2010, marks the fortieth anniversary of the publication of Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch. This important book challenged the traditional role of women in families and their treatment in schools, workplaces and in civil society generally. The book helped to provide an intellectual framework for the women’s liberation movement that was emerging at the time, but how far have Australian women come since the publication of Greer’s treatise? Have we ‘got to equal’? The task of surveying the position of women in Australian society takes us beyond our usual focus on women’s workplace and labour market participation and experience.
'Robin Hood tax' takes from the banks to give to the worthy
Written by Jo-anne Schofield
Thursday, 25 February 2010 16:24
Nearly 800 years after celebrated rogue Robin Hood and his entourage of bandits launched raids from their Sherwood Forest hide-out - redistributing wealth from a greedy and corrupt aristocracy to the starving peasantry - he has been recruited to a new campaign.
This month, 350 prominent economists, including Nobel Prize-winner Joseph Stiglitz, have publicly backed a proposed ''Robin Hood tax'' on speculative financial transactions, which could raise about $US400 billion ($A450 billion) a year worldwide to prop up failing infrastructure, boost health and education resources, fight poverty and deliver a kitty for practical climate change action.
My School is a stunt if it's not backed up by funding
Written by Jo-anne Schofield
Deciding to take a peek at the My School website was a little like tuning in to Big Brother – I knew what I was about to see might alarm me, but I couldn’t help being drawn in for a little look.
And given the huge number of hits on the site over the last few weeks, there is no doubt that education – and the quality of education – is a huge issue, although I did wonder if they were all guilt ridden mothers like me who spend too much time on the net.
The main role of governments is to promote economic and social opportunities for all their citizens. This includes opportunities to learn and work, to enjoy good health and relationships, to have affordable housing and transport options, to raise children and pursue pastimes, to be treated fairly and to be helped when hardship strikes. Lack of these opportunities is the main cause, and also the main consequence, of hardship and injustice.
The tax system is the major source of money governments can use to promote these opportunities by, for example, funding education, health care, social security and transport. The funding may directly benefit individuals and families or it may assist them by promoting economic or community development which will provide them with work and income.
You might not have noticed with everything else going on in politics this week, but it’s been social inclusion week. What does this mean? Executive Director Jo-anne Schofield explores what social inclusion really means...
Since this article was written in June the "debate" about asylum seekers or, more accurately, those of them who arrive by boat, has re-erupted in the Australian media. Again it has generated domestic division and political pointscoring with scant attention being paid to the root causes of people fleeing their home countries.
Within our region Australia should be setting the standard for dealing with the complexities of refugee processing. It is not acceptable for children to be detained on Christmas Island or indefinitely in Indonesian detention centres.
Refugees will remain an ongoing international problem and Australia needs to lead the international community in finding durable solutions with appropriate resettlement options.
- Dianne Hiles, 10th November 2009
Against a backdrop of tensions in Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Myanmar, the Horn of Africa, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) has monitored a global rise in refugees and displaced people. While Australia has an off-shore humanitarian program that is second to none, accepting in 2007–8 10,800 refugees for humanitarian resettlement, policies dealing with on-shore asylum seekers continue to be highly politicised.
Co-inciding with the release of our first publication, Equality Speaks: Challenges for a fair society, Catalyst asked a group of primary students to explore what Australia would look like if it was a village of just 100 people.
Based on Australian Bureau of Statistics data, here is how Ella, Callum, Natalia, Paloma, Rosie and Willow saw Australia as a village....
