Building Australian infrastructure: What works for women?
This year’s Federal budget, announced on May 11th, included a Women’s Budget Statement. Perhaps this was added after last year’s budget left many women feeling their needs were not considered. But will this budget deliver for women? Today’s analysis from Kathy MacDermott and Louise McSorley (@LouiseAMcSorley) , on behalf of the National Foundation for Australian Women (@NFAWomen), examines the government’s infrastructure plans using a gender lens. This piece is synthesized from the NFAW’s infrastructure analysis.
Infrastructure and the Women’s Budget Statement
While the 2021 Women’s Budget Statement (WBS) looks like a formal budget paper, its content has not really developed much beyond the glossy women’s statements that preceded it. Like those, it simply collects and exhibits measures specifically targeting women, a significant number of which actually preceded the 2021 budget. This year’s WBS initiatives make up a tiny percent of the overall budget – 0.14 per cent of total Commonwealth outlays over a four-year period.
When did we conclude the wall was of more value than the service? Photo by Matthew Waring on Unsplash
What the 2021 WBS does not do is to systematically examine mainstream budget initiatives to determine whether they have a gendered outcome, intentional or not. This applies to both the revenue and the expenditure side of the budget. For example, the effect of consumption taxes (taxes attached to goods and services) will be felt more by women, whereas changes in income taxes are more likely to affect men. Or, as was obvious in last year’s budget, industry stimulus measures in a sex-segregated economy like Australia’s are likely to have strongly gendered impacts. If you pour money into male-dominated industries, like physical infrastructure, men are going to be the ones who will principally benefit -- though women do get to use the roads.
In fact, there are a number of measures in the 2021 budget that should have a positive impact on employment in female-dominated industries, but that impact is not reported in the WBS. These include spending staged over the forward estimates in areas of the care economy such as childcare ($1.7 billion), aged care ($17.7 billion), mental health ($2 billion), support for victims of family violence ($998.1 million), and the NDIS ($13.2 billion).
After the 2020 budget the government was left in no doubt by researchers, women’s groups, NGOs and think tanks about the need to spend on the care economy. But the Budget does not begin by recognising the gendered nature of the care workforce and instead largely treats care expenditure in terms of services delivered without reference to those who are delivering them.
The consequence is that the unique factors affecting the supply of carers (such as effective marginal tax rates) and the valuing of care work (through current work value cases) never made it into budget measures, and, where training is paid for, it is often paid for in the absence of clear and articulated skills development plans. (The partial exception to this generalisation is childcare, which is recognized in the budget as affecting the supply of women workers, while the childcare workforce is itself is still ignored.)
Social infrastructure—where women work
The Health Care and Social Assistance industry is the largest industry by employment in Australia, taking in sectors such as hospitals, GPs and aged and child care. It now accounts for 12.6 per cent of Australia’s working population, and is 77.9% female. What is more, the sector is forecast to grow: aged care has been estimated to require an additional 100,000 workers over the next 20 years (p 8); in child care 39,000 additional educators, including 9,000 additional Early Childhood Teachers will be wanted by 2023 (p.4); in disability care the current shortage is estimated at 120,000.
Recent reports on aged care (p. 76) child care, (p. 31), and disability care (p. 5), have all found, however, that employers in the sector are having difficulty attracting and retaining well-skilled people due to low wages, employment conditions configured to further cut costs, lack of investment in staff and, in particular, staff training and the absence of career pathways.
This is a systemic problem, driven by government funding levels combined with the proportion of care operators using a commercial business model, and enabled by the continued undervaluation of women’s work. The National Foundation for Australian Women (NFAW) has documented the problem at length in its recent submission to the Senate Select Committee on Job Security, but it is best summed up in Per Capita’s Case for a Care-led Recovery:
The systemic insecurity of employment in the care economy has been pursued by providers, and allowed under government policy, in the pursuit of cost savings and profit growth for private, for-profit operators of both residential and in-home care. This workforce ‘flexibility’ reduces the cost of labour for providers by eliminating on-costs such as sick leave and other workplace entitlements, and often, by keeping monthly hours for each employee below the mandated threshold, even negates the requirement to pay superannuation to care workers. (p. 12)
It is clear why employers report difficulty attracting and retaining staff. Many workers in the fields of aged care, disability care and early childhood education and care, who are required to have at least Certificate III level qualifications, are paid little more than the minimum wage available to workers with no skills or qualifications:
Retail sales assistant (Aldi) – average hourly pay $25.58
Gas meter reader – average hourly pay $22.97
Average personal care worker – $22.87
Rather than address the problem of raising wages and improving conditions, the sector has relied for more than a third of its workforce (p. 10) on migrant women who are not protected by employment law due to temporary visa status, and who risk deportation or other legal immigration issues if they are not compliant (Joseph 2019, p. 12).
The 2021 budget assumes that in spite of low pay and poor conditions – in spite even of current restrictions on migration – women will be found to do the additional jobs in the care sector, although it does not estimate how many of those jobs the funding will generate. NFAW estimates that around 11,000 will be required in residential aged care[1] and 10,000 in childcare[2]; and the disability care workforce is estimated to require an additional 90,000 full-time equivalent workers to meet current funding projections consistent with budget commitments (p. 1).
Workforce supply may, however, continue to lag behind demand. The government has no plan to address the issue of undervaluation of work in the care sector, which – since it is the key funder in the sector – means that undervaluation will not be addressed. There is a pattern emerging:
Noting that the only Equal Remuneration claim successfully brought to the Fair Work Commission (FWC) under the present legislation was a claim endorsed by the government of the day, the Royal Commission recommended that the principal funder, the Australian Government, join in the current application for a work value pay increase in the sector (Aged Care Royal Commission 2021, Vol 1, p. 263, recommendation 84). The government’s response (p. 56) was to wash its hands of the matter.
A five-year equal remuneration case for childcare workers was rejected by the Fair Work Commission in 2018 on technical grounds. Again, the the Australian Government, as the main ultimate funder of the services, did not support the claim.
The government looks set again to wash its hands of responsibility for the undervaluation of caring work, this time in response to the FWC’s invitation to comment on the implementation of a work value decision reached after eight years and the rejection of an equal pay claim (again on technical grounds) affecting 12,000 early childhood educators.
Fortunately, providing some hope, social workers and carers in the family violence and mental health support sector were largely given equal remuneration in the 2012 case cited by the Aged Care Royal Commission, where the claim was supported by the Gillard government.
Apart from a package of scholarships and bonuses for eligible registered nurses (Budget Paper No 2, p. 103), there is no strategy in place to lift wages and address the undervaluing of the workforce and the risk of shortages and skill gaps, since ‘the current education and training skills and qualification framework is not aligned with the nature of the work’ (p. 24).
While there is little demonstrated concern for low wages and poor worker protections, the budget does contain funding for a media campaign to build the aged care workforce -- $9.8 million over two years from 2021‑22 (Budget Paper No 2, p. 103). There is also a commitment of $105.6 million to introduce nationally consistent worker screening, register and code‑of‑conduct for care sector workers including aged care, disability and veterans sectors (Budget Paper No 2, p. 103) – a welcome development for workers moving to less badly paid sectors, but likely to put even more pressure on industries where undervaluation is worst (p. 18).
Meanwhile, the Budget continues to target payments to operators, who have an established record of approaching workforce management as a cost-cutting opportunity.
If social infrastructure is where women work, physical infrastructure is where women live.
The physical infrastructure of roads and bridges, even new commuter carparks at railway stations (a feature of the 2020 Budget), are critical parts of a budget to keep a flagging economy ticking over, creating jobs and injecting cash into the economy, especially in regional areas. While new roads and road improvements can also be about road safety, they play an important role in connecting communities in an efficient and safe way. Communities socialise together, work together and trade together and this improves the social and economic quality of life.
Gender roles and stereotypes mean that women and men engage with infrastructure differently . While everyone benefits from safer roads, the direct beneficiaries are men. The Monash Accident Research Centre notes men are over-represented in road fatality statistics in all but one age group. Men also have longer commutes by car. Road design and improvements that focus on improving road safety therefore disproportionately benefit men. But if you add in improving bicycle and pedestrian safety, you move towards a more inclusive investment.
Women are less likely to cycle when they perceive the cycling environment as unsafe, so road safety infrastructure investments incorporating cycle ways increase the potential for women to access cycling as a mode of transport. Despite barriers, women are more likely to be pedestrians, so providing safe, separated and wide walking paths to accommodate prams or for walkers with small children, together with landscaping and lighting that enhances visibility, also increase perceptions of safety. This increases usage.
Similarly, road upgrades without considering how access to public transport will operate (including safe, weatherproof and well-lit waiting areas) are investments that can exclude women and lower-income groups, the largest group users of public transport, particularly in regional areas. Time tabling is usually the major driver of patronage. Inclusive timetabling accommodates the nature of women’s travel – trips in a chain, from home to shops, to health care and childcare or school. Making the public transport accessible and easy to use for women with children, women with disability and carers of less mobile elders also improves inclusion.
Infrastructure extends beyond transport. One of the unexpected outcomes of the rollout of the National Broadband Network was the exponential growth in the number of self-employed women. Access to highspeed broadband saw the number of self-employed women grow around 2 per cent per year, compared to only 0.1% pa in areas without the NBN.
The 2021 budget continued the grant programs that fund community infrastructure. Changing rooms, toilets and showers for women at sporting fields, meeting rooms for women’s groups, increased shelter at sports fields, improved children’s playgrounds, widened pathways with new lighting, and cycleways are all examples of community infrastructure that should be eligible for funding under these programs. At first glance these might all appear to be gender sensitive. But also consider a new covered grandstand area at the football field. A weekend football match can be the major social event of the week in a regional area. Without ramp access to the grandstand covered area, people with disability and women with prams and toddlers will be excluded.
Sustainable infrastructure is infrastructure that meets the needs of all users, not just a select few, through its entire lifecycle. It requires listening to women’s specific needs during planning (not just a general call for public submissions), careful gender-sensitive design as noted above and inclusion of women in employment opportunities in infrastructure construction and operation. Infrastructure jobs should not just be jobs for men. Careful thought to work environment, working hours, wage rates and incentives (imagine employer-supported childcare) all contribute to making construction and maintenance apprenticeships and careers more realistic and attractive for women. This is more than just hard hats and work boots in shades of pink. The Federal Budget should be working hard to make its expenditure on infrastructure efficient for women and for men. It currently does not.
This post is part of the Women's Policy Action Tank initiative to analyse government policy using a gendered lens. View our other policy analysis pieces here.
Posted by @SusanMaury
References and notes
Naomi Joseph, N (2019), Marketising Disability Services: A love-hate in a neoliberal world, Social Justice, Practice and Theory, Vol 2, No 2 Student Edition 2209-0878, Sydney University.
[1] Based on modelling commissioned by the Health Services Union recalculated for actual budget commitments. The HSU model incorporated a $5 per hour wage increase, which makes this a conservative estimate.
[2] The Minister’s media release pointed to Treasury modelling suggesting up to 40,000 additional women joining the workforce. Then there will be current women increasing their days of work as well. An additional 40,000 families could mean an increase of around 5% in attendances in long day care. Over a workforce of around 200,000 ECEC workers, that would be another 10,000 workers needed.