On October 5, PM John Howard increased his attacks on mothers who work full-time, with the announcement of the new "maternity allowance": a flat payment, probably of $5000, paid to all women who give birth. This is superior, Howard argued, to providing paid maternity leave because it is "not restricted to working women".
According to the October 7 Brisbane Courier-Mail, the payment will cost the government around $1 billion a year. The Australian Council of Trade Unions estimated that 14 weeks of paid maternity leave for all working women would cost just over $400 million a year.
Howard's scheme is not maternity leave.
Firstly, it is designed to take the pressure off bosses who are too greedy to provide employees with paid time to recover from giving birth and then to spend with their children .
Secondly, it is yet another hand-out to those who have done best under Howard's "family friendly schemes" — well-off families with stay-at-home mothers.
Thirdly — and most importantly — it does not guarantee women the all-important right to continuous employment.
In the 1960s and early '70s, women were expected to resign from their jobs in order to have children. After a few years at home looking after their kids, if they wanted or needed to go back to work, they had to start looking again, and at a disadvantage. I vividly remember my mother, a qualified and experienced teacher, going back to college in order to retrain herself into a job when I started school in the late 1970s.
The feminist explosion of that decade ensured that my generation has many more choices. My sister is lucky enough to work in the public service, which provides 12 weeks of paid maternity leave, and more unpaid leave. She can spend a year at home with her child, before picking up her job where she left off. She could choose to have children without fear of losing her financial independence.
But most women workers are not so lucky — less than 15% of private-sector workers have access to paid maternity leave at all. Of those who do, only a small minority can get as much as 12 weeks.
Permanent workers are now guaranteed, at least, a year's unpaid leave. But this is of little benefit to working women employed in casual jobs for less than a year, who, like women decades ago, must resign and take their chances at re-employment later on if they decide to take time off to have children. Thirty-three per cent of women workers are casual employees.
Howard's plan will not help these women much. But then, it is not designed to. While few would knock back extra cash, it is a fraction of the cost of raising a child. It does not even begin to scratch the surface of what it costs women to retrain and look for work.
Howard has a long history of "encouraging" women to restrict themselves to full-time caring roles. In 1996, Howard cut $40 million from childcare subsidies. In July 2000, changes to the parenting payment denied the full rate to women who took less than a year off work. The 2001 "baby bonus" provided a tax rebate than benefited the wealthy more than the poor.
Howard's claim that the "maternity allowance" would be better than just paying women who work is disingenuous. Maternity leave — which guarantees a women's right to return to her job — is not about forcing women into the full-time work force, it is about giving them the option to be in the work force. These choices should be available to all women.
BY ALISON DELLIT
[The author is a member of the Democratic Socialist Party and the Socialist Alliance.]
From Green Left Weekly, October 15, 2003.
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