Australia’s economy needs a budget for women: RMIT experts available for comment

Dr Leonora Risse, Senior Lecturer in Economics (0401 360 733 or leonora.risse@rmit.edu.au)  

Topics: Federal Budget, gender equality, workforce, wellbeing, paid parental leave

“Tuesday’s Budget will be the opportunity for the Albanese government to lay out the first steps of their gender equality policy agenda.”

“A gender equality approach to the Budget means looking beyond specific policies and casting a gender lens across the full policymaking process.”

“How will the government’s infrastructure spending announcements, training and skills packages, and climate change mitigation policies differently affect men and women? It’s a practice known as gender impact assessments or, more comprehensively, as Gender Responsive Budgeting.”

“Paid parental leave and childcare affordability should be treated as core economic issues that affect the country’s overall productivity and prosperity, rather than just thinking about these policies as “women’s issues.”

“We have to make bold moves to make it societally and professionally acceptable for men to put their hand up and take a larger share of parental caregiving.”  

"Reducing childcare costs will enable women who aspire to work more to do so. However this requires investing more in the childcare and early learning sector.”  

“Bolstering women’s financial self-sufficiency reduces their dependency on government welfare later in life.”

Dr Risse is a Research Fellow with the Women’s Leadership Institute Australia and spent time in residence as Harvard University as a Research Fellow with the Women and Public Policy Program in the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. She is a co-founder of the Women in Economics Network and currently serves as the WEN National Chair.

Emeritus Professor Sara Charlesworth (0412 889 122 or sara.charlesworth@rmit.edu.au)

Topics: Gender equality, paid parental leave, unpaid care, mental health 

“Women took on, and were left to pick up, the bulk of the additional work within families brought on by COVID.”

“Women also lost their jobs or lost hours of work together with any opportunities for career development. While many employers were supportive, different employers and managers varied considerably in the support they provided to women who were juggling day to day care responsibilities with the additional burdens of COVID.” 

“The impact of the additional burdens taken on by many women during COVID will cast a long shadow on their mental health and the rising number of women seeking help post lockdown is hardly surprising.”

“We need public policy, regulatory interventions and adequate funding to make it easier for all workers to meet their unpaid care responsibilities and that ‘nudge’ men to take on more of the care and domestic work within the household.” 

“The proposed ‘use it or lose it’ provision for fathers and partners in the extension of paid parental leave currently under discussion would incentivise shared parental care; an important step towards ensuring that households share the load of unpaid care and domestic work.” 

Emeritus Professor Charlesworth is a socio-legal scholar whose research focuses on gender (in)equality in employment at the labour market, industry and organisational levels. She has held several ARC projects on sexual harassment, gender equality and decent work, quality part-time work, work/life balance and gender-equitable organisational change in male-dominated organisations.

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Interviews: 

Dr Leonora Risse, 0401 360 733 or leonora.risse@rmit.edu.au     

Emeritus Professor Sara Charlesworth, 0412 889 122 or sara.charlesworth@rmit.edu.au

General media enquiries: RMIT Communications, 0439 704 077 or news@rmit.edu.au