What does invisibility look like for women in South Australia? This episode showcases The Invisible Woman Adelaide Panel Discussion, as our expert panel responds to the invisible woman syndrome, and what invisibility looks like in South Australia. The two-part series spans across issues related to employment, housing, domestic violence, and intersectionality, our expert panellists explore how these factors impact one another. Listen to Lord Mayor Sandy Verschoor, Adelaide City Council; Emerita Professor Christine Beasley, The University of Adelaide; Sanjugta Vas Dev, Director Office for Women; Jane Mussared, Chief Executive of COTA SA and Dr Pam Papadelos, the University of Adelaide discuss the key issues women are facing in South Australia. This event is part of our commitment to raising awareness of gender and age equity issues. This episode was made possible through our social partnership with the City of Adelaide, with support from the University of Adelaide and The Office for Women, with special thanks to the Fay Gale Centre on gender research. Stay tuned for part 2
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00:00:14:17 - 00:00:47:07
Carley Bishop
Captured on the lands of the peoples of the and call a nation. We pay our respects to the elders past, present and emerging.
Carley Bishop: [00:00:48] In this special edition of the invisible woman podcast, we are proud to announce part one of the invisible woman Adelaide panel discussion. In part one, we're introduced to our panel featuring Adelaide Lord mayor, Sandy Vishal, Emerita professor Christine Beasley from the university of Adelaide st. Judah bus dev the director of the office for women Adelaide.
Jane Mussared the chief executive of COTA, South Australia, and Dr. Pam Papadelos from the university of Adelaide. Shannon is they discuss women in leadership, homelessness. Diverse communities and the complexity of carving a career path.
This episode was made possible through our social partnership with the City of Adelaide, with support from the University of Adelaide and the office for women and with special thanks to the Fay Gale Center on gender research.
Mayor Sandy Verschoor: Welcome everybody. And I acknowledge that we're on traditional country, the Ghana people of the Adelaide Plains and pay my respects to elders [00:01:00] pass and present, and also extend that respect to other Aboriginal language group. And other first nations who may be with us today.
And I thank Jack buckskin for the gift of language. We in the city of Adelaide are very aware of what's happening to the women in our city and around our city. And in particular the effects of the last couple of years with COVID and what that impact has been particularly on older women, but, but even on younger women the, the cohort of women have been most affected by this because generally they're the ones that are part-time workers due to family responsibilities, and that might be children or might be aging parents.
It is most likely in most cases that it is the female that takes on those responsibilities. I've worked alongside many of the care agencies and the service agencies. The prevalence is really frightening to think that's what's happening at the moment. And the numbers that are falling into homelessness particularly in that cohort over 55 is is really frightening.
Particularly as you get to that part of your [00:02:00] life. So I'm really looking forward to the conversation today because if there's any solutions that we can come up with, I'd love to hear them. We work very closely on some of the other issues equality, of course, and also domestic violence.
My deputy Lord mayor is Aman Abrahim today that I think most people know he's been a tireless campaigner against domestic violence and has the Zara foundation named after his mother who was killed in a domestic violence assault And so it's something that has never left our agenda this term.
And I thank Armand for his work in that area. He's constantly brought that back into us. We've made sure that we have lots of policy in place, lots of even leave provisions in place. But more so we've done additional training around bystander. So just to make people understand what it is to be a bystander and how to actually not be a bystander, if you see, or are aware of any of these things happening.
So that's probably the area that we've concentrated most. As an [00:03:00] organization, we've got a very good gender balance even right up to the fact that I have a female CEO but that has been hard one a lot of women get to a certain level in their career and because of other duties and the time that it takes and the energy that it takes they will, they will opt to stay at that mid level.
Those that do continue, have always got to juggle their time management, their other responsibilities as a mother of three, and having seen both of my parents through their various needs they're no longer with us, unfortunately, but one with dementia and one with emphysema very different roles and responsibilities for me and my sisters.
and again, it was the girls in the family that we're looking after the parents. So I'm very aware of that. And you know, the sandwich generation still exists where you are caught between your kids and your elderly parents. so I'm very keen.
Work alongside organizations that are looking to make sure that we are moving in the right direction [00:04:00] on equality, and also to make sure that we put things in place to protect women as they, as they age.
Sanjugta Vas Dev: And it's so lovely to be in company of these amazing women.
My name is San JEV. I'm the director of the office for women here in the state government of south Australia. This topic of of women as they age is absolutely critical in south Australia. One in five women I think are over 50. And so it is something that is
Affecting more and more of us.
Sanjugta Vas Dev: So I'm really looking forward to contributing to this conversation because it is such an important conversation for south Australian.
Jane Mussared: my name is Jane Maer. I'm the chief executive of COTA in south Australia. We're an older people's movement standing up for the rights, interests and futures of older south Australians.
And we have a particular interest in older women because they have fed. Badly as we've aged. The inequality comes home to roosters. We age, the compounded [00:05:00] effect of inequality comes home to roosters we age. And so older women have experienced more disadvantaged financial disadvantage. And when we have a look at older women who have been migrants or refugees, older women who are first nations, older women with disabilities.
For example, we see that those intersectionality have created a compounded disadvantage that we haven't addressed as a community. Older women have done the heavy lifting in terms of childcare, do the heavy lifting in terms of the care often of parents and have paid the price, paid the economic price Paid the housing prices we're increasingly finding.
And you know, I think that have paid a price of invisibility. We have settings policy settings by and large that are based on male careers. So superannuation balances are lower ownership of homes is at risk. And, and I think, you know, where we need to get to is a point where older women are front and center and as much part of the narrative about our [00:06:00] community as every other segment,
Christine Beasley: My name's Chris Beasley, I'm Aner professor locating in relation to the politics and international relations department, but also have strong links with gender studies.
Generally, I was the founder of the Faye Gale center for research on gender. And was it one of its inaugural co-directors and I guess it was been parted, partly because I felt that despite, you know, friends of mine saying, oh, well, gender's not an issue anymore. Don't need to worry about that. That's all solved.
That is not true. And everybody in this room knows that's not true. So that's why I thought it was really important to develop our knowledges about women and older women, particularly. I suppose one of the things that I, I guess it's very difficult to say better than James just said it. I would say that while older women as a group are very different and it's hard to think about one lump of them.
That all experience exactly the same thing. But I, I [00:07:00] think that Jane has put her finger on the, a crucial element of talking about older women, which is that question of accentuated marginalization. Quad rued accumulated difficulties, marginalization, but also I would want to add some other things that all old women have some experience of ageism and of course, men do too, but there are specific forms And I'll just mention two, which is one of those is that all older people tend to be regarded as sort of somehow bland, uninteresting, not a source of creativity in the community as asexual, as kind of dull. And I'm here to say to you not today, not at all. And that there are two things that I would add into relation to that.
One is the the research, I guess I've been doing on older women and in relation to dating and intimacy and sexuality, as in these things continue and indeed a great. [00:08:00] Old women in interviews will say that they still are part of the community. It's still interesting and worth attention and of some sexual interest as well.
So there's that part now, I guess I would add a comment there, which is that it's the tendency is to not see older women in particular as a source for social change. And one of the things that I would say about internet dating and amongst older women is that they show signs of novel developments, novel behaviors.
And I won't go into all the details of those, but to say that they're not as policed in their gender roles, often as younger women. And sometimes that means there are opportunities. But one of the things I would say is that many of the languages about invisibility and women's marginalization is the tendency to use language, which indeed would have noted here, before.
To talk about respect and dignity. I dunno about you, but I always get nervous when people [00:09:00] start talking about respect and dignity, cuz it sounds to me like, oh, you're poor old dears. And I do wanna say, you know, actually everybody deserves respect and dignity. Everybody does. There's nothing new about that, but it's important.
And I would rather have a language which is much more positive Than that, and to recognize older women as a resource, because that's what I think they are under underestimated in. And one element of that lack of, not being seen as a resource in the community, is our lack of visibility in and purely in physical terms, art, a other, creative possibilities.
Older women are rarely on. Are rarely in our pictures around the room. one of the things I, I guess I've been involved in at Adelaide university is I, when I became a professor and professor, she was difficult to get to if you're a woman still, I noticed that there were no pictures of women almost walking around.
I went, wanted this lunch to, you know, go Harrah you're profess. And there [00:10:00] were no pictures of women anywhere, even though obviously women have occupied, that place. And I said to the, then art curator, where were the pictures women? She took me around. I think there were two out of 150 or something like that.
And to me, that is a way of saying that the kind of failure to recognize them as a resource.
Dr Pam Papadelos: It's a great pleasure to be here, to be part of this group. My name is Dr. Pam Papas and I'm the deputy director of the FA center for research on gender. I also work in the department of sociology, criminology and gender studies.
And I run the, sociology and gender studies program. And I've been involved in the gender studies program for many, many years, hence my interest in the, the center. So the FA gal center for research on gender, and as Chris said, was established in 2009, it's a university wide center with, , well over 50 members across the university in all faculties [00:11:00] of the university.
And what we do there is we encourage not only women, we encourage all scholars who research on gender and sexuality and that's predominantly, our members are women. And so we are a unit that supports women's research and we support research on women, and sexuality as well. And we run workshops, seminars, conferences to further that work.
So I guess my personal work and my interest on genders, I do research on women and aging, particularly migrant women in the community. And I was involved in a project still student land involved in, in some of that project, looking at migrant women and aging, particularly around issues that migrant women with non-English speaking backgrounds face around isolation in aging because of their lack of connection to community due to language barriers.
And generally as we know, women outlive men and usually their [00:12:00] partners. So they're alone, they're reliant on, on children for, you know, company for interpreting, for doctors visits for all sorts of, support.
And, one of the things that I found in my research is that the people that they tend to rely on are also what we would consider older women as, the Lord mayor was saying in terms of, that sandwich generation.
So these women too face a lot of issues around raising children, looking after elderly parents and you know, managing their own careers. And quite often that's what suffers which is why we see. And we've mentioned before women are you know, age in poverty and if their husbands should leave them you know, could also end up homeless and particularly
disadvantaged.
Christine Beasley: I guess, one of the things that we've already raised in some of the things that people have talked about [00:13:00] as been specific problems, is that all older women, not by any means a homogenous block and that some. Women face considerably more difficulties than others. So it's not that just being an older woman is, you know, a marginalizing thing per se.
It isn't necessarily, but there are accumulated marginalizations. And we are certainly when, when Pam talks about older migrant women, they do face very specific problems that aren't shared by everyone. And we've already talked to some extent about the situation of indigenous women. Some of those indigenous women face many difficulties, specifically in relation to connectedness of poverty with great many other issues.
Mayor Sandy Verschoor: there's been a, substantial increase in homelessness in women, particularly old women. And, and as you said, it's sometimes it's just because they find themselves through divorce or other things that they are suddenly. [00:14:00] Without a roof over the heads. I really got to know a lot of this through working with Catherine House.
Catherine House is an organization in Adelaide that looks after women. A lot of the women that go there for refuge are victims of domestic violence, but often it's financial controls as well. And it was, you know, my privilege to do a lot of work with them and meet a lot of the women that came through there, and that whole journey that those women are on to regain their self confidence, to try and find housing to be back out in the world.
And you know, we, the, the reality is that there is discrimination against women who are of an older age group. , you know, I, I have gray hair. There's an immediate judgment as to, you know, who I am or where I am in my J in my life's journey, because I have a particular hair color. There's so many things that we are judged on on a daily basis, but that certainly is one of them.
I just wanna respond to something. Chris said, actually around [00:15:00] seeing ourselves or seeing women. One thing. It doesn't sound very significant, but I think it's a lasting legacy that I was really proud of doing as Lord me, is in our chamber. There was only one woman, which was queen Elizabeth II. The walls are covered in portraits of men.
And so one of the things I did very early on in is said, I want some women in the chamber and we've commissioned portraits. So the first tour are up, which Wendy Chapman, who was the first female Lord mayor of any capital city in Australia. So, and, and Adelaide Dame, Roman Mitchell, who we all know was extraordinary woman.
And the first governor female, governor of south Australia I've got auntie Shirley Presley. So you talk about Aboriginal women that have championed for other women. So Andy Shirley will be joining the ranks as well as many other women that have contributed in a leadership role. And, and part of that was simply that we.
Have so many people coming through that chamber and you are not seeing women in those positions [00:16:00] of leadership and justice and equality. So which I think is just significance and you do need to see, you do need to see you can't, you know, talk about being invisible in that chamber. Women were completely invisible.
Jane Mussared: And indeed one of the, the things we know is that women older women run into this localism and localism is this, you know, the, the look of the moment, isn't an older woman. Look, it's a, it's at the bottom of the pile. And in terms of public appeal, it's a, at the bottom of the pile in terms of media appeal.
And so the, the invisibility is combined often with another image of older women, which is a mocking image or a pathetic image so it's an image which is either way older women lose out on. And I, and I wanna just say that a lifetime of discrimination, I think, as we are learning through racism and, and sexism, a lifetime of discrimination interacts with our own psyche and [00:17:00] self-confidence and so often women are, are told, well, just get out there and just, you know, promote yourselves and, and, and, you know, go inside for your confidence, be resilient.
And I think that's a pretty tough asks for a whole lot of women who have experienced a lifetime of discrim. That is still happening. You know, to be told, you know, this is all on you now, and you've gotta pull yourself out of this and, and, and somehow do something about it. And that's why I think, you know, this is a public issue.
This is not a personal issue. We can't ask women who've, as I've said, done the heavy lifting in a whole lot of ways already to then be responsible for addressing the ongoing discrimination inequality.
Dr Pam Papadelos: And I would agree with that in that we do have this pushing our society not for only older women, but for young people as well in that we are promoting this idea that they need to take responsibility for where they are in life. What kind of opportunities they have, you know? And if you are an [00:18:00] older woman and you are living in poverty or you never went for promotion because you, you just couldn't find the time to do it that in.
we're sort of ignoring these structural issues. Mm-hmm , you know, that actually structurally within organizations, women, as you said, are discriminated against and it, it isn't simply simple enough that it's not a simple enough solution to say that actually your responsibility and you could go and get some training or you could be more assertive or you could, you know, because that's not really how it works.
And we know that, you know for a short, for a while, I was head of department and we have many in our depart. Any meeting I went along to, and I don't know if you experienced this, but any meeting I went along to, they would look at the man for the head of department. And I worked with very good colleagues who used to find this very annoying and say, no, she is the head of department.
And it's, I've always experienced that facing this all the time, you know? And I think it's [00:19:00] something that, you know, no matter what achievements, some women. You know, there is this well as I say to students there there's a lot of structural issues, but some of it just comes down to this discrimination that is perhaps not even something that people are aware of.
Christine Beasley: Like for example imagine if we were to talk to people who are listening now the image of, of certain kinds of activities is never connected to women.
So an academic, what do you think of when you think of an academic, possibly somebody with brown sandals or, but certainly somebody with a beard or, you know, who looks like men. And it's very hard to change our cultural views about our reason I raised that that kind of imagery is because I would like young women and young men for that matter.
But young women to think. You know, as you get older you'll learn a few things. You get to do all the sorts of stuff. You've got a much richer kind of life. I'm not suggesting that that means [00:20:00] young people are somehow thin. I just mean that there is that sense of you do learn a whole lot of stuff.
And actually being older is quite a good thing. And that is never really presented in our culture as as, as being something to look forward to.
Sanjugta Vas Dev: So, you know, doing on what you are talking about, Chris and others and that cultural perspective here in, in Australia about older women and, you know as someone who has grown up in, in an Asian context as well if we look at other cultures sometimes it's very different.
So we look at older people, but also older women. They're more revered, they're more respected in a family context and in a social context, at least. So it is really. I think it's part of a Western culture that we live in that is really dominated by a small group of people who are in control of marketing and what, you know, our body image should be like.
And as women grow older, that becomes less attainable. And that is something [00:21:00] that we need to get control back off and really kind of say, all body images should be out there and be respected. And it's what your body can do as well. So I think there's a real interesting connection between body image and marketing in this culture and how much control that has over our society.
And, you know, what can we do to really shift that is, is a conversation that I'm really interested in, in having so building on what the minister said, and also the conversation with the Lord mayor, what we are seeing through the women's information service, which is a shop front of the office for women.
A lot more older women coming in and they're experiencing housing and security. So, you know, when we talk about homelessness, homelessness can take on many forms and rough sleeping is the most visible form of homelessness. But more prominent. In terms of what we are saying is women who are sleeping at their [00:22:00] children's houses because they, their rentals may have you know, not worked out women who are using their friends' houses or little flats out the back of their gardens as accommodation.
And it's that insecure housing that we are seeing it as becoming more problematic and something that we are working on at different levels. So the state government is establishing a task force on older women's housing. And that will be really interesting to see how that progresses.
I'm assuming that that will look at the root causes of housing and security,
but also
who we can partner with across the south Australian community to get some solutions in place. Some other programs that I think will be really important for all women, but older women as well is the agenda that the state government has around addressing domestic violence.
So part of that is a legislative agenda and that will be looking at criminalizing coercive control. And we've talked [00:23:00] about violence against women. Violence agaisnt older women, coercive control is it's an insidious form of violence. And what the research tells us is that older women far from being immune to coercive control.
Can be more likely to be trapped by relationships where they have been in for many, many years. And it's harder to get out of those relationships where, their partner or a member of their family have been I guess, controlling their finances, their ability to leave the house a whole bunch of things.
So coercive control legislation is on the agenda. Another thing that state government will be introducing will be inequality bill, and that is to promote equality across all attributes, including gender, of course, but, you know, we'll be looking at how age intersects with that as well. And I think the third thing that's worth talking about in terms of our domestic violence agenda going forward is [00:24:00] establishing safety hubs that are focused on prevention of violence,
but also.
Women who may have left a relationship or have made a decision to leave a relationship and, and what they need, you know, past that crisis element. So establishing safety hubs in the north and the south of Adelaide and in that exploratory stage at the moment looking for, for different partners and different ideas to make these happen and make sure that they are accessible and friendly for, older women.
Because I think what we find through our work is there's a lot of shame for women absolutely experiencing violence. And, how do we get through that and ensure that they know that they're not alone and it's nothing to be ashamed of.
Jane Mussared: Cora is an independent organization and works directly with older people.
So we're an older people's movement effectively. What Cora's been trying to do with state government. I think getting really good reception from our state government is to say, [00:25:00] Older women is important to do upstream things, to prevent older women in the future from being disadvantaged.
But it is really important to take notice of older people, older women right now. And I think housing is one of the really critical areas that we've gotta pay attention to. Certainly family economic and other violence is a really important area of attention. The other one is in terms of supporting older women to get back into the workforce.
We know that older women's careers often blossom in their fifties and sixties, just at the point that they're being discriminated against. In a cross section between ageism and sexism. And so it's really important that we stop thinking that all careers Peter out in their sixties, and start thinking about older women as a group of people who have a lot to continue to contribute in terms of our economic life in south Australia.
My well needs some support. It's our, our training programs, obviously front end training and [00:26:00] education, our university and vocational education is front ended. The, so the other area where I think we've gotta put some significant effort into is supporting older women, including with lifelong training training that enables them to make the most of careers that may well come into their own in their 56 and seventies rather than thirties and forties, which is a traditional kind of.
Peak time, I suppose. And, and think about life course entirely differently. Stop thinking about a life course as being modeled on the life course of our parents and grandparents, or indeed on you know, our, our stereotype of a male career start thinking about a life course in terms of the great variety, including for people women and men.
Who've migrated to Australia in the, in the middle of their employment years. So, you know, I, I think it's time to disrupt the policy settings around employment, around housing indeed around image and violence, [00:27:00] economic security.
Dr Pam Papadelos: Yeah. I think a, a real issue through COVID has been that particularly in south Australia, we had a lot of community organizations and mostly held in town halls.
In fact, where. And other community centers across south Australia where all older migrants, particularly Greeks were very good at doing this met once a week or once a fortnight. And they had a new together and they had a speaker come in to talk about a particular issue. And with COVID of course, that all disappeared.
And I think that's a shame because one of the assumptions that I saw through this process and with my own parents at the time is there's an assumption that people are literate in their own language. And this is not always the case. And of course the documents that get translated from one language to another are actually quite sophisticated for people who might have had primary school education, if any education at all.
So of course these Greek documents [00:28:00] would come home to second generation migrants whose Greek probably is pretty average, too. I would've preferred it in English, really. But nevertheless, I think the communication of important information was quite difficult to relay. There's also been issues with, Greek radio and other ways of communicating to to particular migrant groups.
I know that at one particular Greek radio was discontinued and I know that my parents relied on that one for information. So I think it does become difficult. And then once again, older migrants are relying on their children, you know, for communication of this important information or they're getting miscommunication.
And so fearful you know, of something they have no understanding of there's entirely, they rely on their children, the Goodwill of their children. And you know that, there's also an assumption, I think, within the community. That Greek families are so close knit that their children are selfless and they're prepared to, to put in their time.
And I should say that [00:29:00] for any other community, there is an assumption, cuz of course we don't have the resources to support these the, these older people. And even, I must say there are some Greek nursing homes but the second generation migrants aren't working at these nursing homes, in fact, you know, they're particularly educated and you know, it's new, the new generation of migrants that tend to work in those sorts of low level paid jobs.
So there's not even Greek speaking people in Greek nursing homes. There are some, but they're not available all the time. So I think I mean, of course it's good that they're there, but they're not resourced in, in the way that, and that's part of, I think as Australia and our generations continue that language is lost.
But I think for the older particularly women I think it's a very isolating process for them, particularly as I said, the second generation, some second generation Greeks have very good at Greek. Some don't have Greek at all. So not having [00:30:00] any form of community, even church became quite restricted.
And their access to church, you know, was, is a, is a real issue in terms of connecting and relying on their children whom they can't communicate very well with. And probably don't want to talk about the issues that affect them.
Carley Bishop
The Invisible Woman Project, funded by our Social Enterprises Impact Program, promotes awareness and actions for women and gender-diverse people to age with dignity, security and safety. Find out more on Just Go Women dot net or on our socials @justgoldwomen.
Kyriakos Gold
This was a just gold podcast. Find out more about our social enterprise at JustGold.Net.