Philanthropist leads call to lift women’s lagging economic security

Senior businesswomen, former politicians and community leaders will call for big government investments in universal quality childcare, increasing paid parental leave to one year, paid family violence leave and legislative change to mandate reporting of the gender pay gap.

Philanthropist Nicola Forrest, wife of mining magnate Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest, says the pandemic has affected women more than men. She has brought together 23 prominent women including former foreign minister Julie Bishop, ex-Labor MPs Kate Ellis and Jenny Macklin, and former Sydney mayor Lucy Turnbull to demand sweeping improvements.

Nicola Forrest says losing women from the workforce is a “national prosperity problem”.Credit: Rohan Thomson

“As a proud Australian woman, business leader, and mother of three unique and fearless daughters, I am disturbed that progress on gender equality has slowed in the last decade,” said Ms Forrest, co-founder of the Minderoo Foundation and convenor of the Prime Minister’s Community Business Partnership.

“We have to make workforce participation easier for women, not harder ... it comes down to supporting families so that women can re-enter the workforce, because we are losing our educated women and it is affecting our GDP. This is a national prosperity problem.”

Women do not have “an equal chance and equal opportunity”, she said, and in the run-up to the federal election her group, Women for Progress, wants political parties to commit to an evidence-based early learning system for children from infancy to school age, and for educators to be “securely employed and properly paid”.

The women – including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner June Oscar, Diversity Council of Australia chair Ming Long, businesswomen Wendy McCarthy and Carol Schwartz, and ACTU president Michele O’Neil – want the introduction of government-funded paid parental leave at the minimum wage for 26 weeks (shared between partners), phased up to 52 weeks by 2030.

Former foreign minister Julie Bishop is among the women calling for change.Credit: Russell James

They want National Employment Standards changed to include a minimum of 10 days’ paid family and domestic violence leave, and investment in housing for older women and those experiencing violence, including those on temporary visas.

They are also demanding implementation of all 55 recommendations from federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins’ Respect@Work report and for the Fair Work Act “to include gender equality as an express object, remove the need for a ‘male comparator’ and establish a new Fair Work Commission gender equality panel”.

Medium to large organisations should be required to report indicators including the pay gap, cultural background figures and progress towards women-in-leadership targets, they say, and the recommendations of the Indigenous women’s report, Wiyi Yani U Thangani, should also be implemented

Ms Long, who is also chair of AMP Capital Funds Management, said the group was appealing to men to show solidarity with the women’s claims “for their partners, wives, mothers, daughters, grandmothers, female colleagues – [and] that they understand this appeal also benefits them, for them to equally stand with women on these issues”.

Ming long, chair of the Diversity Council of Australia, wants men to get behind women’s demands for a better deal.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

“I would like for every voter in Australia to keep these issues in mind as they consider who they would like to vote for at the next election because leadership matters to all of us – our futures depend on it,” she said.

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