Structural oppression holds women back from leadership positions, financial stability, and security as they age- join A/Prof Jo Cavanagh, Prof Catherine Itsiopoulos and Katherine Ellis as they discuss how social connections can help combat these issues for women over 55.
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[Grace Packer] This is a Just Gold podcast.
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[Grace Packer] Recorded on the lands of the peoples of the Eastern Kulin Nation, we pay respect to their Elders past, present, and emerging.
In this episode we’ll discuss how structural oppression holds women back from leadership positions, financial stability, and security as they age and how social connections can help combat these issues.
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[Katherine Ellis] Jo, you've worked most of your life in the not-for-profit sector what do you see there that can really maybe help make more women more visible as they go through their whole lives?
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[Prof Jo Cavanagh] I’ll come to some of the research that I did recently but I just want to pick up on this theme around you know getting women into the leadership positions just to remind us that there are a whole lot of structural changes that need to happen around that in order for women to age well and one of the key things obviously is equal pay and then equal superannuation in terms of the provisioning for later in life and as we know that is a significant issue and in COVID context there's some research which has just come out showing women who have been coerced into accessing their superannuation during COVID by partners which you know for the first time for some of these women are now presenting to services recognizing that they're actually in an abusive relationship for you know coercive behaviours so you know things keep nuancing and shifting but we need to make sure that we look at the structural issues as well as what we do at the micro level between people to support each other.
I think one of the things that we want to do through The Invisible Woman project and I think is key to international women's day is look at the systems change that needs to happen and the culture change so the flip side of some of that is that you know it's so good for men to be able to take parenting leave and for years we know that was provided for but men didn't take it because it wasn't a good look in the office if you were the one who took the leave so there's all sorts of cultural things that sort of sit underneath this and as the mother of daughters I’m conscious that you know they are still experiencing subtle discriminations around the fact they're the ones having the babies they're the ones taking time out in terms of who's actually getting the promotion it's not as blatant as it used to be but I think it's still there.
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[Catherine Ellis] Do you think that the changes in flexible working because of COVID particularly here in Victoria do you think that's going to sustain and make a difference?
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[Prof Jo Cavanagh] I just think we can't assume anything you know the talk of ‘build back better’ I always get worried when I hear the ‘back’ word in there because we actually want to build forward and the things that didn't work beforehand still won't work even if we've got some different ways of dressing it up, you've got a choice of whether you can work at home or whether you work in the office and days of the week but if we haven't actually changed whether you're getting equal pay and equal superannuation what difference will that make except that you probably could do more child care still.
So I think you know we need to be careful that things are not window dressing and that we've actually carried them through to the actual drivers of the inequality in order to Break the Bias one of the things that was important in the piece of research that I did in 2018 when in my role as CEO of a community service organisation and a had 350 volunteers working with our organisation and conscious that a number of them were in the older category 50+, 65+ and I really wanted to test whether what was happening in the broader picture was actually happening for these women who were actually women that you would think they had professional roles and they were you know teachers nurses you know retired seemed to be in a more middle class living circumstances what was happening for them and it was really interesting to hear the stories from women who through divorce and separation through family violence developing a disability or you know as a result of separation not getting any superannuation and we're finding themselves in their 60s not sure whether they could pay the rent you know they had gone backwards very significantly and although they were very well dressed people wouldn't have realised how vulnerable they were until they were actually encouraged to talk about it.
The other factor that came through was their sense of shame so they were less likely to ask for help and one of the things that through the literature review we did it was very clear that there were factors which enhance the vulnerability of women and they kind of coalesce and the complexity develops as they all interplay so if you haven't got enough money and you get a health issue and you haven't got a house then you've got three major things that are affecting you or if you come from a newly arrived migrant group you may not know how the service system works you don't know where to go for help we did find that you know the most protective factor or the potential for protection and safety is to do with social connections and as you age it's a bit paradoxical and even for myself you're finding not everybody ages with you and that you're losing people so some of your closest friends and your own networks you lose people either through change of circumstances or because people literally die so your social networks start to shrink and one of the things that we would be recommending that women must do and is part of the invisible women woman project is helping women to refresh and renew their social networks to join things to get engaged to be able to talk with people and not be isolated that isolation is a really significant risk factor for vulnerability and the antidote to that is to actually have a network and people that you spend time with, and they may need to be new people it's also important that we've found is family is not a substitute for a social network, so you can be actually quite invisible within a family where the older women's advice may no longer be needed because young people are ordering their food so they don't actually need their older generation so it's really important that you have those social connections that are outside of family as well so one of the positives of COVID was by actually drawing people's eyes into their local community and in in Melbourne your 5kms and people actually saying ‘do you know who your neighbours are?’ And that was one of the really good things I think that came out of COVID but what we need to do is not take it for granted how do we make that cultural instead of just you know part of a pandemic response that's the way we now do things and when people can say that's the way we do things around here we know that we've got a culture change.
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[Katherine Ellis] Yeah absolutely, and I think I certainly know far more of my neighbours now than I did before COVID which has been nice because I’ve been working from home for nearly two years now but at the same time it really brought home to me that I need more hobbies and networks and things outside my work because I get a lot of my social connection and purpose in life through my job but when I was trapped at home and I wasn't doing all the things in the evenings with friends and things like that I realized that it can very easily fall away and so I started to think ‘okay as I’m getting older what are going to be my sort of hobbies that sustain me even after I’ve retired or if I change jobs’ and I think the social networking you were talking about I think is really important for women through a working life as well and quite often women don't go to conferences, don't network because they see it as an indulgence whereas men are out there doing it and that's partly helps with their social connections but it also obviously helps with their career because the bigger the network is the more opportunities there will be for career progression as well and so I think that one of the things that I always like to try and encourage female staff in my teams to do is go out and do that kind of networking, and if I have to frame it as professional development I will do that or as ‘representing the organisation’ because sometimes that's what it takes but it is really important and so that that social connection can happen in so many different ways but you're right it's so important in terms of staying visible, staying relevant I think and in a work in a career set staying powerful as well.
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[Kyriakos Gold] You can connect with us on social media @JustGoldWomen or on our website at justgold.net.
The Invisible Woman Project is a social partnership with the City of Melbourne and in this space we will be hosting consultations for women from across Victoria but in particular from our city so you can connect, you can share your stories, you can be on video if you want, or you can just make friends. As Jo mentioned before we've also got a partnership with the Good Things Foundation so The Invisible Woman Project will also offer some digital literacy skills program over the next few months so do connect with us about that and finally on our pages you can subscribe to our podcast and docu-series that's coming up over the next few months thank you for coming in tonight, thank you for joining us and let's Break the Bias together.
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[Grace Packer] Join us next episode as our guests discuss how can architecture and urban design impact life for women of all ages.
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[Kyriakos Gold] This was a Just Gold podcast. Find out more about our social enterprise at justgold.net.