Silver linings: What are the ‘keepers’ from 2020?

Nobody would disagree that 2020 has been a tough year. In today’s piece, Policy Whisperer Susan Maury (@SusanMaury) of Good Shepherd Australia New Zealand (@GoodAdvocacy) looks for the silver lining.

What a year 2020 has been! Nobody could have predicted in January that the Coronavirus would bring so much human activity to a halt. In Australia we have been fortunate to have the policies and our natural isolation from the rest of the world to allow us to get the pandemic under control (at this point in time at least). Nevertheless, it was a difficult year and fraught with anxiety, closed schools, closed businesses, increased unemployment, isolation from loved ones and – most tragically – illness and loss of life.

Located in Melbourne as I am, we are slowly returning to something like normalcy. It has left me pondering on the silver linings from this year – what will I miss? What would be welcome to keep as we move out of lockdown? Yes, I think there’s a few things.

Silver linings of the pandemic

I have loved all the walking. While we have always done a fair bit of walking, we have gotten to know our neighbourhood in new ways and enjoyed the little libraries, the teddy bears in the windows, and the Spoonvilles – positive artefacts of this strange time. After years of resistance, I finally agreed to get a dog, and we’ve enjoyed taking our ‘pandemic pup’ on our walks and getting to know other dog owners in our local off-lead park. We have normalised walking to the shops for our groceries or a coffee – something we had failed to achieve in 12 years of living in the same location.

The global reduction in pollution and carbon emissions has been incredible. It turns out we can reduce our dependence on airplane and car travel when pushed into it. On a related note, the reduction of traffic has been a dream.

The community spirit and cooperation that was foundational to Australia’s success at containing COVID-19 was modelled for the world by Indigenous communities; in fact, they were far more successful at containing the virus than the general population while also maintaining social supports for older people and others who had medical vulnerabilities.

More walking, less pollution… and a greater appreciation for women’s contributions and challenges - all things to keep as we move away from 2020. Photo by Daniel Gregoire on Unsplash

The world has a new-found appreciation for female-dominated industries, many of which are categorised as ‘essential services’. Anyone who had children learning from home understands that teachers have an incredibly difficult and critical role in childhood development. Beyond that, schools provide safety and stability that would otherwise be lacking for some children and families. Ditto for early childhood educators and the role that childcare provides in enabling women to engage in employment and further their careers. Health care professionals, overwhelmingly female, have literally put their lives on the line during this pandemic, with higher rates of COVID-19 infection. The pandemic has demonstrated that aged care workers are providing critical services despite the lack of worker protections and poor remuneration.

The stigma attached to people who receive income support has lessened, with a greater understanding of how personal realities can overlay with poor employment opportunities to make taking up meaningful paid work extremely difficult. The reality of living on $40 per day is sinking in for people who have recently gone onto JobSeeker and face a reduction to well below the poverty line just as the Christmas season comes upon us, coupled with the ramping up of mutual obligation requirements, which too often take up time that could otherwise be spent productively, while leading to payment suspensions.

The daily conundrums faced by single mothers have been felt more widely, as more women were expected to both work productively and provide care to their children – at home and often without help. While it’s definitely not the same experience that single mothers have had at this time, it’s a small insight into the policies that have kept single-mother households the poorest in Australia for years, and raises the question of why women who are expected to do it all without help and well below the poverty line are being marginalised by government policy.

Rates of domestic and family violence came to the fore as everyone hunkered down in their homes, with the realisation that for some households this was not a safe arrangement. Greater community understanding of the difficulties faced by victim/survivors to remain safe and access help led to greater compassion and a sense of urgency to ensure women and children are properly supported in such situations.

What can we keep?

As we farewell 2020, I hope we can re-align everyday life to incorporate some of these silver linings. How lovely it will be if we can facilitate more walking and cycling, and to see a longer-term commitment to reducing carbon emissions.

The leadership, organisation and successful execution of a strategy to protect Indigenous populations from COVID-19 should be acknowledged and respected by government by opening meaningful talks on embracing the Uluru Statement from the Heart.

And wouldn’t it be lovely if we could properly value female-dominated industries and ensure they include proper remuneration and worker protections going forward? While the Federal government has focussed on male-dominated industries to spur on recovery, economists have modelled the far greater benefits of investing in our social infrastructure, which would provide more dispersed and longer-term economic benefits.

Ensuring that people on income support are able to live a life of dignity and to afford the very basic needs of life – such as food – would have multiple benefits. Providing money to people on lower incomes is actually a better strategy for economic recovery than tax cuts for higher-income earners, because they will immediately put that money right back into the economy. It’s also an opportunity to re-visit who the government considers to be ‘unemployed’ since many people who are on JobSeeker, including single mothers with young children, people with compromised physical or mental health, and people experiencing or leaving family violence, are not in a position to take on meaningful employment.

Speaking of single mothers, in addition to raising income support payments to keep them out of poverty, it’s an excellent time to revisit child support policies which make it incredibly difficult for them to collect payments in a reliable manner.

Ensuring women and children experiencing family violence can access supports and keep themselves safe requires proper funding for current supports and an understanding what the critical factors are for women’s and children’s safety – chief amongst them financial stability.

Reflecting on the past year, there’s much we can learn from these difficult times. Rebuilding with these lessons in mind gives us opportunity to create a safer, more sustainable, healthier and farer society.

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