Invisibility is not just about money; it is about power too. Katherine Ellis explores how the foundation of invisibility can be laid in a woman’s youth, and can begin as early as their 40's. We all know a fundamental barrier from falling into poverty is owning your own home, but the current housing market means that young people are not optimistic for the future – they are now fearful of it. Join Katherine Ellis as she illustrates what the next generation of The Invisible Woman will look like if the status quo remains, and the action required to transform it.
00:00:02:06 - 00:00:34:12
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.
00:00:37:03 - 00:00:48:01
Carley Bishop
In this episode. CEO of Youth Affairs Katherine Ellis speaks about how the COVID19 pandemic affected progress towards gender equity and how the invisibility syndrome affects young people too.
00:00:50:13 - 00:01:24:00
Katherine Ellis
What I think of Invisible Women, I think of the the women who have spent so much of their lives contributing in different ways, usually behind the scenes And at a certain point, suddenly they're seen or they're not seen as valuable anymore and they start to lose their status and their credibility and their visibility in society. And it's such an outrage that women who sacrificed so much for their families and quite often in the workplace as well, end up really being discarded by society.
00:01:25:21 - 00:01:29:01
Carley Bishop
We asked Katherine if she's worried about becoming invisible one day.
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Katherine Ellis
I don't think I'm not really in fear myself, except that I do look forward now to old age and think, is that going to happen to me? And so I'm actually much more conscious now of being careful with my money and building social connections so that I don't end up like that in my eighties and nineties or even earlier.
00:01:46:20 - 00:02:13:17
Katherine Ellis
But I think that and there are definitely more visible women around now, which is fantastic and as it should be. But I think there's still an enormous number of invisible women, and not just older women right through the age groups where women get left out of really high profile activities, big projects at work, political opportunities. So they're not at the decision making table when decisions are being made that affect their lives.
00:02:13:17 - 00:02:34:09
Katherine Ellis
And we need far more visibility of women in those spaces as well. Invisibility is not just about money. It's about power. It's about being seen as valuable. And I don't have children, so quite often I'm not disrespected but dismissed because it's assumption that I don't understand what happens for families, which is rubbish considering particularly the job I have.
00:02:34:17 - 00:02:55:06
Katherine Ellis
Women get dismissed in so many ways and it's because they don't have the money they don't have the power, they don't have the looks or the charm that makes people, men particularly want to hang around them. And so all of those things force them to be less visible and less powerful than they should be. And yet there are things that most men never, ever have to deal with.
00:02:55:12 - 00:03:22:04
Katherine Ellis
I think what makes people visible is a combination of things. And some people are just assumed to have them. And women quite often are not. So they actually have to prove that they have things. Whereas if there's money or there's power or there's decision making responsibility, there's an immediate level of visibility that comes with that. And yet those are quite often the spaces where women are cut out or not at the table.
00:03:22:14 - 00:03:55:05
Katherine Ellis
And so, you know, if we're looking at making the world a better place for women of all ages, but particularly making sure that women don't end up becoming invisible as they get older and they're not seen as good looking enough anymore or they're not having child caring responsibilities that are part of building our society, that they're still seen as valuable for the wisdom that they bring and the knowledge that they have about their community and about the people in their lives and in their community and really respecting, I guess, different kinds of value.
00:03:55:14 - 00:04:22:00
Katherine Ellis
And I think that's what's missing in our society to a certain extent. One of the things that I've seen happen through COVID is that an enormous number of women with child caring responsibilities or parental caring responsibilities have had to leave the workforce. And there's excitement because unemployment numbers are going down. But part of that is because women have just completely withdrawn from the workplace, and they're the ones who are going to have for their careers.
00:04:22:05 - 00:04:44:06
Katherine Ellis
Careers are going to be affected by that for the long term. Some of them may not ever get back into the workforce. And when we're facing a situation where women are already disadvantaged through taking time out to have children and various other ways that they lose traction and get behind in their careers, COVID is going to be another way that they get slammed.
00:04:44:06 - 00:04:45:10
Katherine Ellis
And I'm really worried about that.
00:04:47:13 - 00:04:53:18
Carley Bishop
So did COVID halt progress that was being made in terms of gender issues and women's issues? Here's what Katherine thinks.
00:04:54:02 - 00:05:21:24
Katherine Ellis
I think in some ways COVID shone a light on the fault lines that already existed in our society. So some of the ways that young people and women where disadvantage were really highlighted but unfortunately by the fact that COVID hit them so badly and that casualization of of jobs, child caring responsibilities and otherwise that that women bear a greater burden beyond just their job in the work in their lives.
00:05:22:17 - 00:05:52:13
Katherine Ellis
So in some ways, it's highlighted it. But what has really happened is that COVID has disproportionately affected women and particularly young women. And there's actually research that's just come out this week by Australians investing in women that shows that young women particularly have had their lives derailed by COVID, their work lives derailed and that includes young women who are just sort of graduating from school and university and trying to get into the workforce because those jobs don't exist now.
00:05:53:08 - 00:06:30:13
Katherine Ellis
It's women who have small school aged children who've had to step back and either go part time or not work at all because they've had to look after their children. And I think that there's in emergencies quite often thinking around diversity falls away because everybody's just trying to deal with the emergency. And so the the thinking around will have we got a diverse group around this table has diminished, which, again, affects women and other diverse groups who quite often have to be consciously invited to that table because the power structures don't necessarily guarantee that they're going to be there.
00:06:33:01 - 00:06:38:03
Carley Bishop
Are young women aware of the threat of invisibility as they get older? Here's what Katherine has to say.
00:06:38:08 - 00:06:59:08
Katherine Ellis
I think to a large extent, young women, young people generally think that they're invincible and immortal. But this generation, I think, is far more conscious about the future because of climate change. And a lot of young people I talk to, they've lost their hope and their optimism for the future because they think of climate change as an existential threat.
00:07:00:03 - 00:07:25:14
Katherine Ellis
The inequity in our society is growing. Older people are getting richer. Young people are left the scraps, if anything, and there's still huge amounts of discrimination and gender bias. So a lot of young people are less far less optimistic about their futures, and they actually have a real fear of the future now. And I think that, you know, one of the things that stops people going into poverty when they're older is to own their own home.
00:07:26:07 - 00:07:49:13
Katherine Ellis
But this younger generation, a huge number of them, have given up on the idea that they will ever own their own home because prices that the real estate market has just gone crazy and they can't see it coming back. So I think that they are conscious of the future, but not so much in a way where they're planning towards how they can make sure that they don't end up invisible, but more becoming a bit sort of fatalistic about it.
00:07:49:18 - 00:08:06:14
Katherine Ellis
And that's where we're seeing school disengagement. Part of the reason for school disengagement is because young people don't see the point because are there going to be any jobs? Is there going to be a healthy planet to live on? You know, those sort of concerns, which are much bigger concerns than my generation ever looked at when we were younger.
00:08:06:18 - 00:08:08:09
Katherine Ellis
are right front of mind for them now.
00:08:09:24 - 00:08:13:11
Carley Bishop
We asked Katherine how young people are reacting to this. Are they angry?
00:08:14:06 - 00:08:34:23
Katherine Ellis
There are some who are fatalistic and sort of cynical. And you see a lot of, you know, the dystopian future in all of the young adult fiction these days and that kind of thing leans to that side of things. But yes, young people are very, very active and angry and out there protesting and running youth led projects and things to try and effect change.
00:08:34:23 - 00:09:13:03
Katherine Ellis
And some of those are on climate change. So organizations like Australian Youth Climate Coalition and School for Climate, you know, they're really trying to affect change. And then you have others like this, a, there's a youth led think tank called Think Forward. And what they're doing is trying to create an intergenerational inquiry in the parliament that looks at how is it fair that all of the tax system, tax and transfer system is so biased towards older people and not young people because they see that one day, well, they will never get on a track to wealth in the same way that previous generations have.
00:09:13:13 - 00:09:20:01
Katherine Ellis
So I think if we're talking about older generations becoming invisible, these younger generations may actually have it even worse.
00:09:24:13 - 00:09:44:07
Kyriakos Gold
You can connect with us on social media at @justgoldwomen or on our website justgold.net. The Invisible Women 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.
00:09:44:07 - 00:09:54:02
Kyriakos Gold
You can be on video if you want, or you can just make friends on our pages. You can subscribe to our podcast and docu series. That's coming up over the next few months.
00:10:17:20 - 00:10:24:12
Kyriakos Gold
This was a just gold podcast. Find out more about our social enterprise at JustGold.net.