Politicians tend to have short memories so here’s a reminder: In late 2014, member nations of the G20 committed to a 25% reduction in the workforce participation gender gap by 2025.
That target would help bring 100 million women into the workforce, ultimately contributing to significant global economic growth.
Back then, former prime minister Tony Abbott didn’t seem super confident. Labeling it a “clear aspiration”, he said it would be an “extraordinary achievement if we can deliver on this.”
He was right to be a little pessimistic, despite the fact we’re now seeing more women in the workforce than ever before.
Women currently make up 46% of all employees in Australia, yet account for only 35.7% of all full-time workers. The female workforce participation rate is currently 59.5% for women according to February ABS figures, and 71% for men. We have seen a tiny uptick in female workforce participation over the last year, possibly due to a growing part time workforce.
Still, a 2015 Treasury report found that even if given 40 years, Australia would still fail to meet the 2025 target.
So here we are in 2016 in the middle of a Federal Election campaign. Abbott’s been replaced with a prime minister that’s all about “innovation” and “growth” and “agility” and the “new paradigm”. It’s never been a better time to be an Australian, Malcolm Turnbull once said, actually not all that long ago.
Opposition leader Bill Shorten’s all about “fairness”, putting “people first”, standing up for middle and working class families.
All these things that both Shorten and Turnbull claim to be, share one important value: inclusion.
And a key focus of such inclusion could start with giving that aspirational female workforce participation target a real go. Indeed, according to one finding from the Grattan Institute that politicians are often all to quick to quote – including former Treasurer Joe Hockey – lifting Australia’s workforce participation rate to that of Canada’s would put an extra $25 billion in the economy every year.
Three weeks into this election campaign, we’re still yet to hear much on this conversation. There were no questions about childcare or paid parental leave during the first free-to-air leaders’ debate on Sunday night
Yesterday, we did come across some good ideas. Starting with a proposal for a capped 38 hour working week — to help get men working less hours, women working more hours and both genders better sharing the load at home — along with a wide range of recommendations from the Work + Family Policy Roundtable aiming to shift the status quo on the social infrastructure that supports how we work.
The only problem is that such ideas are not being put forward by the Coalition or the Labor Party in the lead up to the national vote in July.
We’re yet to see much of anything on childcare, aside from a few mentions of childcare relief packages to support parents within certain income brackets. Childcare is getting more expensive for families, with costs and accessibility continuing to be significant hurdles for women looking to get back into the workforce, particularly to work full time. And, frankly, extra support here and there for a limited scope of parents isn’t going to solve this issue. We need to rethink the entire system of care.
What we do know from Scott Morrison’s May Budget is that the $3.4 billion reform package that was supposed to help more than one million families pay childcare has been put off at least another year. The $7500 rebate parents receive for every child in childcare – a figure unchanged since 2008 – won’t be increasing anytime soon, despite fees being expected to rise another 6.5% over the next financial year.
Paid parental leave, meanwhile, is like the outspoken cousin who’s finally been silenced and the family would rather forget. We’ll remember that it was a significant talking point during the 2013 Federal Election and a signature policy of Tony Abbott’s. While the Labor party’s promised to protect the existing scheme, the Coalition looks set to push forward with cutting the payment for those who also receive the entitlement from their employers. We’re not seeing much debate or conversation regarding the role of parental leave in supporting working women.
We’re not seeing a whole lot of conversations regarding women’s workforce participation full stop.
We need more policies and actions on reducing the 18% national gender pay gap. We need more commitments on increasing the number of women in leadership. We need more ideas for getting more women into traditionally male-dominated fields.
On the latter, the Labor government has announced its $4.5 million Girls into Code policy, aiming to increase the mere 28% of ICT workers who are female, along with the fact just one in five tech entrepreneurs are women, by inspiring and encouraging girls to learn coding languages. It’s a start.
The year 2025 isn’t actually all that long away. Now’s the time to put some valuable ideas and initiatives forward – or at least to start a conversation regarding what can and can’t be done.
With four and a half weeks to go until the election on July 2, we looking forward to more such discussions.