such
a high cost to their physical and emotional health during the epidemic to help
spur this rethink, but we have arrived at a very different place. This has
excellently prepared us to reevaluate some of the issues that are essential to
a fresh deal for working women who have not been at the forefront of the
lean-in agenda.