Creating a care economy

Feminist discourse, far from being a radical rump of economic thought through envisioning a care economy, provides inspiration for re-visioning the market. The ongoing task of feminists, is a reorganisation of the economy that puts human need at the centre of the debate, not at the margin.

The creation of a care economy is not just women's work. Valuing care in economic terms provides an opportunity for all Australian workers, exhausted by demands made on time for family and community by profit obsessed employers, to benefit from a more humane marketplace. Where Maxism and Socialism failed, feminism provides the last hope for humanising global capital.

The first step in this re-visioning of the market is better economic data on when, where and how often women and men care. Security4Women recommends that the Australian Bureau of Statistics undertake regular Time Use Surveys in the same year as the Census of Population and Housing to inform decisions regarding support for unpaid care work.

Further, they call for "satellite accounts in line with the international System of National Accounts so that estimates of the value of unpaid care services are available for comparison with the value of Gross Domestic Product." These are recommendations that EMILY's List Australia endorses.

Other recommendations, including those made by the Work and Family Policy Roundtable, establish the foundation for a care economy by promoting and achieving work-life balance for Australians.

The introduction of paid parental leave, an economic reform elevating the importance of post-birth childcare as important to the wellbeing of young Australians and their parents, is the first of these foundations, but many more reforms that must be made.

There needs to be an increase in the minimum entitlements to paid and unpaid personal or carer's leave, from the paltry 10 days a year currently protected as a National Employment Standard.

Other urgent reforms include, ensuringpaid and unpaid leave covers family, friend and community care and extending the right torequest flexible working arrangements to include caring for children, aging parents and the ill, in line with international best practise.

But perhaps the most significant reform heralding the care economy is the achievement of gender pay equity in caring professions occupied predominantly by women. The Australian Services Union equal pay case, currently before Fair Work Australia, will lead to both micro and macro-economic reform in the interests of women.

The question is whether a Labor government, led by a woman and a feminist, can see the benefits in reorganising the economy in this way. EMILY's List Australia hopes so. Not just because it is the right thing to do for women, but because the creation of a care economy makes good electoral sense for Labor.

In each of the six, marginal seats EMILY's List Australia polled prior to the last federal election, the percentage of people employed in caring professions was higher than the national average. Knowing that women make up the majority of these workers, transforms winning the women's vote through financing the equal pay case, must sensibly be part of a targeted marginal seat strategy for Labor.

Last time, Labor won only 1 of the 6 seats EMILY's List polled. It will need them all if it is to win government at the next election, in its own right.