Women are planning a revolution. It will benefit everyone

There is a revolution under way. You could call it “fifth-wave feminism”.

It began before the child sexual abuse scandal, which continues to rock centre-based childcare. But as a result of the emotional wave of disgust and horror that each new revelation has brought, the dam has broken sooner than it might have. Women want to take back their lives. To stop co-operating with a society that treats us like eunuchs, valuing only half of what we do.

“I, like many mothers, knew in my gut – my womb, perhaps – that the baby should not be far from me.”Credit: Getty Images

The exciting thing about this revolution is that it is not just about self-actualisation, but social actualisation. It’s about making room for men to be fathers as much as for women to be mothers. It challenges the archaic workplace, which assumes people stop being parents as soon as they cross the office threshold. The revolution demands that productivity be valued over presenteeism. That hours spent dawdling around an office no longer count the same as hours spent delivering quality work. That we finally measure outcomes instead of inputs.

It insists that we respect the work that parents do. Because, as any parent knows, raising a child is an unparalleled joy, but also a slog. Providing a stable home environment is hard work and something to boast about.

The revolution was under way before the allegations against Melbourne childcare worker Joshua Dale Brown came to light.

At the beginning of this year, I was sent a manuscript by Virginia Tapscott, a mother of four and freelance writer. She and Tara Shelton have created an advocacy platform called Motherism, which describes itself as “the unfinished business of feminism – for mothers”.

Motherism is running a Kickstarter to fund the publication of the Tapscott’s book, All Mothers Work. The book is both profound and energising. It will be the manifesto of this revolution.

Tapscott articulates so many important ideas in the book that I’ve rendered it fluorescent by highlighting passages. The reason the revolution has been so long in coming, she writes, is that previous waves of feminism only valued women as man-like creatures, rendering them invisible as soon as they became mothers.

Society presses us to muddle through those early years stretched to our limits, sleepless, instincts at odds with social expectations, pretending that it’s all fine. That model has gone unchallenged by decades of women because, she says, each generation of women’s children “grew out of their dependency and it became a problem for the next woman”.

This resonates. Unlike others, perhaps, my anger from that confusing time has never subsided.

As a result, I have written often about the need to make childcare flexible – I prefer tax-deductible. So often that I’m sick of the sound of my own keyboard. In 2014, I defended Tony Abbott’s Paid Parental Leave Scheme, which as I then wrote was both “worthwhile and visionary” in the face of detractors from the left and the right. It proposed six months of parental leave at full pay (based on an annual salary cap of $150,000). The policy was costed at $4 billion per year. The government currently spends almost $13 billion a year in childcare subsidies.

At the time when I defended the paid parental leave scheme, I was the mother of a three-year-old. Abbott’s PPL wouldn’t have benefited me – though it might have made another baby possible. In a society in which fertility is declining, with long-term implications for our ability to sustain public services which depend on young, able-bodied taxpayers, that’s a problem for all of us. It’s also an individual tragedy. People these days are having fewer children than they would like to have. There is a sadness, an emptiness, which each missing child leaves.

I have also written repeatedly about a policy shift which would make a huge difference to parents as they go back to work after having children. Instead of attaching childcare subsidies to childcare centres, the evidence that children do better with a single or family carer in the years from 0-2 informs my support for tax-deductible care. Also my instinct, which parents are too often encouraged to suppress.

I, like many mothers, knew in my gut – my womb, perhaps – that the baby should not be far from me. This choice-based model would allow parents to keep their children close or choose a carer they trust. I like a model developed by Rosalind Dixon and Richard Holden, who have also been vocal proponents of parent-directed carer. More and more people are now also making the case publicly.

Fifth-wave feminism is not just for corporate women, but for all women and their families.Credit: Getty Images

As one of these groups, ForParents, points out, this is not about pumping more money into the system. “The childcare subsidy is already budgeted and used by thousands of families,” it recently told the media. “We are not asking for money; we’re asking for a change to how it’s used.”

This movement insists that social policy is only good policy if it makes combining work with care financially viable. And yes, that will require reforms that go beyond childcare, to put homeownership back within reach, even for a family that lives – for a while at least – on one salary.

Most importantly, fifth-wave feminism is not just for a small group of corporate career women, but for all women and their families. Family breakdowns have increased as families are stressed and distressed by the need to pretend the institution comes second to a career. Low-income women and their children have felt the brunt of this most.

Fifth-wave feminism is not just about recognising the whole woman in all her roles and choices, it’s also about making space for fathers to be more involved and integral to family life. Conferring status and respect on men, as well as women, who take on the carer role as well as those who take on the earning. Creating a society that values caring as well as careering. Because it’s these precious family units that give children the best start in life.

Parnell Palme McGuinness is managing director at campaigns firm Agenda C. She has done work for the Liberal Party and the German Greens.