There are a wide range of issues that currently affect Australian young women. These include (but are not limited to): The casualisation of the workforce, high rates of under-employment, increase in the gig economy and increasing unpaid internships make it difficult for young people to find steady, secure employment with access to paid leave and superannuation.1 The youth unemployment rate is currently 12.6% overall and 12.3% for young women aged 15-24, compared to an unemployment rate of 5.1% for the total population.
Election 2019 – Women with disabilities. What are the particular issues for women with disabilities.
Violence against women is widespread – 1 in 3 Australian women have experienced physical violence and 1 in 5 have experienced sexual violence. An estimated 25% of women have experienced emotional abuse by a partner including financial abuse, isolation from family and friends, continual humiliation, threats against children or being threatened with injury or death.
Women are the beneficiaries of a progressive and redistributive taxation system. Taxation data shows that women are underrepresented in the highest income tax brackets and overrepresented in the lowest income tax brackets. Women are also the beneficiaries of increased spending on income support payments and social services. Unsustainable tax cuts hit publicly funded services, with the potential to reduce jobs.
Superannuation policy is gender blind, but by treating men and women the same it does not recognise that women’s lived experience of economic security is different to men. Through a gender lens, the Superannuation Guarantee system is fundamentally flawed because it is based on earnings. As long as women experience lower earnings and interrupted work patterns, the superannuation system will result in poorer outcomes for them.
Any changes to structures or funding have serious implications for women’s working conditions and ability to deliver high quality education. Women make up the majority of the workforce in the schooling sector.
While the broader sphere of sexual and reproductive health affects all genders and sexualities, women carry a disproportionate burden of reproductive health issues.
While workplace agreements mean that some employees receive 26 weeks of paid leave, they are likely to be higher earning, professional or public sector employees
the failure to provide a superannuation contribution to PPL has a negative effect on women’s lifetime and retirement incomes, and there is a mismatch in eligibility for unpaid leave under the National Employment Standard (NES) and eligibility for PPL. Some mothers eligible for PPL aren’t eligible for unpaid leave because of their work history.
Women earn less than men. The full-time total remuneration gender pay gap based on WGEA data is 22.4 %, meaning men working full-time earn nearly $26,527 a year more than women working full-time. When you consider total remuneration, women still get paid about 23 per cent less than men (this and other data at the Workplace Gender Equality Agency
