Priorities
Nov. 18th, 2013 08:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sacredchaoSo I spotted yet a couple more articles this week about representation of women in the boardroom and in government and I found myself wondering if this is really the most important discussion we can be having. Don’t get me wrong, the ridiculous gender imbalances at the top levels of government and business are appalling but we seem to talk of nothing else. What we’re discussing here is, at best, the top 5% of earners in the population. Not the top 5% of women, mind you, The top 5% of the entirety of the adult population and I’m pulling figures out of my arse here so I’m being exceedingly conservative. I’d not be at all surprised to discover that we’re talking about a far more exclusive part of the community even than that.
So yes, the pay gap and superannuation gap is outrageous at those high levels but let’s pause for a moment. We’re talking about whether these women are driving a Volkswagon or an Audi and whether their superannuation will last them sufficiently far into their 80s. To a very great number of women the questions are more like whether they can afford a car at all and whether superannuation is anything that they can speak about in anything but a speculative sense. This is the end of the community where the pay gap bites the hardest. Where the degree of casualisation of workforce and job security changes markedly depending on whether the work in question is considered men’s work or women’s work. Where scarcity of childcare and other support services make them near impossible to find and when they are obtainable they eat such a huge chunk of income that it becomes genuinely debatable whether it’s actually worth going to work at all. Where that casualisation of work combines with so little discretionary income that failure to get those non-guaranteed shifts mean that being obscenely compliant to your employer is the only way to ensure that you’ll make rent and bills and still be able to eat this fortnight. Every. Single. Fortnight. This in turn leaves no leverage to negotiate rosters and conditions with an employer, much less introduce the phrase “work/life balance”. This is where the gender imbalance bites hardest and across the largest portion of the community. This is where genuine hardship arises from that imbalance. This is also where the least attention is paid while we discuss paying up to $75,000 per annum on maternal leave or indeed any paid leave at all to a handful scrambling to join “the elite”. We shouldn’t stop paying attention to the number of women in those top positions but we should be paying a great deal more attention elsewhere. We should be paying more attention to which work is valued and how much. We should be paying attention to the factors that make it a struggle to find work at all, much less struggle to the top.
My feminism will be intersectional or it will be bullshit.
So yes, the pay gap and superannuation gap is outrageous at those high levels but let’s pause for a moment. We’re talking about whether these women are driving a Volkswagon or an Audi and whether their superannuation will last them sufficiently far into their 80s. To a very great number of women the questions are more like whether they can afford a car at all and whether superannuation is anything that they can speak about in anything but a speculative sense. This is the end of the community where the pay gap bites the hardest. Where the degree of casualisation of workforce and job security changes markedly depending on whether the work in question is considered men’s work or women’s work. Where scarcity of childcare and other support services make them near impossible to find and when they are obtainable they eat such a huge chunk of income that it becomes genuinely debatable whether it’s actually worth going to work at all. Where that casualisation of work combines with so little discretionary income that failure to get those non-guaranteed shifts mean that being obscenely compliant to your employer is the only way to ensure that you’ll make rent and bills and still be able to eat this fortnight. Every. Single. Fortnight. This in turn leaves no leverage to negotiate rosters and conditions with an employer, much less introduce the phrase “work/life balance”. This is where the gender imbalance bites hardest and across the largest portion of the community. This is where genuine hardship arises from that imbalance. This is also where the least attention is paid while we discuss paying up to $75,000 per annum on maternal leave or indeed any paid leave at all to a handful scrambling to join “the elite”. We shouldn’t stop paying attention to the number of women in those top positions but we should be paying a great deal more attention elsewhere. We should be paying more attention to which work is valued and how much. We should be paying attention to the factors that make it a struggle to find work at all, much less struggle to the top.
My feminism will be intersectional or it will be bullshit.
