childcare

As the disproportionate impacts of COVID-19 on women’s economic security bite, we face a critical crossroads.

A group of predominately women-led businesses are spearheading an urgent campaign calling on the Government to make early childhood education and care free.

Parents unable to use childcare services over the next six weeks, during Melbourne’s stage four lockdown, will be provided with an extra 30 days of “allowable absences”.

Thousands of educators in long day childcare services across Melbourne have no guarantee of income for at least the next 6 weeks.

As child-care centres close in Melbourne, the focus needs to be on what governments can do to cushion the impact on working parents.

A lot of effort’s going into promoting women in STEM but there’s one thing that’s standing in the way: unpaid work and the cost of childcare

Our workplaces need to be more family friendly – and employers and the government must be prepared to lead the change head on.

The end of free childcare is a double hit to working women. It hits an industry mostly staffed by women & will make it more difficult for women to work.

Even when the end of free childcare was announced in early June it felt inexplicably premature & short-sighted. Now, it seems completely unsustainable.

Childcare operators will be permitted to waive the gap fee for Melbourne parents from July 13, if their children do not attend due to new restrictions.

Free childcare provides the rarest of economic policy opportunities – an effective form of fiscal stimulus in the short term and the long run.

The government has acknowledged the disproportionate effects of this crisis on women. So what action can turn the ‘she-cession’ into a ‘she-recovery’?