Why we have to, for the moment, make childcare a woman’s issue

On Women’s Agenda, we’ve often advocated for childcare to be considered a family or workplace issue, rather than a “women’s issue” alone. Today, Jo Briskey from the Parenthood argues the opposite. That it should remain a women’s issue: At least until we can change the norms around gender specific roles at home. 

Over the last two and a half years I have been campaigning and lobbying for more affordable and accessible early learning and care – also known as childcare.

Through The Parenthood, over 20,000 parents from across Australia have lobbied their local MPs, have come with me to walk the halls of Parliament House to meet with Ministers, the Opposition and Cross-Bench Senators. We have helped parents write submissions to Senate inquiries and have had parents giving evidence for Senate Committees.

Thousands of parents, both mums and dads and even grandparents, uncles and aunties, have achieved some pretty big wins during this campaign. Together we:

–  Ensured the value of childhood development was featured in the terms of reference for the 2014 Productivity Commission review into early learning

–   Moved former prime minister Tony Abbott to accept that the government really couldn’t do anything to improve access to affordable, quality, early learning and care without increasing its investment.

–   Secured bi-partisan support for the continued roll out of the National Quality Framework that is helping to improve the quality of early learning available for our kids.

But we’ve also experienced some setbacks:

–   We had originally been told that extra funding for early learning would come from the savings made out of not going ahead with the massive $5.5 billion paid parental leave scheme – now we’re told massive cuts to family payments and scaling back our existing paid parental leave scheme is the only way the government can fund the extra $3.2 billion proposed for the childcare.

–   The Turnbull Government reform plans have been pushed out to 2018 leaving many families with reality that their children will be in school by the time anything happens to rectify the issue around cost and accessibility.

So as with many campaigns some battles are won, some are lost. But at every step along the way it’s been vital to maintain the pressure and make it clear why access to affordable early learning is so, so important.

The reason it’s so important? Well it’s two fold really –

1. Because of the incredible long term benefit (and where arguably government gets its best bang for buck) of children accessing early learning. Research continues to show access to quality early learning dramatically improves academic success and long-term life outcomes and that this is especially true for those kids born into struggling and disadvantaged circumstances AND

2. Because of the impact it has on the meaningful participation rate of women in the paid workforce.

And this is why we must not shy away or step back from prosecuting affordable childcare as a woman’s issue

Fact:

–   The workforce participation rate of mothers in Australia remains at just 56 per cent (compared with 91% of fathers, 85% of whom are working full time);

–   Women remain over-represented as part-time workers, in low-paid industries and in insecure work and women continue to be underrepresented in leadership roles across both the private and public sectors (despite the fact women are more likely than men to have higher educational attainments from tertiary education)

That fact remains that mums are the ones organising their lives around the care of children and this is especially true when the kids are under five years.

The reality is the cost of childcare is the cost of mum going back to work. Not only is this a perception – it is seen as a reality for many families.

Now of course this shouldn’t just be a mum’s issue, of course it’s a joint responsibility for both parents to contribute to the care of their kids. And I recognise the argument that by campaigning for affordable childcare as a woman’s issue seemingly perpetuates the notion that child rearing is largely a woman’s job.

But as a society we’re just not there yet. We’re not even close to changing the norms around gender specific roles and what it means to be a working mum and what it means to be a working dad.

And this is why we must not shy away from continuing to point out the fact having children is a limiting factor for women wanting/needing to be in the paid workforce and a logical way to address this is access to affordable childcare.

Plus, government continues to tell us how important increasing the workforce participation rate of women is to our national economy – so highlighting the impact affordable childcare has on mums returning to paid work or being able to work more is a clear campaign strategy. 

So this is why we must remain, for the time being, steadfast in championing affordable childcare as a significant woman’s issue. A core pillar of our argument should be that childcare costs are preventing women from returning to work because they are.  The experience for thousands of women is a sense of working for less or in some cases losing money because of how much childcare costs – so of course many ask why bother?

The language around childcare being a woman’s issue shouldn’t change – rather the term ‘childcare’ itself needs to change.

When we replace ‘childcare’ with ‘early learning and care’ we shift the whole argument. No longer is it about government needing to fund the care of children so mums can work – rather it becomes government investing in education so our kids can get the best start in life.

Once ‘childcare’ is seen as early learning and it’s recognised that all kids should benefit, it will become more affordable, accessible and acceptable and that’s when we can start to change and challenge the notion child care is only a woman’s issue.