Australia’s Ominous Social Crisis

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Australia has never before witnessed the sort of ominous social crisis that is unfolding now.
Australia has never before had a demographic defined by age and gender, plunged into poverty and homelessness on a mass scale.
There are already more than 400,000 women over the age of 50 for whom this is a reality. It is a outcome of government policies, gender inequality and social prejudice. There are more women aged 50+ on Jobseeker than any other group. They suffered disproportionate job losses during Covid but are excluded from national recovery plans. There is talk of childcare plans in Budget 2021, but what plans are there to avoid economic disaster facing older women?
Over half of Australian businesses will not hire them according to a recent report by the AHRC. Nevertheless they will lose their Centrelink payment if they don’t apply for 20 jobs per month. On $44 per day they probably cannot afford to both eat and pay rent, let alone pay for the internet to look for jobs. The latest analysis shows a person on Jobseeker can afford just    3 out of 74,000 rentals across the whole country. It is estimated that 28 per cent of women aged 55-64 in private rental accommodation are likely to be at risk. For part-time or non-full time employees this figure rises to 34 percent.
It’s almost winter and you can already see them sleeping in their cars and in parks around Australia. Even last year they were crowding emergency wards at hospitals suffering from hypothermia.

The social crisis directly impacting women over 50 is going to get a whole lot worse. ABS figures show that the number of Australian women living alone is expected to increase by 27-58 per cent by 2041. Most have little or no superannuation.

Poverty is essentially a choice made by the Government. We saw this during Covid when people were raised from below the poverty line & the homeless were housed. If Budget 2021 fails to address the economic, social and housing disaster faced by older women then the Government bears direct responsibility for this escalating social crisis.

Older Female Workers

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A perfect storm is facing hundreds of thousands of unemployed, underemployed and underpaid older female workers.

First, the Federal Budget 2021-2022 completely overlooked them. 

The Treasurer said job creation was a top priority in this Budget. It was also promoted as a Budget for women. In this spirit, funds were allocated to childcare for women with young children. And funds were allocated to people in aged care, the majority of whom are women. But, if you fall between these two age groups, if you are a female worker aged over 50, then the Budget had a clear message – we don’t see you. There are no funds for you and you do not even rate a mention. 

It is a spectacular omission given that one of the defining characteristics of Covid19 has been that older women have been the hardest hit with job losses and the least likely to be re-employed.

There was nothing in the Budget to tackle the economic insecurity of women over 50 to prevent them from joining more than 400,000 women who already face impoverishment and homelessness.

Secondly, ageism is pervasive and growing both in Government and business.

The Budget offers training programs and apprenticeships but only for young people. Why? Women over 50 have had years in the workforce, skills and professional experience. Why freeze them out of opportunities to re-train? Why not mobilise this massive human capital to benefit both the country and these women? With widespread skills shortages it makes good social and economic sense to provide employment for these women, even if Australia were not cut off from foreign labour. But Australian working women over the age 50 are irrelevant to any economic recovery plan.

The latest finding of a survey of more than 600 business leaders by the Human Rights Commission& Australian HR Institute that found that 17% of respondents classified 51- to 55-year-old workers as “older”, compared with just 11 per cent in 2018. This research also found that nearly half of Australian businesses are reluctant to hire older workers. 

Thirdly, Federal Government is reaping plaudits for the big spending Budget, but unemployed older women who constitute the majority on Jobseeker are denied an increase above $44 a day to live on.

Surviving on $44 a day while looking for 20 jobs a month is impossible. And now we learn that a hidden $1.1 billion efficiency drive in the Budget will shift 1.2 million job seekers to an online service. If women already have to choose between eating and paying their rent they are unlikely to be able to afford the internet. As a result they will be forced off Jobseeker.

We are witnessing an escalating social crisis. But it is being largely ignored.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Christine Holgate, Australia Post and the Federal Government

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Appearing before a special Senate inquiry, Christine Holgate presented a powerful and meticulously documented expose of the role of the Australia Post Board and Prime Minister Scott Morrison in her removal from her position as CEO of Australia Post. So convincing was her testimony, that she was able to do the unthinkable. She was able to unite Pauline Hanson, Bridget McKenzie, Sarah Hanson-Young and the rest of the committee behind her in exposing the duplicity and bullying that led to her removal.
The key points that emerged from Ms.Holgate’s appearance at the Senate committee hearing are that:
1. Ms.Holgate was humiliated by Prime Minister Morrison and bullied by the Chair of the Australia Post Board, Lucio Di Bartolomeo.
2. Ms.Holgate was an extremely successful and popular CEO, a woman of integrity who did nothing illegal or particularly extravagant. The Australia Post Board approved the watches as a bonus for a remarkably beneficial achievement by staff for Australia Post.
3. Ms. Holgate did not resign but intended to take sick leave. The Chair then initiated her removal through a series of highly questionable acts. So much so, that Pauline Hanson argued that in fact due to this improper process, Ms.Holgate is still legally under contract the CEO of Australia Post.
4. Ms.Holgate said she was “going through hell” and “ suicidal” in desperation over the injustice of her treatment and the lies fabricated by the Chair. As Ms. Holgate pointed out, there are males in the Cabinet facing much more serious charges, but only she was forced to go.
5. The Chair was acting on the directive of PM Morrison who dismissed Ms.Holgate in a speech from the floor of Parliament.
6. Bottom line: The Government wanted Ms. Holgate removed because she opposed the secret report of the Boston Consulting Group that reportedly planned privatisation of Australia Post. One of the key reasons for Ms.Holgate’s opposition was because it would mean the firing of thousands of staff from Australia Post and the closing of branches that are so vital particularly in rural areas.
The members of the Australia Post Board were all required to appear in person before the Senate committee at the end of April. However, they did not do so. Despite the ire of the committee, members of the Board failed to present in person but appeared on Zoom instead.
Ms.Holgate has managed to energise a groundswell of public support for her position, particularly amongst women.
They recognise that despite being remarkably successful in her leadership role, a female CEO is still treated very differently to the way a male leader is treated.
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When Women Roar

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The March4Justice movement has achieved something remarkable for Australian women. It has transformed decades of private suffering into mass solidarity. 

For the first time, tens of thousands of women ended their silence about sexual abuse and injustice.

The ‘I’ has become the ‘We’.

The March4Justice protests that saw 110,000 people in 42 marches around the nation have not dissipated into silence. 

This is because Australian women have fundamentally changed their way of thinking. 

Grace Tame, Brittany Higgins and Katherine Thornton together ignited this explosion of rage. Their courage set off a spontaneous combustion of deep reserves of trauma, shame and frustration buried beneath silence. Women have had enough.

These events drove home to women that it’s not an individual problem, but a society-wide bias against women seeking justice and equality. The system is rigged against women and girls. 

The misogyny is institutionalised

The biggest shock to most Australians was learning that Federal Parliament is one of the most unsafe workplaces for women in the country. Harassment, abuse and even sex crimes against women have not exacted a toll on anyone but the women who have been abused.

The entire structural framework of Government, law enforcement, the courts and social prejudice collectively have denied women justice. Collectively they have denied women effective recourse to the apparatus of state to protect them from rapists and sexual abusers. Collectively they have denied women the possibility of seeking punishment for perpetrators of sexual crimes. As Senator Eric Abetz confidently assured Tasmanian Liberal MP Sue Hickey:

“ Not to worry. The woman is dead and the law will protect” Attorney-General Christian Porter regarding the alleged rape.

Statistically this is undeniable. Ninety percent of sexual assault cases do not end up in court. The chances of a woman finding justice are minuscule compared to the reality that she will be re-traumatized and left with her reputation shredded. 

The revelations about Katherine Thornton were followed very carefully by women. They understood how the years of grief and and trauma had de-railed her life and potential for a remarkable career. They read that when she went to make a complaint to the police, she was forced to wait months for them to take a sworn statement from her. They never did. She killed herself. All calls for an independent investigative process have been rebuffed by the Government.

The identification of women with Kate, Brittany and Grace springs from shared experience. It’s about women acknowledging that as individual women they are powerless against a system that is built on their silence. It is a system that has left them with no option but silence. They won’t be believed if they speak up and they will most probably be slut shamed. Brittany was called “a lying cow” by one of the highest officers in the land, the Defence Minister of Australia.

The word of women has been discredited in order to protect the status and reputations of men. And that is why rapists are so confident they can successfully silence their victims.

But women are no longer prepared to remain silent and that’s what makes things so different now.

Two key factors have prevented the rage ignited by Grace, Brittany and Kate from being muffled.

Women journalists

First, the number of leading women journalists determined to prevent a cover-up. A team of women journalists across different networks has emerged in the forefront. It is perhaps the most striking proof that when women are present, the conversation changes dramatically. Without these highly experienced women journalists, unquestionably, the whole issue would have been dropped out of public discourse. Louise Milligan and Laura Tingle have continued to speak out despite the ABC having its funding slashed and facing litigation. Lisa Wilkinson, Samantha Maiden, Katherine Murphy, Tracy Grimshaw, Amy Remeikis and others have done exceptional work. 

Social media

The second key factor stopping the rage from being quashed is social media. 

Well may PM Morrison rail against social media. It is contributing to his demise. But it has nothing to do with its  ‘evil influences’ as he calls them.

Social media is a threat because it has removed the near monopoly the media oligarchs and the Government hold over public information and public discourse. This mutually beneficial connection between them is being challenged by a grass roots movement. Inordinate power is being democratised. 

Social media is giving individual, powerless women a voice. For most, it is the first time they have ever mentioned the sexual assault they had endured. As one woman came forward for the first time, another woman and another took courage and spoke up until it became a wildfire.

Women posted how old they were when they were first assaulted and the circumstances. The posts are horrifying.

It has happened to women at all ages, from the time they were toddlers to when they were in aged care.

Often it happened to three generations in the same families. 

It happened in their homes, schools, the street, their workplace – everywhere. It is perpetrated by their closest family members, neighbours, friends, teachers, co-workers, employers – every type of relationship. And it happens across all socio-economic demographics, backgrounds and religions.

It has always been like this. But what has changed now, is that many women have had enough of keeping it secret. They’ve had a lifetime of trauma and stigma, while the perpetrator in most cases walks away with impunity.

Despite their fear it will damage their reputations, they are now speaking out publicly, no longer accepting victim blaming.

And they have easy access to a national and international platform.

Without social media the March4Justice on March 15th could never have happened. On February 25, Janine Hendry was exploring the idea of having women link hands around the perimeter of Parliament House to protest against gendered violence, discrimination and inequality. She tweeted asking: “I need someone to tell me if this is possible. I then also need someone to estimate the distance and how many women we would need?”

And from that it rapidly morphed through Twitter and Facebook, with minimal organization and funding, into simultaneous national-wide marches.

Grace Tame exhorted women to make noise. And that’s exactly what they are doing. The momentum continues to grow. We have not yet seen the full repercussions of this movement.

999 Ways to Describe an Older Woman

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Google offers over 999+ adjectives to describe an older or old woman. Astonishing. And they are uniformly pejorative:

Some common names for women over 50 – old bag, granny, biddy, crone, hag, witch, harridan, bedlam, old bat, old boiler – are just some of the names.

And if that’s not bad enough, you can also resort to:

‘withered and bitter’; ’almost well-dressed’; ‘unnaturally lusty’; ‘crazy and uncanny’ ; ‘entirely uninteresting’, are some of the terms. Even the word ‘Boomer’ has become slurred and layered with connotations of greed and selfishness.

When Dr.Biden, the First Lady of the United States appeared in patterned tights and boots, she was instantly condemned in the media and on social media. Twitter users hurled sexist and ageist jokes at the 69-year-old educator. Numerous tweets called her names like “hag,” “hooker”, “trash and “witch”. One tweet advised that ” For an additional $29.99 Jill Biden could have accessorized her Halloween costume with the optional broom.”

It worth noting that during the U.S. election campaign, Joe Biden was called “Sleepy Joe” as reference to his age. But when Hillary Clinton ran for president, she was pilloried as a “crone” capable of witchcraft. 

In a society that values women primarily for their youthful beauty, sexual and reproductive powers, the more we age, the more our currency as women is devalued.

And it is reflected in the language.

Mary Beard, who is Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge and the presenter of BBC Two’s Inside Culture said she is frequently branded a witch in an attempt to discredit her and older women generally. “Throughout many periods of history in the West there has been a real worry about what you do with women who are past their childbearing years. As I can confirm, women with long grey hair can make people anxious.”

There is nothing positive about the appellations                       for older women 

They denote weakness, ugliness, helplessness and even evil.

They constitute a massive put down. 

But does it matter? What’s in a name you may ask?

Well, nomenclature and honorific reflect respect, status and even power. 

Or the lack thereof. 

They are fundamentally connected to value. 

Or the lack thereof.

It is important to point out the sharp dichotomy between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians regarding appellations for older women. Indigenous older people, women and men, are collectively called ‘Elders’ and individually the women are addressed as ‘Aunty’. These are terms that denote respect. They reflect the status and position of authority that older women hold in First Nations society. They are valued as leaders and repositories of traditional stories, culture and law spanning 60,000 years. They are so valued that during Covid19, Indigenous communities made protection of their Elders their utmost priority. And they were very successful.

 Unlike traditional societies, we still haven’t come up with a respectful and value-enhanced term to describe older women. This paucity of positive appellations puts me in a real quandary whenever I write articles about women over 50. I have to use either the term ‘older women’, or try to remove value judgments by using the phrase ‘ women over 50’.  I wrote an article using the term ‘ We, the Matriarchs…’ but most women do not identify themselves as matriarchs.

What we call people reflects the value society assigns to them

The feminists of the 1960s understood the importance of nomenclature and honorific. That’s why one of the first things they did was change Mrs. and Miss to Ms. It was to give women a value and a way of being addressed independent of their relationship to a man. 

What we call people reflects the value society assigns to them. So our lack of respectful and value-enhanced terms to describe older women exactly reflects the negativity and discrimination towards them in society and that is translated into policy and action.

The widespread and well-documented age discrimination in the Australian workforce has directly led to women over 50 constituting the majority of those living below the poverty line. During Covid19, women over 50 were the first to lose their jobs and are the least likely ever to be re-employed despite their qualifications and experience. There are presently over 400,000 women over 45 at risk of homelessness in Australia.

This is Australia 2021.

Global crisis

Globally, prejudice and discrimination are now threatening the financial security and the very survival of so many older women in countries around the world. 

But most governments barely acknowledge the problem, let alone develop policies to deal with it. And what is extraordinary, is that we are not speaking about a small minority group. We are speaking about a significant demographic in Australia, the US, England and other countries. By 2030, one in three Australians will be over 55. The majority will be women.

Perhaps the problem is that so few countries are led by women over 50. Here too we can trace this back to attitudes about older women. Men on the public stage gain gravitas and authority as they age, women are considered enfeebled and inappropriate for the public stage.

It is encouraging therefore to see women over 50 becoming more visible in international forums as strong leadership figures – the great Angela Merkel has just retired, but we see Kamala Harris, Janet Yellin, Nancy Pelosi in the U.S., Ursula von der Leyen and Christine Lagarde in the EU, Christine Tsai Ing-wen in Taiwan. And Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala of Nigeria, the Director General of the World Trade Organization.

But this does not change the fact that the major social crisis now affecting older women has remained, like the women themselves, largely invisible.  

What are we going to do about it?

 

 

 

 

 

Open Letter to Premier Daniel Andrews

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Don’t fail Victorian women in the upcoming State Budget. The Federal Budget failed Australian women.

It is illusory to think that there can be economic recovery without the full participation of women of all ages.

Affordable childcare has to be a cornerstone of Victoria’s Budget.
Policies targeted at older women are another cornerstone.
So too is social housing.

The progressive exclusion of women 50+ from the workforce is one of the most serious violations of women’s rights in Australia & it is happening on a mass scale. As a result these women constitute the majority of unemployed, those on welfare and the homeless. The Victorian Budget can halt this process of impoverishment with incentives for employment instead of age discrimination policies such as JobMaker.

If you neglect this escalating social disaster,Victoria will bear both an uncontainable economic burden and social dislocation.

But if you mobilise these women with their accumulated professional expertise & skills, they can be key drivers of recovery, particularly in the expanding health and care sectors.

Deloitte Access Economics estimated pre-pandemic that a 3% increase in participation by the over 55s would generate a $33 billion annual boost to the national economy.

If the coming Budget is good for women, it will be good for Victoria.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ruth Bader Ginsburg Shattering The Age Barrier

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In all the tributes to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg for shattering the barriers denying her and other women justice and equality, haven’t we overlooked what was staring us in the face? Justice Ginsburg was an old woman aged 87 when she died. And the last barrier she shattered was the one erected in the path of women when they reach the age of 50. 

RBG was at the height of her power and influence in the 27 years between the ages of 60 and 87. She was 60, when she was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, the age when most women are regarded as being way past their “use by” date.

Older women as a demographic group are at best ignored and at worst disdained. 

But Ruth Bader Ginsburg said, here I am and I’m staying as long as I can do my job.

It was so typical of her. Throughout her life, she led the way not only in her legal judgements, but by personal example. 

RBG showed that an old woman can be a leader and she can be powerful.

She demonstrated that ageing should not be a process of devaluation for a woman.

Just as she upheld the worth of every individual in the eyes of the law, so too she upheld the right of every woman to command respect and reject discrimination,  no matter her age.

If Ruth Bader Ginsburg Applied for a Job in Australia

But most probably, if Justice Ginsburg had taken off her robes and unrecognised, applied for a job in Australia, she would be treated the same way other women her age are treated. Most employers would consider her unemployable and refuse to give her work, and Government would resent such an unproductive person as a drain on resources. In a pandemic they might readily agree that she be sacrificed on the altar of economic recovery.

This is the way women over 50 are viewed in Australia. This is the thinking that informs Federal Government policy. And this is certainly the thinking that informed Budget 2020. It was a Budget that was bad for women generally, but disastrous for women over 50. It matters greatly because these women are sinking into a home- grown social catastrophe. 

Covid19 did not create this catastrophe, it just accelerated a process that has been going on for almost a decade. If anything, Covid19 spotlighted the fact that it is not just some individual women who are having difficulties for whatever personal reasons. 

Consequences of Discriminatory Policies towards Older Women

What we are seeing is the progressive exclusion of women over 50 from the workforce. It is one of the most serious violations of women’s rights in Australia and it is happening on a mass scale.

Despite the unemployment rate amongst women over 50 being amongst the highest as a result of Covid19, there was nothing in the Budget that even referred to this problem let alone set out measures to address it. There are a specific schemes for apprenticeships and hiring subsidies for young workers, but nothing for women who are unlikely every to be employed again. These schemes actually incentivise employers to drop older workers and get subsidised for younger ones. An existing Government plan for older unemployed people has been described as an “utter failure” with only half the amount pledged actually being spent and more than 40% of those receiving these wage subsidies being out of work within 3 months.

Despite being fully aware, for a number of years, that the majority of people on Newstart were older women and that they struggled to survive on $40 a day, the Government is cutting JobSeeker and putting the unemployed back on $40 a day. The Government is also fully aware that older women are the ones who will be on these unemployment payments for the longest periods. And it is quite likely that they will be unemployed for the next 15-17 years until they qualify for the pension. For older women, JobSeeker has now become a sort of pre-pension that keeps them in preliminary poverty before they get on to the permanent poverty of the pension, which remains unchanged at $10 below the poverty line.

Unemployment predictably leads to a cluster of disadvantage. Its key outcomes are impoverishment, homelessness and the lack of means to escape violent relationships. This is because women generally have fewer assets, savings and super to fall back on compared to male contemporaries. Consequently, homelessness amongst women over 50 is accelerating at an alarming rate. But there was nothing in the Budget that even referred to this problem, let alone addressed it with a policy of social housing. Even pre-pandemic, there were over 405,000 women in this age group at risk of homelessness. Now, with the rate of Jobseeker cut back, and eviction moratoriums and mortgage deferrals ending, this rate of homelessness is set to skyrocket. 

The Government policy of neglect towards older people is aggravating the economic decline of women 50+. 

The majority of people on welfare now are older women.

The majority of homeless are now older women.

Damaging to Economy

This policy is not only morally repugnant, it is also damaging to the economy.

It represents a spectacular waste of human capital. These women possess decades of workplace experience, skills and professional expertise. 

There was only one Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but she was not alone. She led the generations of women now over 60 who, like her, were the first to enter the universities and break into the professions and the workforce in record numbers in the 1960s and 70s. These women went where others had not gone before them. And these are the women now being forced out of the workforce because of age discrimination.

Women over 50 as Key Drivers of the Economy

As a consequence of Covid19, the Australian workforce has shrunk by a million workers. Without immigrants and with low population growth we do not have the human resources to fuel economic recovery. Women with children must be enabled through affordable childcare to return to the workforce. But in addition, there is the invaluable resource of older women. Deloitte Access Economics estimated pre-pandemic that a 3% increase in participation by the over 55s would generate a   $33 billion annual boost to the national economy.

The view of women over 50 as key drivers of the economy is strongly upheld by Joseph F. Coughlin, director of the AgeLab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of ‘The Longevity Economy: Unlocking the World’s Fastest-Growing, Most Misunderstood Market.’ When these women are employed and have purchasing power, they become the “chief consumer of an entire demographic wave”. Coughlin estimates this fast growing market to be worth $20 trillion globally.

The reality is that Australia has an ageing population and by 2030 one in four Australians will be 65+. The majority will be women.                                                         

The Federal Government can continue to neglect older women or it can mobilize them in a way that both benefits the women and the economy. Otherwise, as women continue to fall off the cliff in ever increasing numbers, we will know they were pushed.

 

The Impact of the Pandemic on Older Women

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The impact of the pandemic on older women has been severe. It is not only particularly dangerous to their health, it has also increased their social isolation and exacerbated their precarious financial position.

It is no accident that Australia is now a world leader in the number of Covid19 infections and deaths in aged-care facilities. Almost 70% of Covid19 deaths have been in aged care. This catastrophic situation is the direct result of Federal Government policy over decades to divest itself of responsibility for the sector. That this divestment has been able to proceed over so many years without public outcry raises questions of how much Australia values its old people. And more specifically, whether it values ageing women, since the majority of older Australians are female.

Australian women are experiencing ageing quite differently to the majority of men. “Beyond life expectancy, on every other measure of economic and social wellbeing, older women experience significant disadvantage compared to men,” according to a Per Capita Report: ‘Measure for Measure’ in March 2020.

The pandemic did not create this difference. But it did highlight it and it did exacerbate a process that has been going on for a very long time.

Ageing as a process of devaluation

We need to look at ageing in Australia as a gender issue. For women, ageing is a process of devaluation.

Indeed, if you are a woman over 50 in Australia and have no financial security, your prospects are increasingly grim. You will most likely face long-term unemployment, impoverishment and even homelessness. When you become dependent on in-home care you will join the 100,000 waiting up to 3 years for aged care packages. Government figures released at the beginning of the year showed that around 30,000 people had died waiting in the last two years. If you are in private residential care you will likely have to deal with insufficient staff, lack of nurses and failure of government oversight. In these circumstances you are in danger of facing a preventable death due to unavailable or sub-standard care.

Economic impact – the workforce

The institutionalised inequality women suffer in the workforce throughout their working lives increases exponentially as they age. Pre-pandemic, women over 45 who were unemployed were finding themselves unable to find jobs and were effectively locked out of the workforce because of age discrimination.

And those who did have work were struck particularly hard with Covid job losses. Already in June, the Brotherhood of St. Laurence published a report  that up to 30 per cent of the newly unemployed or underemployed are aged 51 to 65.  That is nearly 400,000 Australians who have either lost work or had their hours cut as a result of the downturn. The majority are women and most are unlikely ever to work again. New research from the National Bureau of Economic Research in the U.S. found that age discrimination rises hand in hand with the unemployment rate. Older workers tend to be the last hired back and the first fired.

Which means that they will most likely be dependent on JobSeeker until they are eligible for the pension. Government plans to reduce the boosted JobSeeker payment will impoverish these women, just as it impoverished those on Newstart.

Economic impact on retirement

For those women who are already retired, the pandemic has increased the numbers who will age into poverty and homelessness.

Older women who are desperate enough to withdraw their super during Covid19 will be left totally vulnerable. Unlike young people, there is no chance of them ever replacing their super.

As it is, women retire with around 47% less super than men, if they have any super at all. The generation of Australian women presently over 55 have little or no super as it was introduced too late to provide them with substantial amounts.

Far more women than men rely on the age pension in Australia.

Sixty percent of single women (divorced, widowed or never married) in Australia rely on the full age pension and more than half of them live in permanent income poverty.

If the pension is their only source of income, then ageing women will remain in penury. There were already over a million female pensioners aged 65+ below the poverty line in 2016 according to ABS Census figures. These numbers have continued to swell. And even though it is $10 below the poverty line, the Commonwealth Government has already announced that it will not increase the pension this year.

It is no surprise that older women are now the face of poverty in Australia.

In August a report was published that there are now 405,000 older women at risk of homelessness.

Domestic violence

The pandemic escalated the rate of domestic violence. But what is particularly striking is the large number of older women who are killed each year as victims of domestic violence. Of 74 women killed in 2019, 23 were aged over 50, 43 were under 50, and 8 were of an unknown age, according to figures of The Red Heart Campaign and ImpactforWomen. And yet we rarely if ever see the stories of these women in the media. Is it perhaps because an older woman being violently killed has less media impact than if the victim is young?

Aged Care

The impact of the pandemic on ageing women reaches its apogee in aged care.

PM Morrison said he was sorry about what was happening in aged care and presented it as if he were having a bad day. This is disingenuous. The current catastrophe is the inevitable outcome of Commonwealth Government policies. Since John Howard, successive Federal Governments have seen ageing Australians as a thankless burden and not their social, moral and legal responsibility as prescribed by the Constitution. They have sought to abandon their responsibility by slashing funding and outsourcing care to private operators with little Government oversight.

Despite denials it has become obvious that the Federal Government saw no need to prepare a plan to protect the elderly from Covid19 in aged care facilities. And there is still no plan. Most deaths in aged care and most infections were in the privatised aged care system. This was preventable as is evident when you compare the numbers in Victoria where 1 in 23 residents in the private system caught Covid19 compared to 1 in 900 in the public system.

What is truly disturbing is that as early as June, the Commonwealth Government moved beyond neglect of those in aged care. 

As Rick Morton wrote in his landmark article, the Federal Government’s Aged Care Quality and Safety Commissioner and the New South Wales Health’s deputy secretary ordered that aged care homes not transfer residents who tested positive to hospitals for treatment. Transferring them would not only have provided them with possibly life-saving care, but also have prevented the spread of infection in the aged care residences. But the Government authorities preferred that hospital beds be saved for younger Australians. 

In these discussions of whether to move older people, Government officials talked about ‘decanting’ them as if they were a liquid and not human beings.

And that’s when Government officials ordered aged care workers not to waste PPE  treating aged care residents. These workers, mostly female casual employees, had to risk their lives after being instructed to use only one glove or not change PPE all day. 

In what can best be described as ‘damage control’, PM Morrison is now throwing more money at aged care. This will not change a broken system where the priority too often is profitability and not the welfare of the aged. 

The only way to bring about meaningful change is for the Commonwealth Government to stop shirking its responsibility for aged care as mandated by the Constitution. 

At the same time, we need to fundamentally change attitudes to ageing, particularly since one in three Australians will be over 55 by 2030. The majority will be women. How they are able to age will have a major impact on the type of society Australia will become. This fundamentally depends on how much we value older women.

Perhaps we can learn from Indigenous Australian communities and culture. Aboriginal women elders have a respected status. They are considered a valuable resource and esteemed for their experience and knowledge. It is incumbent on the community to protect them. That’s why during the pandemic, one of the priorities in Indigenous communities was to protect their elders. And it worked.

 

 

Published in Pro Bono Australia

 

 

Corona & the Common Good

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In the autumn of 2020, for two months, Australia united around the common good – “pro bono publico”.

When the scale of the approaching threat of coronavirus became evident, two unprecedented things happened.

First, Australian governments, federal and state, chose to put aside politics and ideology and based their policy on the advice of health experts.

Secondly, the Australian people trusted that our governments were actually acting to avoid a national catastrophe. So remarkably, a public consensus formed around the need to uphold the common good as a priority. What kept the vast majority of people in their homes was not the possibility of fines, it was this shared belief that our individual welfare depended on the welfare of others. And what kept us resolute were the images of mass graves in countries where there was no leadership and no consensus regarding the common good.

That is why Australia was successful in containing the virus.

But after two months the consensus regarding the common good started to come apart for several reasons. The most obvious one was its very success. As soon as restarting the economy began to supersede control over the spread of COVID-19 which had largely been achieved, the politics of satisfying political and economic constituencies returned.

Another reason the period of cohesion around the common good broke down is because too many were left out. Whole sectors such as those employed in the arts, at universities and casual workers were not included in the safety net of JobKeeper.

Furthermore, the common good began to be re-defined with a gender bias. Women have been hardest hit by job losses and lost hours. But instead of policies to assist women to return to work, we are seeing the exact opposite. Ending free childcare, the opening salvo in the federal government’s austerity approach to economic recovery, effectively undercuts women’s participation in the workforce. According to the latest figures, a third of women who presently have children in daycare will not be able to afford childcare and will have to stay home and look after the children.

Women aged 50-plus were amongst the first to lose their jobs because of COVID-19, and are the least likely ever to find work again. They will join the tens of thousands of women aged 50-plus who were on Newstart unable to find work because of rampant age discrimination. The government, with the support of the opposition, will likely try to cut the JobSeeker payments back again as close to the $40 a day as they can.

The consequences of COVID-19 and federal government policies ensure that the economic recession that we experience will disproportionately be shouldered by women. But keeping women in the workforce and fostering their advancement has a significant positive effect on productivity. The latest WGEA Australian research has established direct proof for the first time that companies with more women in leadership positions tend to outperform while those with fewer women underperform.

Just as there can be no economic recovery without the full participation of women, so too there can be no common good that disadvantages women. Nor can we speak of an Australian common good that does not fully include First Nations people. This was made clear by the recent Black Lives Matter demonstrations held despite the threat of COVID-19. Constitutional recognition is fundamental to the acknowledgement of First Nations people in the common good.

Climate change is the biggest common good issue facing the planet. Having set the precedent of a government-led health response policy based on scientific evidence and advice, the Australian government will have no credibility rejecting the science on climate change.

Businesses too will need to act more in line with the common good on a range of issues. More and more companies are committing themselves to social purpose as well as profit. It not only brings about a more positive social impact but also translates into many business advantages.

One of the positive and encouraging legacies of this COVID-19 period is the recognition of just how much can be achieved when we are united for the common good.

 

 

Published in Pro Bono Australia

 

Indigenous women elders imprisoned for homelessness & poverty

by

 

Janine (age 61) is one of a large and growing number of older women who are homeless.  Five years ago, she was made redundant from her position as an Office Manager in Perth.  Despite great effort she has been unable to find a job and ultimately couldn’t afford to continue paying rent.  Since beginning to live in her car 8 months ago, Janine has tried to find relatively safe places to park at night.  As a result, she has accumulated parking fines which she simply can’t afford to pay … particularly as these have compounded, had administrative fees added and now total over $3,000.  When Janine was pulled over by police for allegedly speeding, she was immediately arrested for these outstanding fines and sent to prison.  She doesn’t know what’s happened to her car, which contains all her worldly possessions.

Imprisonment rates amongst Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women are particularly alarming.  Nationally, First Nations women account for 2% of the Australian population, but represent 34% of women prisoners.  First Nations women are being disproportionately sentenced to prison compared with non-indigenous women for the same crimes.  In NSW, there has been a 49% increase in the number of First Nations women sentenced to prison since 2013 (compared with a 6% increase amongst other women).  A recent study found that 87% of First Nations women had been in prison before – with homelessness being the main cause of women returning to prison within 9 months of release.

Selina (age 62) is an Aboriginal woman who moved to Melbourne when she left a violent relationship 3 years ago.  Here, she quickly became homeless – mainly couch-surfing between family members.  Selina drinks (to mask the many traumas she has experienced) in a place she feels safe – a park frequented by First Nations people.  Every few days the police break up gatherings in the park, and Selina is invariably charged with offensive behaviour, swearing, public drunkenness and/or resisting arrest – her long criminal record is entirely made up of these and similar ‘offences’ committed over the past 3 years.  She is usually imprisoned on remand because she doesn’t have a home address.  Selina had never been to prison until moving to the city: she now regularly moves between homelessness and prison.  

Imagine being put in prison without warning – even for ‘only’ 2-3 weeks.  Imagine how this would affect every aspect of your life – your job, your rental property, custody of your children (or grandchildren), your friendships.  Imagine that your only alleged offence was stealing food for child in your care, or evading a fare you couldn’t afford to meet a Centrelink requirement.  Then, imagine that you hadn’t even been found guilty of this offence.

Across Australia, approximately 40% of women prisoners are on remand.  In Victoria, for example, the number of women entering prison more than doubled between 2012 and 2018, and 9/10 were on remand.  A further 20% are imprisoned for procedural offences, such as minor breaches of (often onerous) parole conditions or failure to appear in court – commonly due to poverty.  Most women are imprisoned for minor, non-violent offences.  These realities about the women’s prison population are reflected in the short time typically spent in prison – in Queensland, the median prison sentence across all prisoners is 3.9 months, and this is much shorter for women prisoners.  

Mary (age 52) is an Aboriginal woman who has moved between the streets and prison since childhood.  She was released on parole a couple of months ago, after serving a short term for street offences. Three weeks ago, she was cut off unemployment benefits for failing to meet job search requirements.  This left Mary with no money – and unable to pay for public transport to report weekly to Probation and Parole.  Whilst she usually walked the 5km, Mary was unwell on this particular day.  She rang to request an alternate arrangement but was refused, and when she failed to report a warrant was issued for her arrest.  Shortly after, she was picked up by the police and returned to prison for breach of parole.

The rise in the number of women prisoners not serving ‘substantive’ sentences is mainly due to failures of the state.  It has run parallel with cuts to housing, health and welfare services, and increased funding to police and prisons.  Most women are refused bail due to homelessness, or unmet mental health or substance abuse needs.  With the vast majority of women prisoners (90% of First Nations women) having experienced domestic violence, often these needs were driven by DV.  (Ironically, breach of a DV Order is now amongst the top 10 reasons for women’s imprisonment in Queensland – another example of law reform having unintended consequences.)  

After surviving many years of abuse, Cheryl (age 55) finally grabbed a saucepan and wacked her violent partner over the head.  When police arrived, they assumed she was the primary perpetrator and imposed a DVO on her.  The order required that she not enter the house.  As the primary carer of her 3 grandchildren, Cheryl felt she had little choice but to break the order to care for her family.  Her partner was happy with this arrangement … until another argument broke out and he called the police.  Cheryl was immediately arrested for breach of DVO and taken to prison.

More older women are going to prison

The number of older women prisoners in Australia has grown very significantly over the past 20 years.

There hasn’t been a detailed study of older Australian prisoners since 2011, and there has never been a study of older women prisoners.  But, in our experience at Sisters Inside, the trends identified in 2011 are continuing and worsening.  Our Health Support Program in Brisbane, for example, estimates that the number of women over 55 they are supporting has almost doubled over the past 3 years: 70% of the women they work with are now aged 55-64, and 80% are First Nations women.

Between 2000 and 2010, the number of 50+ women prisoners more than tripled – nearly twice the growth rate of male prisoners (and higher than the growth rate of younger women prisoners).  From 2010-2014, there was a 140% increase in 65+ prisoners in NSW which reflected the national trend.  By 2018 there were a total of 5,790 prisoners aged 50+ in Australia.  Of these, 334 were women (with 27 being 65+).   Whilst these numbers are relatively small, they represent a massive increase in the number of older women imprisoned over the past 20 years.

We don’t know how many of these women were Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander.  In 2010, the overall number of older First Nations prisoners was relatively lower due to their shorter life expectation.  Only 7% of women prisoners were 50+ in 2010.  However, it is reasonable to expect that First Nations women prisoners aged 40+ will face similar issues to non-First Nations prisoners aged 50+.  Between 2000 and 2010, the fastest growing age group amongst First Nations women prisoners was aged 45-49.

We don’t know much about older women prisoners.  It is unclear how many are serving short sentences, how many are first-time prisoners, and how many have aged inside prison whilst serving long sentences. We do know that their growth rate exceeds the growth in the number of older women in the general population.

It has been suggested that increases in the number of older prisoners in Australia is a result of a growing aged population, mandatory sentencing, tighter bail laws, improved forensic techniques, longer sentences for serious crimes and a reluctance to release some prisoners.  Given the small number of women serving very long sentences, it would seem that the increase amongst women would likely be explained by poverty – older women being imprisoned on remand due to homelessness.

Rising poverty amongst older women increases their risk of imprisonment.  As detailed in Augustine Zycher’s recent article Abandoning Old People on Ice Floes,  about 1/3 of single women 55+ and over a million women 65+ are living in poverty.  I am very concerned that the number of older women in prison will continue to increase exponentially.

Prison is a particularly terrible place for older women

Prison is no place for any woman, particularly older women.

The reality is that we, as a community, must stop criminalising and imprisoning women (and girls), particularly Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women.

Sisters Inside is increasingly seeing women prisoners with serious health needs – problems like chronic cardiac and respiratory illnesses; severe depression; and degenerative conditions.   

Joan (age unknown) was observed wandering aimlessly around the prison by Sisters Inside workers.  She had kept getting on public transport without paying for a ticket, and was eventually charged with fare evasion. Joan was remanded in custody because she became angry when pressured to provide family contact details and refused to provide a home address.  Once in prison, Joan kept entering prohibited areas and was threatened with disciplinary charges by prison staff.  It quickly became evident to our staff that Joan had dementia, and didn’t even understand that she was in prison.  Once Sisters Inside found her family, we were able to ascertain that Joan had never previously been in trouble, and secure her release on bail to her family.  

Several studies have suggested that the health age of Australian prisoners may be 10 years older than their chronological age. Many of the women we work with already entered prison with poorer health than women in the general community (and male prisoners).  

Older women’s health deteriorates in prison.  The standard of both medical and mental health care in prison is significantly lower than in the general community.  Studies suggest that because older prisoners are typically more compliant than younger prisoners, their health can be completely overlooked in the prison system.

Maureen (age 63) had emphysema and other chronic health conditions.  She served a 6 month sentence.  When she finally got to see a doctor, he refused to prescribe the preventative inhaler she had been using prior to imprisonment, and her breathing became increasingly laboured.  By the time Maureen was released from prison, her health had deteriorated to the point that she now requires oxygen with her at all times.

Prisons are designed for young, able-bodied prisoners.  Prisons are ill-equipped to respond to common problems amongst older prisoners such as limited mobility, hearing or vision impairments, incontinence or frailty.  Too often, older women prisoners are ‘doubly punished’ in an environment which is harsher for them than other prisoners, and can be dangerous. 

And, being a minority within the prison population, older women (along with prisoners with disabilities) are vulnerable to violence, abuse, neglect or exploitation by both prison staff and other prisoners.  Prior to imprisonment, some older women prisoners were being helped with tasks of daily living through NDIS.  Professional personal carers are generally not available in prison, and older prisoners are forced to depend on others for assistance with showering, or getting into a bunk bed … or more vulnerable activities such as toileting.

Once released, older women’s difficulties can further escalate.  Too often this leaves them struggling to meet parole conditions and puts them at risk of returning to prison.  Most prisons offer limited pre-release planning, and post-release women can find themselves with inadequate health care, housing, possessions, transport assistance or disability support to survive on the outside.

That’s why Sisters Inside advocates for the individual and collective rights of older criminalised women.

Sisters Inside advocates for the human rights of criminalised women

Sisters Inside exists to undertake public advocacy and address the unmet human rights and needs of criminalised women and girls, and their children.  Our primary goal is to keep as many women and children out of prison as possible.

Sisters Inside has taken a public leadership role on the human rights of women prisoners and other criminalised women in Australia for over 20 years.  Over the past decade we have increasingly engaged in international campaigns to achieve justice for criminalised women and girls.  Sisters Inside has formal consultative status at the United Nations, and much of our time at a management level is now spent working alongside like-minded organisations across many countries.

Our services are available to all women in the criminal legal system in Queensland.  Sisters Inside workers are increasingly supporting older women, many of whom struggle to survive in the prison system.  We are particularly conscious of the needs of older Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women prisoners, and employ First Nations Elders, managers and staff to ensure that we respond to women’s needs in a culturally appropriate way.  

Our first priority is to prevent women and girls from going to prison at all!  Our youth and women’s workers in the Brisbane police watch-house support women and girls to access lawyers and whatever they need to get bail: anything from housing, to a place in rehab, to a counsellor, to enrolment in school.  We support women and girls in South East Queensland when they first appear in court, then support those who are granted bail to meet their bail conditions.  In the future, we hope to be able to offer this service throughout Queensland.

Inside prisons, Sisters Inside offers violence-related counselling and support; help to maintain family relationships; and help accessing bail and parole in all women’s prisons in Queensland.  We also receive some limited funding to help women and girl prisoners to plan for release.

On the outside, Sisters Inside offers a wide range of services throughout Queensland – health support, housing support, family reunification, parenting support, practical/financial help … and whatever else women need to get their lives together after the trauma of prison.  We also support children and young people whose mums are in prison, or who are criminalised themselves, to access housing, education and employment, and address any issues that put them at risk of ending up in prison.

Imprisonment shouldn’t be a death sentence

A Queensland judge recently said “If an 85-year-old is given a five-year term, without being dramatic about it, it is likely to be a form of life sentence as opposed to the 20-year-old”.  

There is great fear of COVID-19 virus reaching our overcrowded prisons.  Here social distancing is impossible, soap is considered a luxury (which women must pay for themselves), many cells do not have running water and hand sanitiser is contraband (due to its alcohol content).  Our women prisoners are left defenceless against the onslaught of the virus.

Many women prisoners (both old and young) have chronic health conditions.  This places them at higher risk of a severe case of COVID-19.  It is critical that women prisoners are released and suitably housed, before a few days on remand for unpaid fines, stealing food or fare evasion turns into a death sentence for someone’s mother, or grandmother, or sister, or daughter.

As a nation, we are paying approximately $300 per night to keep each woman in prison – to punish them for poverty.   Imagine the inestimable harm that could be prevented to women (and their families) if we spent $2,100 per week on meeting each woman’s needs.

 

About the author

Debbie Kilroy has led Sisters Inside, an organisation which advocates for the human rights of criminalised women and their children, for almost 3 decades.  Having spent 20 years moving in and out of adult and children’s prisons in Queensland, Debbie began Sisters Inside when she was finally released in 1992. Debbie is a qualified lawyer, social worker, gestalt therapist and forensic mental health practitioner.