Swap the car for a trolley, pram or train: Real women don’t drive cars - Women's Agenda

Swap the car for a trolley, pram or train: Real women don’t drive cars

According to Treasurer Joe Hockey’s logic, if you’re a woman you’re less likely than a man to drive a car – or to at least not be driving very far in it.

While he didn’t specifically reference women when he said yesterday that, “the poorest people either don’t have cars or actually don’t drive very far in many cases”, women do earn significantly less than men, are more likely to retire in poverty and make up a larger proportion of low income earners.

Therefore we’re less likely to be affected by the proposed increase to the fuel excise because we’re more likely to not be driving cars.

Or if you’re lucky enough to actually own a car, then you’re unlikely to be driving it very far. After all, if you’re poor, out of work or earning very little, you probably don’t have much need for your own transport.

You might be driving to drop the little ones off at childcare, but that’s probably just down the road and there’s always the option of pushing the pram. Or perhaps you take the kids to school, but you could always leave them at the bus stop, no doubt conveniently located just outside your house. Maybe you drive the short distance to the supermarket, but there’s nothing wrong with taking the shopping trolley with you once you’re done. Perhaps you even have a job and drive to work, but we do have the option of public transport for that.

Hockey’s comments on what type of individuals tend to own and drive cars shows just out of touch he is with some of the common pain points of people everywhere, especially low-income earning women with children and any woman struggling to make ends meet.

Owning or driving a car is not a luxury. It’s a necessity for many women and men in simply getting through the day: driving to work, picking the kids up from school, getting the groceries done, visiting loved ones.

The same could be said for Education Minister Christopher Pyne, who when asked about the impact of an increase in university fees on women last week told the ABC’s Sarah Ferguson that women “will not be able to earn the high incomes that say dentists or lawyers will earn”. He said women will instead be over-represented in the teaching and nursing professions, and universities will charge less for these degrees because such vocations pay less.

Just like poor people shouldn’t worry about paying more for fuel, because they apparently don’t get to benefit from the use of a car anyway, women shouldn’t worry about higher education fees – because they apparently won’t be benefitting from the courses that are likely to be more expensive.

Actually, women make up 60% of law and dentistry graduates – the so-called ‘expensive’ degrees that Pyne believes we don’t pursue – and it doesn’t take much common sense to realise circumstances, rather than income, tend to determine just how much we’re spending on fuel.

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