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It isn't just mothers and wives who bear the burden. Many households outsource domestic labour to nannies, housekeepers and cleaners. These workers are part of a vast global industry that employs 100 million people around the world. They are usually women from poor backgrounds who are rarely paid well for their labour.
Regardless of one's politics, the loss of Bishop from cabinet should be a wake-up call, prompting reflection on how our socialised norms work together with our institutions to keep women from power. We need women — and far greater diversity in other respects also — at the table, making decisions.
Many people, including on the left, talk about the centrality of work to our sense of purpose and dignity. Work is commonly understood as the method through which we acquire income, a sense of identity, make a contribution and find community, but for many, it has also become an extremely unreliable source of these things.
The proposed tax cuts will create long-term structural changes to government revenue sources, which may prove to be economic folly in future-proofing Australia against global economic shocks, and in dealing with current unmet needs of poor and vulnerable Australians.
Parenting is expensive, financially and emotionally. I would be fibbing if I didn't acknowledge the love and pride we receive from laughing with our progeny. Seeing them grow. But I'd be lying if I didn't acknowledge that being a mum or dad can be hazardous to your financial, social, sexual and physical health.
As I drop my daughter at daycare at 6:30am, to be looked after by someone else who I then have to pay, to go to work to earn enough money to pay our rent and daycare, I am struck by how much our system is failing families. It was a failure of my own empathy that I only came to understand this after I experienced it personally.
Jill Allan wants to see good stories in circulation. As she holds a book in her hands she asks herself, 'Would a child want this?' She's been a children's librarian for years, she's read the research. The number of books in the home is a crucial factor influencing language and literacy outcomes.
The struggle of workers has changed a lot since the 1850s, when stonemasons won the right to an eight-hour day. With the rise of contract work and the hustle of the gig economy, a lot of the fights won by workers don't even make much sense. Consider the following Facebook ad an outer Melbourne resident: FREE ROOM IN EXCHANGE FOR HELP.
'We need to recommit to work for all those who are able and willing. We need to recommit to social assistance for all those who are not able. We need to ensure that a life of frugal dignity is within the grasp of all citizens.' 2017 Rerum Novarum Oration by Fr Frank Brennan SJ
On the day of their departure I covered their faces with kisses. A dark cloud seemed to settle. For the last ten years I'd been a mother. What was I without them? My first impulse was to get busy filling my social calendar. But something stopped me. Somehow I knew I was just trying to stave off the inevitable: having to spend time with myself.
One of the big science stories in the last month has been the invention of an artificial womb. The device has successfully assisted a number of lamb foetuses to term, and scientists are hopeful it will also assist premature human babies. What a wonderful development, to alleviate the health complications for those tiny babies and reduce the heartache for their parents. But the potential of the invention does not stop there. Like all tools, humans could choose to put it to use in ways that are good or bad.
The announcement by Kate Ellis, the 39 year old federal Labor MP for Adelaide, of her retirement at the next election to be with her young son came as a surprise. Several Fairfax journalists were dismayed. Stephanie Peatling issued a challenge: 'It's not people who should have to change to make their lives fit politics as we know it. It's politics as we know it that should change.' The immediate issue is gender balance, but the wider context is all types of diversity in parliament.