The issues of family violence, women’s homelessness and economic security are not mutually exclusive, they often always occur in conjunction with one another. Join Tania Farha, CEO, Safe and Equal; Jeanette Large, CEO, Women’s Property Initiative; and Dr Emily Porter, Senior Research Fellow, Brotherhood of St Lawrence as they describe a snapshot of the current circumstances affecting women in Victoria. This ‘In Conversation’ event is moderated by Julie Riley OAM, CEO of Australians Investing in Women.
This episode is a collaboration of Just Gold and the Melbourne Women's Fund.
Melbourne Women’s Fund is a Giving Circle that brings together members’ financial, intellectual, professional and personal resources to support non-profit organisations in Melbourne that address issues undermining the quality of life and futures of women and their families. It is a charitable fund account within the Lord Mayor’s Charitable Fund ABN 63 635 798 473.
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Grace Packer
This is a Just Gold podcast.
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Carley Bishop
Captured on the lands of the peoples of the Asian Cool a nation. We pay our respects to their elders past, present and emerging. This podcast was recorded live during a melbourne Women's Fund In Conversation event on Thursday, the 9th of June 2022. Just Gold Proudly supports the Melbourne Women's Fund. This episode is the first part of three from this event.
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Carley Bishop
The issues of family violence, women's homelessness and economic insecurity are not mutually exclusive. They almost always occur in conjunction with one another. Join Tanya Farha, CEO of Safe and Equal. Jeanette Lodge, CEO of Women's Property Initiative. And Dr. Emily Porter, senior research fellow at the Brotherhood of St Laurence. As they describe a snapshot of the current circumstances affecting women in Victoria.
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Carley Bishop
This In Conversation event is moderated by Julie Riley, O&M CEO of Australians Investing in Women. Now here's Tanya Farha, CEO of Safe and Equal.
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Tanya Farha
Like Julie said, I'm the CEO of Safe and Equal, which is really what is the peak body for family violence services in the state of Victoria. So a lot of the work we do, it's sort of twofold. We do a lot of policy and advocacy. So governments at both state and federal level around service provision, particularly around advocating specialization.
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Tanya Farha
In this work, it's really critical because of the nature of the violence and how it occurs. And we also have a strong sector development arm. So a lot of training and resources for the sector, but beyond the sector, too. So we often do a lot of things for service, a lot of work around understanding family violence, how to respond, how to respond to disclosures, you know, a whole range of work.
00:01:59:07 - 00:02:30:11
Tanya Farha
So that's primarily the work of self equal. I guess my own personal commitment is it's a long one. I've worked for many years in this area of of individual and at many different levels. So Julie said I worked in Victoria Place for nine years trying to and many of you know the Christine Nixon back in the day when she was trying to do a lot of work to really improve police responses and really set police up on that pathway to where we see to where we see it going now.
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Tanya Farha
So I did a lot of work on implementing regional changes within Victoria Police, but family violence and sexual assault and child abuse. And then after that I went to the United Nations, I worked there for a long time and one of the interesting things about the United Nations is it can be you can feel disconnected from everything but UN women, which is the organization I work for, is very connected to civil society.
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Tanya Farha
So the not for profit set is all around the word world. And you know, it's interesting. We think we live and we work here and we see things. But, you know, some stories I heard at the UN, you know, women in Africa working three days, walking three days to a police station to report a sexual assault because it was fake human right to do so.
00:03:14:11 - 00:03:32:13
Tanya Farha
So we hear these amazing stories and you can't help but be compassionate and be passionate and committed to this work. And then obviously the royal commission had happened to us. So that was the opportunity to come back and do a lot of work there. Primarily, I did the work there around problem prevention. I hope we get to talk a bit about that tonight.
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Tanya Farha
And yeah, and then even even better, I ended up now in the not for profit running this peak body. So it's been fantastic and I guess just one really important point is that family violence is often a driver of the other two issues. So homelessness and economic insecurity, it can perpetuate economic security. I was listening to the way in which you described it, which was the other way around, and that women can't leave, or if they do leave, they left with with with nothing.
00:04:01:05 - 00:04:23:04
Tanya Farha
Well, they might be forced into relationships. So I think that's a really important point. These things are often not mutually exclusive. They happen, you know, in the same context. I think it's interesting, you know, when you think about, you know, the top issues for family, what's really had I mean, I think you all noted the statistics. You've seen them on the back of this fall.
00:04:23:12 - 00:04:51:24
Tanya Farha
But I think one of the really important things, it's an ever changing, dynamic family violence like the you know, very recently we've heard about coercive control and how that underpins all forms of family. So you can see how society's maturing around the understanding of what you know is the basis for these and how expensive it can be. But even during COVID, we saw the weaponization of COVID as a form of family violence during the pandemic.
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Tanya Farha
So there are always ways that perpetrators manipulate circumstances to perpetrate violence. So that's why it's really important that this issue stays front and center of the way in which we respond to the dynamics of these. Because even though we might say the basis is the same, the expression can change. And it's really, really important we stay across that.
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Tanya Farha
And the services able to respond and provide adequate responses. And it's really great to hear you, Jeanette, about housing because housing is so critical. You know, even now we've got at any one night at least 100 or 120 women and their children not even have refuge in hotels because there is not enough room to accommodate women. They can stay there for ages because there's no transitional and long term housing.
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Tanya Farha
So you're so right about the need to focus on the long term housing to really get some security in.
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Carley Bishop
Now let's hear from Jeanette Lodge, CEO of Women's Property Initiative.
00:05:57:24 - 00:06:30:07
Tanya Farha
So Women's Property Initiative, WPI, we provide affordable rental housing for women headed households, so it might be women with or without children. It's long term housing and permanent housing. And we've actually had such returns on investment undertaken, which really demonstrates the value of having that long term housing for the change in women's lives and the children's lives. One of the biggest impacts from that socially term investment to me was how it started.
00:06:30:07 - 00:06:58:18
Tanya Farha
It contributed to breaking that generational cycle of poverty, which is absolutely vital. It doesn't mean that the crisis and the transition is not needed. It is needed. But we need to provide that long term housing. Prior to working at Women's Property Initiatives, I was actually managing a women's homelessness service and I was delighted to be able to move into women's property issues because working at the Women's Housing Service, it was a great service, still is a great service.
00:06:58:18 - 00:07:28:23
Tanya Farha
It was providing support in transitional housing, but it wasn't very transitional. What was happening was the women were getting stuck in that transitional housing to two plus years that was supposed to be there for three months at the most six months. And that's because it wasn't the long term housing for them to move into. So as far as my own personal journey and my passion, it it happened to me getting the passion around housing.
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Tanya Farha
The first job I left once I left university, I was working with unemployed young people. And I must say this was a long time ago and the boundaries I had in place were probably not particularly good because one of the young women through that unemployed service rang me one Saturday night to let me know that she was experiencing domestic violence from her partner, of which I went and picked her up and brought her back to stay at my house for a while until she's able to find somewhere else that really was, I suppose, the beginning for me of how how was she ever it's an employment service.
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Tanya Farha
How is she ever going to be able to find a job or get get ahead in her life without having a safe, secure home for her to leave? I then moved from the unemployment service to working as a youth housing worker, working in a youth refuge. And even I had other jobs in between working before with the Women's Homelessness Service.
00:08:33:00 - 00:09:03:07
Tanya Farha
But I've always been involved in housing in some way, whether it be on an emergency housing committee, a housing council. It is an absolute passion for me. It underpins so much of what is important for women in particular. We can talk a bit more about why women are further disadvantaged than men, but it's a springboard. So then you can get into employment or study, or you can has an impact, have a health impact if you've not passed.
00:09:03:07 - 00:09:36:10
Tanya Farha
Well, so I'll take the excellent question. Well, I think I mean, you mentioned housing affordability, an introduction. Anglicare does a research around housing affordability as far as product which goes every 12 months or so and year after year it comes up with if you're on a particularly on a Newstart benefit, there are no private Rachel properties within any major capital cities in Australia that is affordable.
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Tanya Farha
And when we say affordable we mean that people don't have to pay more than 30% of their household income and even say 80% of your household income to somebody who's on a Newstart allowance is pretty, pretty high. Department of Health and Human Services also family status and having that funding is also do a rental review. Every so often, you know, they've determined that for a single, single mum or, you know, single parent with one child, there's I think two properties out of every hundred that are affordable.
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Tanya Farha
And they're not saying that they're actually well-located properties and we'd always want properties to be well-located, so that probably properties with access to childcare or schools or employment or public transport is not particularly good. So the housing affordability issue in the private rental market is a huge, huge issue. Come with rental assistance is not increased not so long after so many years.
00:10:36:06 - 00:11:04:09
Tanya Farha
So there's a there's a huge need for that to be redressed. Now in Victoria you will, as most of you will have heard, that the government, state government is putting $5.3 billion to create social housing, which is terrific. However, that will deliver 12,000 properties. We have a register which is like a waiting list for public housing of 60,000 households.
00:11:04:21 - 00:11:40:01
Tanya Farha
Now, this, you know, Victoria is actually coming from a very, very low base. I don't think most people realize that per capita, Victoria was the lowest of any other state in Australia of the provision of social housing. So housing affordability absolutely is a huge issue when it comes and therefore when it comes to a woman who's escaping family violence, if she's on a low income, many women are on low incomes or she's on a Centrelink benefit, then she can't afford to fund another property within the private rental market.
00:11:40:17 - 00:12:06:15
Tanya Farha
There's not enough social housing out there for her to access that. So it's it's a huge women's financial disadvantage generally, which you probably talk about. But you know, the fact that we know that even if a woman is working in the lower paid jobs of the health and community sector, the education sector predominantly, that's where women of work.
00:12:07:02 - 00:12:38:23
Tanya Farha
So not where they are working, but they make up the predominant skill set, I think of that workforce and then 40% of that workforce is casual or part time. So the income that they're earning, many women are earning who are think they've been encouraged. They're thinking university, but they're still in the lower paid positions. So the women who are working, so there's a whole lot around financial disadvantage and the impact of that for women in their housing.
00:12:39:08 - 00:13:08:23
Tanya Farha
They've got less money to spend when they are working on their housing. They do take time out of the workforce as we know, to care for children is still the predominant tiered system for children, for the elderly, for the disabled. They work part time. And yes, here we have impact then of the older women and housing and it's they mentioned how much that's increased in the two in the tooth that 2060 idea steps up across Australia.
00:13:08:23 - 00:13:40:13
Tanya Farha
Yes, I think it was about the increase of the states since the Victoria was 67% for women who are 65. And so if you just find shocking, that was quite shocking. Now. I mean I think particularly women saving for is often in the lead around gender equality, making us internationally as a government that is very progressive. Is there any insight into why that is the case?
00:13:41:13 - 00:14:17:10
Tanya Farha
I'd say, Julie, some of the things that I've just said before about the complete lack of affordable housing in Victoria, that lack of investment in Victoria and affordable housing, you know, and I don't you know, I wouldn't necessarily say that femme violence is the higher issue, but I don't have those sorts of statistics. But the other thing is that we also know that this any of the statistics that we might read, there's a huge number of hidden women who are not included in those statistics.
00:14:17:10 - 00:14:56:13
Tanya Farha
You know, many of particularly older women wouldn't even identify as, you know, sleeping in their child's home or their friend's place. They wouldn't necessarily identify as being homeless. But they are so unfortunate. Statistics concerning. But it's even more concerning what we're not seeing. So yeah. And look, I think I've got to hear also when you go on about how many women are approaching homelessness services, actually, and this is around Australia, 156 women are turned away from homelessness services every day compared to 88.
00:14:57:00 - 00:15:23:01
Tanya Farha
So while we have 15,000 children in the exact place and yes, 82,000 children are accompanying. So and it was actually one of our board members, I forget, and she calculated how many classrooms and that that was. It's a huge number. A huge number. 80,000 children.
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Carley Bishop
Now, we will hear from Dr. Emily Porter, senior research fellow at Brotherhood of St Lawrence.
00:15:28:12 - 00:15:52:11
Tanya Farha
So I work at the bottom sometimes for about two years for client organization, well founded off of the Depression by Father Tucker, who is concerned about poverty in Australia. So ambition is still an Australian story of poverty and as part of that we have a goal of economic security for all. So I'm in the work in economics and security and we will be doing research for the program.
00:15:52:12 - 00:16:15:24
Tanya Farha
So using data from some of our programs like Save Plus Stepping Science, which is in the power and business program for women. I'm currently working with the seed projects. I won't say the acronym, but always together. So what to do is create economic security, help dispense women and single basically provide all the services that they need in one place.
00:16:16:17 - 00:16:39:04
Tanya Farha
And we find that in single a lot of the issues that we see around with a strong with technology services exactly the same issues. But we see a population so we see poor access to work, poor child care, high rates of inadequate Social Security, high rates of domestic violence, lots of homelessness, a lack of available public housing and private housing, lots of homelessness.
00:16:39:15 - 00:17:07:01
Tanya Farha
I'm sorry. We see all these factors come together and our work is to try and implement programs on the ground to actually help women directly. But also, we take lessons from Britney Spears that from what we know about our system of bullying and the programs to advocate at the local level to the national level is actually policy change to address some of the systemic barriers, because too often we see that simplistic arguments of like, well, why don't you get a job?
00:17:07:01 - 00:17:30:04
Tanya Farha
But they can't get a job because they don't have a house and library classes to transport and they don't have access to childcare. So it's really about on the side of drivers and trying to change them on the ground for individual women and at the national level through policy change. And they will have to ask you, when you are doing research and you're presenting that this you main audience event.
00:17:30:16 - 00:18:04:02
Tanya Farha
So our main audience would be policy makers, but personal this are really important because there's so much misunderstanding around what causes economic security and around all the intersecting factors. So it's really important that we have a shared understanding of what causes economic insecurity and how it can lead to things like homelessness and domestic violence. So when we have conversations and when we have policies like we can actually shift that, we start addressing the root causes also, I think, over the might of one of those really important ones.
00:18:04:02 - 00:18:26:23
Tanya Farha
But I think what we really want to emphasize is all shows that the women are in a financial position themselves across a lot of social networks and that over time, so women average more educated. That means they spend more time and invest more in terms of time and space to get educated. But as Jeanette said, they start out at a disadvantage.
00:18:26:23 - 00:19:00:12
Tanya Farha
Women's work, women skills undervalued. And that support is in the market. And and in terms of on paper, that means that women entering the labor market get low, paid them a lot. So to be in insecure work, they're also more likely to struggle to access full time work even before childcare responsibilities. So at the moment we have about 51% of women in the aged 20 to 24 category with at home we expect women to establish in their careers only about 51% of the workforce full time compared to 69% of men.
00:19:00:15 - 00:19:26:03
Tanya Farha
So those are really large incentives for people. But again to say that again, so a 51% of women in the 20 to 24 category, so some of them will be studying. But this is the time what you expect young people to be establishing their careers work part time. So only so they work full time. So almost half of them women are unable to or unwilling to get full time work.
00:19:26:03 - 00:19:49:23
Tanya Farha
And that's at the start of the career, is what you want them to be developing skills, getting savings, getting experience to establish them for later on. So this really started off at a disadvantage. And labor market changes mean that that's on backwards. So ten years ago, 58% of women in that age group work full time for a percentage of what was once 30.
00:19:49:23 - 00:20:18:06
Tanya Farha
So that was 69. So and starts before, obviously women take on childcare responsibilities. So women will offer to take national markets as their access to paid work becomes dependent on things like childcare, access to affordable childcare, finding work that you can manage or else drop offs and pick ups around children getting sick. And that means that you're not going to be have.
00:20:18:11 - 00:20:50:00
Tanya Farha
So at the moment for all women in the workforce, you have a 62% of women are in the workforce compared to 70% of their men. So it's much lower. But you also look at the right time work for all women, 56% work full time compared to 82% of men that work full time. And at the moment we don't see the same quality positions in a full time, part time work, so we don't have the same opportunistic and spurious future progress as about the impacts.
00:20:50:07 - 00:21:14:17
Tanya Farha
Not only facility to but enough to survive on particularly on that are just on a part time salary. But it impacts their goods later in life and for women that don't have access to childcare and have to take long periods out of the workforce, it makes it a lot harder for them to get back into the workforce, particularly if they're taking time off for from their partner or relationship break or gentleman that's got to get back into the labor market.
00:21:14:17 - 00:21:42:21
Tanya Farha
They're really precarious position and might struggle to find work. So this this leaves a lot of women either reliance on male partners or having to rely on the Social Security system, our Social Security system is not designed for women have a right to an adequate skills are highly conditional. So we really push women into work. And that increased a lot women on Social Security, including parenting payment now.
00:21:42:21 - 00:22:05:22
Tanya Farha
So women are pushed into a parenting nest program where they're required to complete a range of things. And that's led to women having higher rates and assumptions for the benefits because they haven't been able to attend to the elements of training, always running, but doesn't actually empower women. It doesn't address the barriers like childcare or transport or or provide them useful skills in the labor market.
00:22:06:09 - 00:22:30:06
Tanya Farha
So single parents much more likely to be. So about 25% of single parent households are in poverty and a lot more of those not necessarily in poverty but in difficult financial positions. On top of parenting payments, the base rate is the $63 a day and that's really not enough to live on and raise a child's own financial wellbeing.
00:22:30:06 - 00:22:59:15
Tanya Farha
Research found that making commitments for single parents that weren't in work were 43% lower than the Australian average. So they are much less likely to be able to make ends meet and measures of their savings or resilience. Possibilities deal with the financial shock was less than 50% below the Australian average. So this is a group that really has absolutely Obama and time on the market also means that they're much less likely to have superannuation in this cohort.
00:22:59:19 - 00:23:28:14
Tanya Farha
In the pre-COVID period we found that using 1 million single source data, around 65% of superannuation, free time is during the peak of corporates that declined to 45% as a lot of people withdrew this information that had there's going to be some really long term questions that I heard that started out in a really financially disadvantaged situation and not going to have really long term effects because we're not actually providing people, seeing what they need.
00:23:28:14 - 00:23:55:05
Tanya Farha
It's also getting harder. So we've talked a lot about older women. These are older women are one of the forces for employers relying on the jobseeker payments. And that's because they're pushing due to raising the pension age, as well as tightening eligibility for the disability support pension and other sort of parenting payments were pushing a lot more women in their fifties onto jobseeker payments, adjustment payments of $46 a day.
00:23:56:01 - 00:24:30:00
Tanya Farha
Only 8% of households. But the majority of payments are in poverty. And there's really high rates of people seeking meals, taking medication, and it's contributing to homelessness. So in 2001 30% of. Okay, so let me just point in, in 2001 5% of jobseeker was against government, only 50, not 20.6%. So it's quadrupled in that time. And this is a payment that puts a conditions.
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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 gold women dot net or on our socials at just gold women.
00:24:58:08 - 00:25:08:15
Kyriakos Gold
This was a just gold podcast. Find out more about our social enterprise at justgold.net