Pre-Budget Submission 2023
The Equality Rights Alliance welcomes the government’s efforts in the October budget to strengthen paid parental leave, make childcare more accessible and to recognise the main causes of the gender pay gap as low pay and poor conditions in care sectors like aged care where the vast majority of workers are women. It can build on those measures with structural change that further builds the economic security and wellbeing of women while exercising fiscal and ethical responsibility.
Improving gender equality is smart economics, enhancing productivity and improving social and fiscal outcomes for this and future generations. Continuing to build back better in the shadow of the pandemic requires seeing and improving the big picture: how taxes and transfers, childcare, housing and all areas of policy interact.
ERA urges a broad sweep of measures that address the underlying drivers of poverty, namely low-income and gender biases that exist to keep women from doing as well as men. Our evidence-based submission calls for measures that aim to strengthen women’s economic security with better income-support, better transitions into work, fairer housing supports, and more gender responsive climate policy.