A / Prof Jo Cavanagh, Prof Catherine Itsiopoulos (RMIT), and Katherine Ellis (CEO of Youth Affairs Council Victoria) discuss the current situation for women in Australia post Covid-19. Welcome by Kyriakos Gold (Just Gold CEO). Recorded live at The Commons QV, located at Melbourne's Greek Quarter, on International Women's Day 2022. The Invisible Woman Project is a social partnership between Just Gold and the City of Melbourne.
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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.
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[Kyriakos Gold] Hello, I’m Kyriakos Gold and welcome to Just Gold. Tonight we're coming to you from our amphitheatre at The Commons QV in the heart of Melbourne and we are going to celebrate women. We're going to dedicate all of our platforms to women for International Women's Day and with us as guest speakers, we have Katherine Ellis, Jo Cavanagh and Catherine Itsiopoulos you'll find a little bit more about them in a few minutes, but first I want to let you know about our social partnership with the city of Melbourne where we are together tackling gender and age equity under the umbrella The Invisible Woman. More about our project and about this year's theme for International Women's Day that is Break the Bias coming up.
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[Grace Packer] And now join A / Prof Jo Cavanagh, Prof Catherine Itsiopoulos from RMIT, and the CEO of Youth Affairs Council Victoria, Katherine Ellis, as they discuss the current situation for women in Australia post Covid-19.
CEO and Founder of Just Gold Digital Agency, Kyriakos Gold, hosts the conversation live at The Commons in Melbourne’s CBD for International Womens Day 2022.
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[Prof Jo Cavanagh] For The Invisible Woman project, we engaged with the research which was actually pre-COVID before COVID happened and at that time we knew that women were more likely to be below the poverty line we knew that older women were the largest growing group of homeless people we also knew that women were more at risk as they age due to their financial insecurity and then added to that is all the issues of complexity of other things that happen in people's lives some of which are perhaps have been developing over time and others which can become shock events for women like loss of a partner family violence divorce separation a health concern and disability and finding themselves at an older age without the housing and financial and health security that they need in order to age well.
So with The Invisible Woman project it's our goal to start the conversation raised the understanding and awareness about the particular needs of women 50+ and the opportunities to do better to strengthen and prevent the vulnerabilities which are currently occurring we also know that in the context of COVID women have fared very badly in terms of extra pressures that they've had to bear as being part of the essential workforces we now understand and the care of children the care of aging parents loss of jobs there are many issues where women once again have experienced greater disadvantage and increased vulnerability.
So tonight we're going to share with you from our particular expertise and I’m going to hand over to my friend and colleague Katherine Ellis in a minute and we're going to just have a conversation where we can share with you the things that we know from the research and expertise of our professional areas, but with a view to identifying what we can all do to bring about or participate in a change movement to ensure that we do Break the Bias and that women can in fact improve their security as they age rather than the decline that we currently see. So Katherine can I hand over to you and invite you to share what are some of the top of mind messages that you'd like to share with our viewers?
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[Katherine Ellis] Yeah, sure thanks Jo. I think working in the youth sector for 20 years now it's been really interesting to me to see what's happening with young girls and young women and comparing it to my own experiences as I’ve gone through life and through the workforce and as we've seen COVID hit so many things have happened many of them you mentioned already about job losses and extra caring responsibilities and for young women what we've also seen are things like the cancellation of organised sport which is where a lot of girls and young women get their first leadership opportunities and have the chance to sort of excel without being criticized for it in any way so that concerns me.
I think also we've seen sexual and reproductive health services not be as available during COVID which has obviously been life-changing for some young women so there are also things which in themselves are invisible and I worry that over time will actually end up with those girls and young women not having the same successful life course that they might have had if COVID had never happened. So I think we're living in a very interesting time right now there are also potential silver linings the job situation now is actually in some ways giving opportunities to people who may not have had opportunities before because employers are really looking very much harder for employees and so I like to think that it's going to open up opportunities for people who may have been discriminated against, or not had the ability to kind of enter the workforce with the supports that people from more sort of middle-class families have so I think that that is a silver lining potentially that we're also looking at as well but the reality is for girls and young women which is where I focus my work.
COVID has been a terrible impact for their lives and also in their social connections and as we all know social connections for women are so incredibly important through life for career but also very much for a sense of purpose in community and connection in older age as well so I think it's going to be very interesting seeing what happens as we go forward with all the knowledge we had before COVID and the new reality that we live in now.
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[Kyriakos Gold] You can connect with us on social media @JustGoldWomen or on our website at justgold.net.