Kate Gunn
Security4Women
Kate Gunn is the Chair of Security4Women (S4W) and President of the National Foundation for Australian Women (NFAW). Kate is an experienced company director and Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors (FAICD). Kate is the Co-Founder and Director of Balance! Healthcare. Balance! Healthcare is a leader in multidisciplinary integrated healthcare, and runs the Blue Mountains and Cairns GP Super Clinics. She holds a Masters of Business Administration (MBA) from MGSM.
Commentaries by Kate Gunn:
18 August 2010
Care Economy
The Care Economy, do we really know what that is?
It encompasses both macroeconomics and
microeconomics.
It is a relatively new but highly significant
concept with increasing importance for the Australian economy and the economic
wellbeing of citizens, especially women.
In other words, it is complicated.
The provision of care has
public good qualities with the benefits of providing care, both paid and unpaid,
‘spilling over’ to the wider community. As people who require care cannot
exercise consumer rights in the way that well people can, the public goods
aspect and impaired consumer sovereignty signal an important role for government
policy and public funding to support both paid and unpaid care
It
is very much an issue for women.
Care work, both paid and unpaid, affects women’s
economic wellbeing. Paid care services are characterised by a highly feminised
workforce with high levels of casual and part-time employment. Informal caring
impacts negatively on women’s lifetime earnings
The Care Economy is becoming a challenge to manage and is almost falling into
that “too hard basket”.
The population is ageing and longevity is
increasing, whilst this means that we are all able to enjoy our lives longer
with our families and friends, it also poses a challenge to the supply of
caring.
This should be a high priority issue for the 2010 Election but as with the Pay
Equity it appears to be a non-issue from either candidate.
Well maybe they are lucky enough to not be
affected.
4 August 2010
Pay Equity
The
Gender Pay Gap should be one of the current issues raised in the Election
Campaign but at this stage it has not been highlighted as an issue by either
party.
It would appear that our new Prime Minister is one of a
few women in Australia that is fortunate enough to be earning the same salary as
her predecessors unlike the rest of us who continue to earn 17% less for the
same job.
Well let’s hope that is the case and that she is not
oblivious to the situation.
Unlike the Opposition Leader who has publically acknowledged that women earn
less than men when he put on the record that in relation to the Paid Parental
Leave “dad’s should be paid at the mum’s rate”.
Clearly this is to save the bottom line as men do
earn more than women.
Instead of stating that dad’s should take a salary
cut to look after their new born, maybe he should have been focusing on
eradicating the Gender Pay Gap.
Interesting thought!
There is a lack of awareness of the gendered choice of occupations in terms of
life-long economic security and there needs to be a set of electronic business
tools to ensure improved gender pay equity in businesses with less than 100
employees (SMEs) as more than 1.5 million work in this sector.
This is an important issue and should be high on
the list for the 2010 Election.
The ‘Making it Fair’ report recommendations need
to be implemented.
I would like to see, as I
am sure everyone reading the commentaries submitted by this Panel would, that
each candidate make an active commitment to lead pay equity from within the
government at both the state and national levels.
A
Female Prime Minister and Paid Parental Leave
The last couple of weeks have certainly been historic for
Australian women.
First, Legislation for
To top the PPL historic event on the 24th June
2010 we watched history in the making as The Hon. Julia Gillard MP was appointed
the Prime Minister of Australia.
This was a momentous occasion for all women in
4 June 2010
Paid Parental Leave
Over the past couple of
months there has been a lot of discussion both in the Public and Private sectors
about the Paid Parental Leave Scheme.
The Government has been committed to their 2009-10 Budget promise and I
am delighted that the Oppostiion has formally stated its intention to allow the
enactment of this Bill in the current Session in order for its administration to
begin from 1 January 2011.
National Foundation of
Australian Women and many women’s organisations including Economic
Security4Women have worked hard to clarify with all parliamentary parties that;
the Government's Bill is a necessary first step in developing any national
scheme; that immediate passage of the Bill as an essential, and we look to
enhancements over time.
No doubt there will still
be some stimulating exchanges over the next few weeks as the Opposition and the
Greens seek to make amendments, but passage of the Bill- with or without
amendments, is now assured.
I stand by my comment in
an earlier commentary that the Government’s Paid Parental Leave policy is a
starting point for women bearing children to have some economic security on
maternity leave. I believe that this
scheme will benefit many women in low paid jobs, and in the private sector who
currently lack any access to paid parental leave.
Henry Report, the Budget and Women
Unfortunately, even though the increase to the Compulsory Superannuation
Guarantee to 12% appears to be a great move on the Government part, I’m
wondering if the Government thought about the adverse impact this would have on
the capacity of low income women and whether the increase in the Superannuation
amount the company has to pay will affect their take home income on which they
live on. Of course a lot of the
impact could be solved by abolishing the current 17% gender wage gap.
Unfortunately, there has been no mention of recommendations on Pay Equity
from the House of Representatives report “Making it Fair.”
As mentioned in my previous commentary the care economy is an important issue.
It is important to note that Henry did make recommendations about
financing aged care services. The
Government has made reference of the issue of financing aged care to the
Productivity Commission. Let’s hope
they follow-through.
It is important to note that the Henry Report made a number of important
recommendations concerning enhancing female work-force including enhancing
provisions for and funding regimes for child care, contingent on work-force
attachment for parents once a child reaches 4 years of age.
I have strong reservations about this proposal and am pleased the
Government rejected it. However, the
issues around work-life balance do need to be explored further.
4 May 2010
CHILDREN AND THE CARE ECONOMY
As mentioned in my previous
commentary, Security4Women’s core focus is on economic security for all women.
We believe supporting parents through affordable, accessible, quality
child and after school hours care is an important issue that needs to be
addressed by Government. I think we
would all agree that Government has a role in child care with supporting the
development of children and the participation of parents in the work force.
Currently most child care centres’ and provider
organisations’ revenue comes almost entirely from payments by individual users,
who drawn on the Child Care Benefit, Child Care Tax Rebate or their own funds.
As we know through extensive research these revenue sources unfortunately
do not guarantee quality child and after school hours care and do not reach the
majority of working parents in
The lack of availability of affordable, accessible,
acceptable quality care for school aged children out of school hours including
during vacations, is a major cause of disadvantage in relation to women’s
workforce participation. I believe
there is a most urgent need for significant policy and program changes at
Commonwealth level if the needs of school age children and young people, and
needs of their working mothers, are to be met.
I would suggest that all women in
Another important issue is the care economy.
The majority of care is provided by women with the erroneous assumption
that the supply of care is infinitely elastic, whether it is paid or unpaid.
Of importance is the tension between unpaid work in the home, voluntary
work in the community and paid work in the market.
I find “Caring” is an ambiguous notion which encompasses physical care,
which can be provided independently of a relationship between the carer and the
care recipient, and emotional care in which the person caring is inseparable
from the care given. Women should,
when taking on the role of carer, not have to have the extra burden of wondering
whether they will lose their financial stability.
18 April 2010
Kate is currently overseas.
2 April 2010
I would like to see a
substantial improvement in women’s access to sustainable employment and business
enterprise; women’s access to relevant and affordable education and training,
information and technology; provision of appropriate working conditions and
advancement within employment; the rate of elimination of employment
discrimination and occupational segregation; women’s control over economic
resources; and recognition of women’s (actual and potential) role in the
economy.
As Chair of S4W I recently
signed on behalf of S4W to the Open Letter to Senators and MPS produced by
National Foundation for Australian Women and regarding “Let’s Get Paid Parental
Leave Happening in January 2011. We believe that the proposed Government’s
Paid Parental Leave policy is a starting point for women bearing children to
have some economic security on maternity leave. I believe that this scheme
will benefit many women in low paid jobs, and in the private sector who
currently lack any access to paid parental leave.