Molly Saunders
Prior research has shown that health inequities worsen during pandemics. In this blog piece Professor Helen Dickinson and Professor Anne Kavanagh highlight the health inequities already faced by people with disability and how the Covid-19 pandemic could make these worse. They outline steps the Government urgently needs to implement to protect people with disability as the pandemic progresses.
Read MoreThe issue of school closures in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic has been polarising the political and public discourse in Australia. In this blog post Professor Peter Collignon from ANU Medical School discusses why the Australian Government recommends keeping schools open for now.
Read MoreAs Covid-19 case numbers have been rising quickly in Australia Government responses and recommedations to the public have also been fast moving. In an age where trust in our political institutions is at an all time low Professor John Shine from the Australian Academy of Science argues that in such a fast moving environment transparency must be at the core of Government responses. The Academy has thus called on the Government to make all the data and science underpinning their Covid-19 decisions be made public.
Read MoreThe Covid-19 pandemic is exposing a raft of issues with social welfare policy in Australia. Australia’s lack of social housing and lack of affordable rentals means many people are living in crowded or inadequate housng, or are homeless. In today’s blog post Nicole Gurran, Peter Phibbs and Tess Lea discuss the issues Australia is now facing as Covid-19 intersects with homelessness and inadequate housing, and what governments need to do to help.
Read MoreAs unemployment surges in the face of Covid-19, advocacy groups are calling for Government to respond by raising the rate of all welfare payments and put an end to the Cashless Debit Card trial. Yesterday the Accountable Income Management Network and the Australian Unemployed Workers Union issued a joint Media Release outlining their calls to the Federal Government. Below are their demands:
Read MoreCovid19 is creating massive employment upheavals with significant implications for peoples’ mental health. In today’s blog Post Aurora Elmes discusses the role social enterprises can play in providing flexible and supportive workplaces for vulnerable people and the need for government to consider how they can support these businesses to help cushion some of the economic and social fallout from Covid-19.
Read MoreAustralians are increasingly isolating in an attempt to flatten the curve of Covid-19’s spread. This is having profound impacts on our everyday lives, but the evidence is clear that the impact is far greater for women. In today’s piece, Policy Whisperer Susan Maury (@SusanMaury) of Good Shepherd Australia New Zealand (@GoodAdvocacy) outlines some of the key concerns for women’s safety that quarantine measures and its impacts are raising. If you need immediate help, call 000. If you are looking for advice or support, contact 1800RESPECT.
Read MoreThere is a very real fear that Covid-19 will have a worse impact on people with disability and yet, as Professor Helen Dickinson discusses in today’s blog post, they are being left out of the Government’s response.
Read MorePaige Fletcher, a PhD Candidate at Flinders University, is examining the influence of actors outside government on public policy through a case study of feminist organisations and policy addressing gendered violence. She explains here why this research is needed and how to get involved.
Read MoreCOVID-19 is rapidly changing the world around us, and disability peak organisations in Australia have called on government to move quickly to guarantee continuity of essential services, support and information for people with disability, and to curb the risk of infection for people with disability and their support workers. People with disability are rightly worried about the particular risks this health crisis poses for them. This message from the Australian Federation of Disability Organisations, Children and Young People with Disability, Disability Advocacy Network Australia, First People Disability Network, Inclusion Australia, National Ethnic Disability Alliance, People with Disability Australia and Women with Disabilities Australia explains what needs to be done.
Read MoreIn today’s post, Dr Kathryn Snow methodically and clearly addresses some key questions about COVID-19. Dr Snow is a health services researcher and epidemiologist at the University of Melbourne and the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, and collaborates with clinicians, health authorities, and qualitative researchers to improve health services for vulnerable groups. This post was originally published on her blog.
Read MoreLeading health and disability researchers in Australia are calling for urgent action from State and Federal governments to develop a targeted response to COVID-19 for people with disability, their families and the disability service sector. In this post originally published by Croakey, Professor Anne Kavanagh from the University of Melbourne and Associate Professor Gemma Carey from UNSW flag risks facing people with disability in this rapidly shifting environment and set out recommendations for government to mitigate those risks.
Read MoreWhen 60 Minutes aired a segment called ‘Does Australia really want to see the end of Down syndrome?’ in August 2017, its Facebook platform was flooded with negative comments about people with Down syndrome and their parents. Belinda Johnson and Dr Raelene West from RMIT University examined the online responses to the program and uncovered confronting views of Down syndrome as an economic burden, a medical burden and a social burden. As they worked their way through comments questioning the right of children with Down syndrome to access publicly funded disability services in light of advances in prenatal testing, for example, the authors began to question the extent to which derogatory and ill-informed comments that push people with disabilities into an exhausting and endless process of justifying their existence should be tolerated in the name of free speech. Their findings were recently published in the Journal of Sociology.
Read MoreSocial inclusion is a determinant of mental health and wellbeing. In today’s analysis, Autumn Pierce (@otonoenespanol) of Women’s Health East (@WHEast) shares highlights from their important new report The Unheard Story: The Impact of Gender on Social Inclusion for Older Women, which explores how inequalities accumulate across the lifespan to increase the risk and impacts of social exclusion for older women.
Read MoreIn the wake of International Women’s Day last Sunday, an annual United Nations day with a 2020 theme of ‘I am Generation Equality: Realising Women’s Rights’. Sarah Squire (@SquireSarah) of the Butterfly Foundation (@BFoundation) explores the role that diet culture and other sociocultural factors play in women and girls’ lives. Reflecting on some key challenges, she suggests policy levers and tips for improving women’s relationships with their bodies. This blog originally appeared on The Butterfly Foundation website.
Read MoreImplementation of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) is the biggest reform to the disability sector since deinstitutionalisation. To the broader community it can be assumed that the NDIS will benefit all people with disabilities. In the week of International Women’s Day, Jen Hargrave (@Jen_Hargrave) of Women with Disabilities Victoria (WDVtweet) and University of Melbourne (@MSPHSC) and Maeve Kennedy (@mkennedy_vic) of Children and Young People with Disability Australia (@CDA39) look into the reform’s fitness to achieve gender equality now and for the next generation.
In this piece we discuss the NDIS’ capacity to provide women with greater choice and control, and a number of areas of equity and sustainability. We also examine the way the NDIS supports, or fails to support, women experiencing violence and consider the potential impact of broader gender equality measures on a market-based scheme.
Read MoreAs described in our piece on what the revocation of the Equal Remuneration Order may mean for Australia’s female-dominated community services sector, ongoing government funding is critical to maintain quality services. In today’s companion piece, Kathy McDermott of the National Foundation for Australian Women (@NFAW) describes the advocacy efforts of the sector and peak bodies with the Morrison Government on this issue, and calls for meaningful engagement.
Read MoreMuch of the gender pay gap can be explained by different pay scales in male- and female-dominated industries, which raises questions of how society values health, education and social services. In a landmark ruling, an Equal Remuneration Order (ERO) was granted to social and community service workers to legislate a much-needed pay rise across the sector. In today’s piece, Natasha Cortis of UNSW shares insight from research she conducted with Megan Blaxland on the role that government supplementation has played in ensuring the sector could maintain quality service while also implementing the award. More information can be found in their report: Challenges for Australia’s Community Sector: ERO Supplementation.
Read MoreIn order to truly represent Australia in all its diversity, we also need greater diversity in our politics. Evidence shows that increasing female representation has a very real impact on the legislation that is raised. In Australia, however, while the numbers of women in politics is slowly inching upward, many women have said that engaging in politics come at a cost seldom borne by their male counterparts: Consider, for example, Nova Peris’ recent comments on the racial abuse she endured, or the slander endured by Senator Sarah Hanson-Young.
For International Women’s Day, in today’s post Blair Williams (@BlairWilliams26) of Australian National University provides an overview of her research into the way women Prime Ministers are portrayed in the media, how that denigrates their authority and capability, and the negative impact it is having on increasing female political representation.
Read MoreFew people are aware of co-design’s political roots. The concept first emerged in Scandinavia in the 1970’s through union insistence that workers be included in the major restructuring of their industries as a way of “emancipating workers at the workplace” (p. 145). Central in its philosophy is the tenet to equalise power as a prerequisite for true collaboration. For International Women’s Day, Summer May Finlay (@SummerMayFinlay) of University of South Australia explains why the government has shown bad faith in failing to adopt the full recommendations from the Uluru Statement from the Heart. As long as full citizen rights are withheld from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, women’s rights will also fail to be achieved.
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