This submission is being made by the National Foundation for Australian Women (NFAW).

NFAW is dedicated to promoting and protecting the interests of Australian women, including intellectual, cultural, political, social, economic, legal, industrial and domestic spheres, and ensuring that the aims and ideals of the women’s movement and its collective wisdom are handed on to new generations of women. NFAW is a feminist organisation, independent of party politics and working in partnership with other women’s organisations.

Insecure employment affects women and men in different ways; it is not gender neutral. This submission responds to the Inquiry’s terms of reference through a gender lens.

The displacement of secure by insecure work is not due to a single factor such as growth in casual work. It is a constructive impermanency based on multiple strategies driving and enabling employers to maximise numerical flexibility, maintain a constant downward pressure on wages and side-step the responsibilities of the National Employment Standards.

Historically, it has relied on leveraging women’s characteristic employment patterns, calling them ‘non-standard’ and treating them as atypical. They are typical for women. Nevertheless, the greater deviation from the male-dominated ‘standard employment relationship’ the less protection there is for workers (Vosko 2007; Vosko and MacDonald 2009).

It is critical not to allow the word ‘flexibility’ to be used to confuse employer-defined flexibility with flexibility for workers with family responsibilities. They are very different things.

The impact of insecure employment shows itself in the employment data, in COVID-linked risks, and in reduced income and housing security, and in each context women are most likely to suffer from ongoing structural defects in the current policy settings, and an unwillingness to rise to new ones.

Following our initial overview, we have focused on how these issues are worked out in the feminised and less well researched care sectors—aged, disability and child care.

 

 

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