At the Liberal Women's Convention in Adelaide on June 9, PM John Howard threw up his latest strategy to combat the alleged "fertility crisis" a $5000 payment to all women who give birth.
Howard is describing this as an "alternative to maternity leave". For Howard, the plan has myriad advantages over compulsory and universal paid maternity or parenting leave.
First, it is not designed to make life easier for working women. It will be paid to all women who produce children, because, he told the assembled delegates, "mothers with very young children still have a marked preference to be completely out of the labour force".
Second, it relieves the anxiety of the Australian Chamber of Industry and Small Business Association that they might be asked to contribute to the cost of raising the next generation of workers. The scheme will be entirely taxpayer-funded welfare, not wages.
Third, it's cheap. Compared to the savings he's made with childcare cuts, reductions in women's real wages and tightening of social security, it's chickenfeed.
There are eerie echoes of Howard's proposal in a recent incident in which a couple attending a Brisbane abortion clinic were approached by pro-lifers and offered $1000 to change their mind about terminating the woman's pregnancy. The couple, struggling financially with a young family, took the money and the woman did not have the termination. Two weeks later, still troubled by their decision, they sought counselling at Children by Choice and told the counsellor what had happened.
C by C's Cait Calcutt told the media that the offer of cash had been an important factor in changing the man's mind but that his wife had been less sure. "She was not relieved to have received the money", Calcutt said.
At the macro level, women are unlikely to be much relieved by a $5000 payment either. In the absence of decent pay, family friendly hours of work, quality child care and adequate, accessible health services it is a paltry bribe that will do nothing to alleviate the massive stress of being a mother in a sexist society.
And that hasn't been Howard's only attempt at social engineering in the last month.
On June 19, Howard expressed support for a radical plan to increase the rights of all men in child custody disputes. Men's rights advocates and anti-feminists such as Bettina Arndt are welcoming the so-called "presumption of joint custody" proposal as a way to redress the "massive power" that is wielded so "irresponsibly" by custodial mothers.
Arndt says the system, which automatically grants shared custody to both parents, has been a terrific success in the 30 US states in which it operates.
"There's intriguing US research showing a lower divorce rate in states with presumptions of joint custody, apparently because women denied the freedom traditionally associated with sole custody are more inclined to stay in the marriage and try to work out their problems", she wrote last week.
The stark reality, of course, is that in this society women have significantly less power than men less access to paid work and the status that goes with it and that is why they so often end up as impoverished sole-carers for their children.
If these women are no longer to be afforded the "freedom" traditionally associated with sole custody (freedom to rely on charity and beg help from family perhaps?), what kind of a prison will enforced joint custody be? The answer is: One from which there will be no escape.
BY KAREN FLETCHER
From Green Left Weekly, June 25, 2003.
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