Where does invisibility begin? Women find themselves fading away over time, oftentimes it is a rapid downward spiral. No woman is immune to invisibility, and as our Project Convenor Jo Cavanagh explains, it can even happen overnight. Join Jo Cavanagh as she discusses the data drawn from grassroots research that has been codified into the Five D’s that are affecting women: Disability, Divorce, Death of partner, Domestic violence, and a Dearth of dollars. This perfect storm is rendering those women invisible who bind the fabric of our society and communities together.
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Grace Packer
This is a Just Gold podcast. Recorded on the lands of the peoples of the eastern Kulin Nation, we pay respect to their elders past, present, and emerging.
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Carley Bishop
In this episode, The Invisible Woman Project convener, Adjunct Professor Jo Cavanagh, speaks on the rise of homelessness in women over 55 and how the COVID19 pandemic added to the problem.
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Jo Cavanagh
My name is Jo Cavanagh and I'm delighted to be part of the Invisible Woman project as the project convener and assisting with the impact measurement. So back in 2018 we were really quite shocked to hear the new data that was telling us that homelessness for women over 55 was rising significantly and they were now the largest group of homeless in Australia.
00:01:21:22 - 00:01:54:07
Jo Cavanagh
And this was quite shocking at the time. And I was working with a number of older women, women over 55 who were also volunteers. And so we undertook some grassroots research to check in with these women. What was their life experience at that time and to what extent it was aligned with the major data that was now coming out about women's wellbeing as they age or their lack of wellbeing actually as they age.
00:01:54:18 - 00:02:34:12
Jo Cavanagh
So in consultation with those women and listening to their stories, what we found was that indeed their life experience was aligned to what the new data was saying. And as some said, the risk of homelessness felt like it was one month's rent away, that they were now so insecure in terms of their income and their lack of assets to help their financial security as they aged that they were increasingly finding that they were living on a month to month basis to ensure they had enough income.
00:02:35:01 - 00:03:10:20
Jo Cavanagh
And when we were diving into that data, we kind of codified it in the end as what we were calling then the five days that were affecting women, and they were disability. So women who developed a disability and had trouble working then they were now on job seeker payments. We had women who after divorce had not done at all well financially in the separation and so now they were really struggling financially.
00:03:11:12 - 00:03:38:16
Jo Cavanagh
We had the impact of domestic violence a way that's very well established, the impact for women and particularly when they've had children that they're supporting. And then there was also death of a partner, which could be a real shock. And the finances may not have been well established for the woman to continue on her own. And all of that also added up to a dearth of dollars and including lack of superannuation.
00:03:39:09 - 00:04:06:06
Jo Cavanagh
So we had these five days which come together and intersect and can create a perfect storm for a woman who may well have been a professional, who may have been a teacher, who may have been a nurse for many years, who may have worked in a corporate environment who, as they were aging suddenly found that they did not have the security they were expecting to have to secure, to live securely and safely into their older age.
00:04:08:08 - 00:04:13:20
Carley Bishop
So what are the first steps out of invisibility in a post-pandemic world? Here's what Jo has to say.
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Jo Cavanagh
The COVID pandemic we know now from the data and this is one of the important changes, is that we do have the data about what actually happened in the first two years of COVID. And 55% of the job losses due to COVID were women. The majority of the essential workers have also been women, and they are in the lowest paid jobs.
00:04:39:18 - 00:05:02:23
Jo Cavanagh
The women depleted their superannuation savings at a higher rate than men. So when government made that available to help people to make their living expenses because women also were not getting job keeper because they were in the casualised workforce, they actually tapped into their superannuation more so than men to just put food on the table and pay the rent.
00:05:03:07 - 00:05:32:07
Jo Cavanagh
And also we know that women were performing more of the unpaid labor and then also the home education of children. So in fact we could say that covered is a gendered problem that women have in fact carried the burden. And as yet we hear nothing about any correction for that in looking after the wellbeing of women. So we will have even more women who are now vulnerable.
00:05:32:18 - 00:05:57:17
Jo Cavanagh
So one of the things that we learned from the women that we spoke to earlier before COVID, which I think will still be true now, is the need to work with women to what are the solutions that they identify that they need. And I think we've now got two strains. One is the women who are already in the situation of vulnerability and the other is to prevent the next generations ending up.
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Jo Cavanagh
So there's a lot of work to do to make sure that younger women understand they are not in principle, that they need to be thinking about planning for their future, and they need to advocate for equality, equity and all of those things that we've talked about to ensure that everybody has the best future possible in terms of the women who are vulnerable now.
00:06:21:01 - 00:06:55:23
Jo Cavanagh
There are some extraordinary things happening in grassroots organizations working together to develop new models of helping women to collaborate, to share their resources to reskill and mentor and support women into employment. So we're finding that the organizations where women who are more secure are donating their time and some funds to assist women who are unemployed or unable to retrain and get back into the workforce.
00:06:56:18 - 00:07:27:04
Jo Cavanagh
So one of the other big things that has happened through COVID is that technology is said to have advanced more in the last two years than it did in the previous 20 years. So the gap between those who are included in the digital economy has actually increased because those who were already engaged have lifted with the new technology and those who are only loosely engaged or unengaged have fallen further behind.
00:07:27:14 - 00:07:58:24
Jo Cavanagh
So we now have another form of poverty, which is data and digital poverty. So one of the things that we know we need to do is also assist women to have access to digital devices and the skills and to stay safe online We know that women are also increasingly the victims of cyber scams and online abuse. So there are initiatives that are being led through the Safety Commission to pay attention to what will help women to be more secure online.
00:07:59:11 - 00:08:30:12
Jo Cavanagh
So it's really that it needs to be a whole of community effort to identify who are the women in your life who may be vulnerable just because they are aging. And our society has not been set up for equality for women, and particularly if they're now on their own, as well as what we need to have happen in legislation that will ensure women do have equal superannuation, that women are treated equally in the workplace, that we actually get equal pay.
00:08:30:19 - 00:09:02:20
Jo Cavanagh
I mean, I cannot believe after all these years that we are still asking for equal pay. It felt like an argument that we should have won when I was a teenager, but here we are still talking about that and not saying any moves by government to make sure that that is indeed what will happen because Australia has fallen further behind on the measures of equality for women and we are slipping down the scale instead of rising.
00:09:02:20 - 00:09:11:22
Jo Cavanagh
Given the amount of education of women in our country, when you would expect to see a rise in inequality in our country and we're not saying that.
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Carley Bishop
We asked Jo how vulnerable women are to becoming homeless if their circumstances were to change. Here's what she said.
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Jo Cavanagh
It in fact can happen overnight The shocks of a death of a partner and finding that you are not financially secure. There is a syndrome called sexually transmitted debt. And sometimes women find they've been left with a whole lot of debt that they weren't even aware had been accrued in that relationship. And the partners left or died. And they are left to sort this sort that out.
00:09:49:12 - 00:10:20:07
Jo Cavanagh
And that can happen overnight. There's a woman who was part of our study, and I will protect her confidentiality, but to a professional woman and she'd even been involved in standing for parliament at one stage. But she's one who said to me, you know, it becomes a month to month issue to know whether I'll be able to pay the rent And we know now that the greatest protection for women is by age, is to own your own home.
00:10:21:04 - 00:11:08:01
Jo Cavanagh
If you are now in the private rental market and what's happening in real estate. The risks of homelessness have also increased because if you don't own your own home, you may not be able to afford the rent. So this was a woman who had been incredibly successful, worked all her life, and then through a divorce and separation, lost all her assets and had again had to go back into the workforce and reestablish herself and was really struggling to do that because she was seen as too old for the, you know, the current profile that many employers want for their senior executives.
00:11:12:11 - 00:11:36:21
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.
00:11:36:21 - 00:11:42:00
Kyriakos Gold
On our pages you can subscribe to our podcast and docu series that's coming up over the next few months.
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Kyriakos Gold
This was a just gold podcast. Find out more about our social enterprise at JustGold.net.