Australia is in the midst a housing affordability crisis. And now we know who to blame for it.

The Government is not to blame for a tax system that fuels skyrocketing house prices by benefiting local and foreign investors, developers and speculators. Nor is the Government to blame for its failure to address scarcity of housing including social housing.

No. The real culprits it appears are older Australians still living in their homes. It is their generational greed that is to blame.

Let’s start by listing what other people call us – matron, old lady, granny, biddy, old bag, crone, hag, witch, are some of the names used.

There is nothing positive about these appellations. They are either neutral or negative. 
They denote weakness, ugliness, helplessness and even evil.
They constitute a massive put down. 

In a society that values women primarily for their youthful beauty, sexual and reproductive powers, the more we age, the more we lose value. Our currency as women is devalued. 
Until we become invisible.

There is a disturbing narrative growing about Covid19 restrictions. It boils down to making a choice between the economy or the elderly. The argument is that the economy and young people are being sacrificed to protect older people. Mike Seccombe in the Saturday Paper defined it as “ the extent to which we will mortgage our children’s future to protect the health of our ageing parents.”   And he talks about “ repaying the massive debt we have accrued, largely out of consideration of those older people.”

First, this creates an artificial dichotomy that somehow presents an international and a national crisis as an  inter-generational conflict.

Paul Keating recently expressed fears of a future when there will be two Australias. But we are already there. We already have a generation of people who have worked all their lives and now find themselves impoverished. They are women aged over 55 and there are over a million of them.
Their economic disadvantage is the consequence of a history of gender discrimination.
Throughout their working lives, these women suffered decades of economic discrimination, inequality and injustice.

Have you noticed something about the women who were honoured this year in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list?

Have you noticed that a significant number of these leaders in business, the media, STEM, women’s rights, Indigenous recognition, and innovation are women over the age of 50 – usually referred to as ‘older women’.

These women have been quite rightly recognised for their valuable contributions to society.  So why is it that women over 50 are generally regarded in media and in terms of employment as having expended their value with their youth?