Abstract
This chapter examines former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s withdrawal of welfare benefits to 150,000 single mothers on the day of her historic ‘misogyny speech,’ 9 October 2012. The contrast between the rhetoric of equality and the Fair Incentives to Work Bill was striking because it symbolised the discrepancy between women’s standing as ‘individuals’ in liberal-democratic societies and their standing as mothers. This chapter develops the argument, outlined in the author’s new book, that women are normatively free as ‘individuals’ in liberal-democratic societies, but remain constrained as mothers performing unpaid, invisible care work. Redefining women actively engaged in mothering as ‘unemployed’, as the Fair Incentives to Work Bill did, is a pernicious outcome of unfettered liberalism, which presupposes that all individuals are free to compete on the same terms. In the context of declining marriage and declining welfare, it is argued that this erroneous assumption has produced the problem of women’s poverty.
This chapter was originally presented as a plenary speech at ‘The Sexual Contract: 30 Years On’ conference, 10–11 May 2018, Cardiff University, Wales, https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/events/view/the-sexual-contract-30-years-on. I would like to thank the organisers from the Law and Gender Research Group Lydia Hayes, Sharon Thompson and Daniel Newman for the opportunity to present at this conference. I dedicate this chapter to Professor Carole Pateman, whom it was a great honour to meet at this conference.
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Notes
- 1.
‘Transcript of Julia Gillard’s Speech,’ The Sydney Morning Herald, 10 October 2012, https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/transcript-of-julia-gillards-speech-20121010-27c36.html.
- 2.
ABS News Australia, ‘Julie Gillard’s “Misogyny Speech” in Full,’ 8 October 2012, https://youtu.be/ihd7ofrwQX0.
- 3.
ABC News Australia, ‘Hillary Clinton says Julia Gillard’s “Misogyny Speech” was Striking,’ 16 June 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0rC-nqz-Co.
- 4.
Judith Ireland, ‘Misogyny Definition to Change after Gillard Speech,’ Sydney Morning Herald, 17 October 2012, https://web.archive.org/web/20121018173752/http://www.smh.com.au/national/misogyny-definition-to-change-after-gillard-speech-20121017-27q22.html.
- 5.
Anne Summers made the comment that the Australian press gallery was ‘out of kilter with how so many of the rest of us reacted.’ Anne Summers, ‘Gone is the Turned Cheek: Gillard as We’ve Rarely Seen Her,’ The Drum, 10 October 2012, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-10-10/summers-gillard-sexism/4305728.
The international commentary was largely positive, including by expatriate journalists. See Amelia Lester, ‘Ladylike: Julia Gillard’s Misogyny Speech,’ The New Yorker, 9 October 2012; Chloe Angyal, ‘It’s Good to See Julia Gillard Tackle Sexism Head-On,’ The Guardian, 10 October 2012, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/oct/09/julia-gillard-tackle-sexism.
- 6.
Critical feminist commentary after the speech was scarce. For two poignant examples drawing attention to the plight of single mothers, see Stephanie Convery, ‘On that Parliamentary Smackdown,’ Overland, 10 October 2012, https://overland.org.au/2012/10/on-that-parliamentary-smackdown/ and Shakira Hussein, ‘Pooping Gillard’s Party,’ Crikey, 10 October 2012, https://blogs.crikey.com.au/thestump/2012/10/10/pooping-gillards-party/.
- 7.
See Philip Mendes, ‘Retrenching or Renovating the Australian Welfare State: The Paradox of the Howard Government’s Neo-Liberalism,’ International Journal of Social Welfare 18, no. 1 (2009): 102–110.
- 8.
John Murphy, A Decent Provision: Australia Welfare Policy, 1870 to 1949 (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2011); Marilyn Lake, ‘State Socialism for Australian Mothers: Andrew Fisher’s Radical Maternalism in Its International and Local Contexts,’ Labour History 102 (2012): 55–70 (reprinted this volume).
- 9.
Under Gough Whitlam, Australia introduced the ‘Supporting Mother’s Benefit’ indexed to the average male wage.
- 10.
Ann Orloff, Farewell to Maternalism: Welfare Reform, Liberalism, and the End of Mothers’ Right to Choose between Employment and Full-Time Care (Evanston, IL: Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University, 2000).
- 11.
Carole Pateman, The Sexual Contract (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988).
- 12.
Marilyn Wearing, Counting for Nothing: What Men Value and What Women are Worth (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999).
- 13.
Lyn Craig, ‘Does Father Care Mean Fathers Share? A Comparison of How Mothers and Fathers in Intact Families Spend Time with Children, Gender and Society 20, no. 2 (2006): 259–281.
- 14.
Bettina Cass, ‘Citizenship, Work, and Welfare: The Dilemma for Australian Women,’ Social Politics 1, no. 1 (1994): 106–124.
- 15.
Marilyn Lake ‘“A Revolution in the Family”: The Challenge and Contradiction of Maternal Citizenship,’ in Mothers of a New World: Maternalist Politics and Welfares States in Comparative Perspective, eds. Seth Koven and Sonya Michel (New York: Routledge, 1993), 378–395.
- 16.
As Anwen Crawford notes, ‘When Fair Incentives to Work became law, Parenting Payment (Single) had an “income free area” of $176.60 per fortnight, plus $24.60 for each additional child, before payment was reduced by forty cents for every dollar earned above this. Newstart, on the other hand, had an income-free area of just $62 a fortnight before payment was also reduced by 40 cents in the dollar. Earlier this year [2014] the threshold was increased to $100 per fortnight.’ Anwen Crawford, ‘This Isn’t Working: Single Mothers and Welfare,’ Meanjin 73, no. 3 (2014), https://meanjin.com.au/essays/this-isnt-working-single-mothers-and-welfare/.
- 17.
Lake, ‘A Revolution in the Family.’
- 18.
In 1976, the Child Endowment was converted into the Family Allowance, and in 1981, mothers in low-income families were granted a basic allowance plus an additional payment for each child. Dale Daniels, ‘Social Security Payments for People Caring for Children, 1912–2008: A Chronology,’ Parliament of Australia, January 29, 2009, https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/BN/0809/children.
- 19.
John Carroll and Robert Manne, Shutdown: The Failure of Economic Rationalism and How to Rescue Australia (Melbourne: Text Publishing, 1992).
- 20.
Jane Lewis, ‘The Decline of the Male Breadwinner Model: Implications for Work and Care,’ Social Politics. International Studies in Gender, State and Society 8, no. 2 (2001): 152–169.
- 21.
Jane Jenson, ‘Inscribing Maternalism in the Social Investment Perspective,’ Review of European and Russian Affairs 9, no. 2 (2015): 4.
- 22.
While this name change signalled a change in eligibility criteria to include male single parents, which was a necessary and important development, it also had the effect of symbolically negating the reality that women do the great majority of ‘parenting.’ We see this in the language of government reviews like the one by Daniels cited in note 16: ‘Social Security Payments for People Caring for Children.’ Overwhelmingly, these ‘people’ are women.
- 23.
Belinda Hewitt and Janeen Baxter show that a third of all marriages end in divorce in Australia and this is predicted to rise to half or more in the coming decades. Belinda Hewitt and Janeen Baxter, ‘Relationship Dissolution,’ in Family Formation in 21st Century Australia, eds. Genevieve Heard and Dharma Arunachalam (Dordrecht: Springer, 2015), 77–99.
- 24.
Julia Gillard, ‘Walking the Reform Road,’ Gough Whitlam Oration, Whitlam Institute within Western Sydney University, 1 April 2011, https://www.whitlam.org/publications/2017/10/2/2011-inaugural-gough-whitlam-oration.
- 25.
John Rickard cited in Sarah Burnside, ‘Gillard, Work and Welfare,’ Eureka Street, 17 August 2011, https://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=27198.
- 26.
Lake, ‘State Socialism for Australian Mothers,’ 56.
- 27.
Cass , ‘Citizenship, Work, and Welfare.’
- 28.
Pateman, The Sexual Contract.
- 29.
The ‘goodies’ here are widows, preferably war widows, followed by deserted wives; the ‘baddies’ are unwed single mothers.
- 30.
David Stanton, ‘Sole Parents in Australia: Anniversaries and Reflections,’ ANU Workshop on The Impact of Policy Change and Macroeconomic Conditions on Australian Single Mothers, Social Policy Institute, Crawford School of Public Policy, Beryl Rawson Building, Australian National University, 28 October 2016.
- 31.
Brian Toohey cited in Burnside, ‘Gillard, Work and Welfare.’
- 32.
Petra Bueskens, ‘Poverty-Traps and Pay-Gaps: Why (Single) Mothers Need Basic Income,’ in Views of a Universal Basic Income: Perspectives from Across Australia, ed. Tim Hollo (Melbourne: Greens Institute, 2017): 42–51; Anne Manne, ‘Mothers and the Quest for Social Justice: From the “Universal Breadwinner” to the “Universal Caregiver” Regime,’ in Dangerous Ideas about Mothers, eds. Rachel Robertson and Camilla Nelson (Perth: UWA Publishing, 2018), 17–33.
- 33.
Crawford, ‘This Isn’t Working’; Petra Bueskens, ‘Single Mothers and the Sexual Contract,’ On Line Opinion: Australia’s e-Journal of Social and Political Debate, 21 February 2013, http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=14716&page=2.
- 34.
ACOSS, Poverty in Australia 2018 (Strawberry Hills, NSW: Australian Council of Social Service, in partnership with the University of New South Wales, 2018), 13–15.
- 35.
ACOSS, Poverty in Australia 2018, 13.
- 36.
Bueskens, ‘Poverty-Traps and Pay-Gaps.’
- 37.
Pateman, The Sexual Contract.
- 38.
Orloff, Farewell to Maternalism.
- 39.
Petra Bueskens, Modern Motherhood and Women’s Dual Identities: Rewriting the Sexual Contract (London: Routledge, 2018).
- 40.
Pateman, The Sexual Contract, 14.
- 41.
Susan Maushart, Wifework: What Marriage Really Means for Women (Melbourne: Text, 2005).
- 42.
Bueskens, Modern Motherhood, 142–145.
- 43.
Arlie Hochschild with Anne Machung, The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home (New York: Viking, 1989).
- 44.
Sharon Hays, The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996).
- 45.
Catherine Hakim, Work-Lifestyle Choices in the 21st Century: Preference Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Anne Manne, ‘Women’s Preferences, Fertility and Family Policy: The Case for Diversity,’ People and Place 9, no. 4 (2001): 6–25; Janeen Baxter, Australian Mothers’ Participation in Employment: Analyses of Social, Demographic and Family Characteristics using the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey, Research Paper No. 52 (Melbourne: Australian Institute of Family Studies, 2013).
- 46.
Australian Human Rights Commission, ‘Supporting Working Parents: Pregnancy and Return to Work National Review—Report,’ 25 July 2015, https://www.humanrights.gov.au/our-work/sex-discrimination/publications/supporting-working-parents-pregnancy-and-return-work.
- 47.
Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA), ‘Australia’s Gender Pay Gap Statistics,’ 22 February 2019, https://www.wgea.gov.au/data/fact-sheets/australias-gender-pay-gap-statistics.
- 48.
Hakim, Work-Lifestyle Choices in the 21st Century.
- 49.
Carole Pateman, ‘The Patriarchal Welfare State,’ in The Disorder of Women: Democracy, Feminism and Political Theory, ed. Carole Pateman (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1989), 196–197.
- 50.
Pateman, ‘The Patriarchal Welfare State,’ 197.
- 51.
Ann Marie Slaughter, ‘Why Women Still Can’t Have It All,’ The Atlantic, July/August, 2012, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/07/why-women-still-cant-have-it-all/309020/.
- 52.
Tony Abbott cited in Anne Summers, ‘Her Rights at Work. The Political Persecution of Australia’s First Female Prime Minister,’ 9 September 2012, http://legacy.annesummers.com.au/2012/09/my-speech-her-rights-at-work-the-political-persecution-of-australias-first-female-prime-minister/.
- 53.
Carole Pateman, ‘Preface to the Thirtieth Anniversary Edition,’ in The Sexual Contract: Thirtieth Anniversary Edition (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2018), ix–xi.
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Bueskens, P. (2019). ‘Gillard’s Dilemma’, The Sexual Contract and Maternal Citizenship: The Case of Australian Single Mothers. In: Pascoe Leahy, C., Bueskens, P. (eds) Australian Mothering. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20267-5_20
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