Women wearing surgical masks during Spanish Flu, Brisbane 1919.
Recently the Commonwealth government decided that hairdressers were essential. On March 26 Scott Morrison announced that nail clinics, beauty salons, and gyms will all close but hairdressers were a necessary service. Phew, every woman over a certain age and in possession of a certain amount of money, breathed a collective sigh bringing into even sharper focus the strange decision to add a caveat. However, he added, haircuts are now restricted to thirty minutes.
As soon as I heard the words flying out of the mouth of our Prime Minister, I imagined many women all over the country crying out “What the? That’s not enough time for anything”! This decision has now been reversed, due to the overwhelming response from the hairdressing industry. Slamming the decision to keep them open despite shutting down every other beauty profession.
As every [older] woman already knows, a good haircut is only part of the reason we go to a hairdresser. The rest, like the meme doing the rounds is about our grey hairs (‘feels like we are only 3-4 weeks away from learning everyone’s real hair colour.’) And this exercise takes way longer than 30 minutes. Surely suggesting that the only people making this decision fro all Australians was Scott Morrison, Brendan Murphy, the Chief Medical Officer Government and perhaps the treasure Josh Frydenberg. No woman could surely have been involved in that decision? There were none to be seen anyway when Morrison made the announcement, so we can only assume it’s a matter of a rule created by men for men.
When you want to make things clear to constituents in the twenty-first century and don’t include 50% of the population in the decision-making process, surely you are not thinking clearly? Were there really no women included in this decision at a national level? It’s bizarre. Hairdressing salons may be shut down any minute, but when it comes to decision-making on emergency social and economic shutdown measures, how much is gender bias influencing decisions, especially on a national level?
Everybody surely knows that the first place in the world to give women the vote was in South Australia in 1894. Way before Emmeline Pankhurst (1858-1928) and others in 1903, frustrated by the lack of progress for women’s votes in the United Kingdom, decided more direct action was required. They founded the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU). Their motto, hardly out of place today no matter what your creed, was 'Deeds not words'.
Sadly the 46th Parliament of Australia under Scott Morrison, by February 2020, had the same number of women in the cabinet as Kevin Rudd had in July 2013. Nearly seven years earlier. Yes, there was the brief interlude at the beginning of his leadership, in June 2019, when Morrison announced that his new cabinet had the largest majority in the cabinet since Parliament begun. But that was before the ‘Sports Rorts’ debacle and after the then liberal Party leader Malcolm Turnbull, had openly stated that there was indeed a 'women’s problem' in his party, with female representation down to 23%.
Nothing much has changed. Morrison’s grand statement this last International Women’s Day was even more concerning. He stated that he wanted women to rise, “but we don’t want to see women rise only on the basis of others doing worse.” As Kristine Zwicka so neatly articulated, this speech did little to highlight any new positive outcomes for women going forward. Instead it mirrored Anne Summers suggestion last year that the problem in the national government was a ‘man problem’, not a 'woman problem'.
On a state level, there are many more women in positions of authority. We have two female Premiers, Annastacia Palaszczuk (Queensland) and Gladys Berejiklian (New South Wales). The Chief Medical Officer in New South Wales is Dr. Kerry Chant, with a large majority of women in the Victorian state government. It would be interesting to analyse their decisions where some of the traditional female occupations like education and community services are on the front line in delivering face to face services in the era of COVID-19.
In the midst of what appears to be the most horrific national crisis facing our nation, it is remarkable that the gender issues so clearly obvious to so many of us who are watching the Morrison Government fumble its way through the unfolding nightmare, sadly underplay the importance this government places on women as people too, not the economy.
Recently the Commonwealth government decided that hairdressers were essential. On March 26 Scott Morrison announced that nail clinics, beauty salons, and gyms will all close but hairdressers were a necessary service. Phew, every woman over a certain age and in possession of a certain amount of money, breathed a collective sigh bringing into even sharper focus the strange decision to add a caveat. However, he added, haircuts are now restricted to thirty minutes.
As soon as I heard the words flying out of the mouth of our Prime Minister, I imagined many women all over the country crying out “What the? That’s not enough time for anything”! This decision has now been reversed, due to the overwhelming response from the hairdressing industry. Slamming the decision to keep them open despite shutting down every other beauty profession.
As every [older] woman already knows, a good haircut is only part of the reason we go to a hairdresser. The rest, like the meme doing the rounds is about our grey hairs (‘feels like we are only 3-4 weeks away from learning everyone’s real hair colour.’) And this exercise takes way longer than 30 minutes. Surely suggesting that the only people making this decision fro all Australians was Scott Morrison, Brendan Murphy, the Chief Medical Officer Government and perhaps the treasure Josh Frydenberg. No woman could surely have been involved in that decision? There were none to be seen anyway when Morrison made the announcement, so we can only assume it’s a matter of a rule created by men for men.
When you want to make things clear to constituents in the twenty-first century and don’t include 50% of the population in the decision-making process, surely you are not thinking clearly? Were there really no women included in this decision at a national level? It’s bizarre. Hairdressing salons may be shut down any minute, but when it comes to decision-making on emergency social and economic shutdown measures, how much is gender bias influencing decisions, especially on a national level?
Everybody surely knows that the first place in the world to give women the vote was in South Australia in 1894. Way before Emmeline Pankhurst (1858-1928) and others in 1903, frustrated by the lack of progress for women’s votes in the United Kingdom, decided more direct action was required. They founded the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU). Their motto, hardly out of place today no matter what your creed, was 'Deeds not words'.
Sadly the 46th Parliament of Australia under Scott Morrison, by February 2020, had the same number of women in the cabinet as Kevin Rudd had in July 2013. Nearly seven years earlier. Yes, there was the brief interlude at the beginning of his leadership, in June 2019, when Morrison announced that his new cabinet had the largest majority in the cabinet since Parliament begun. But that was before the ‘Sports Rorts’ debacle and after the then liberal Party leader Malcolm Turnbull, had openly stated that there was indeed a 'women’s problem' in his party, with female representation down to 23%.
Nothing much has changed. Morrison’s grand statement this last International Women’s Day was even more concerning. He stated that he wanted women to rise, “but we don’t want to see women rise only on the basis of others doing worse.” As Kristine Zwicka so neatly articulated, this speech did little to highlight any new positive outcomes for women going forward. Instead it mirrored Anne Summers suggestion last year that the problem in the national government was a ‘man problem’, not a 'woman problem'.
On a state level, there are many more women in positions of authority. We have two female Premiers, Annastacia Palaszczuk (Queensland) and Gladys Berejiklian (New South Wales). The Chief Medical Officer in New South Wales is Dr. Kerry Chant, with a large majority of women in the Victorian state government. It would be interesting to analyse their decisions where some of the traditional female occupations like education and community services are on the front line in delivering face to face services in the era of COVID-19.
In the midst of what appears to be the most horrific national crisis facing our nation, it is remarkable that the gender issues so clearly obvious to so many of us who are watching the Morrison Government fumble its way through the unfolding nightmare, sadly underplay the importance this government places on women as people too, not the economy.