Antiseptic
Good on your for running a small business – a tough gig. But compulsory super is not a gift to employees, ultimately it’s a part of their wages that the government is forcing them to save. I respect your choice to use your income the way you want; wage and salary earners do not have that choice. And if your choice means you don’t have enough to live on in retirement my taxes will support you. Why should they not also support someone who is has saved less because she was raising a child rather than earning a wage?

Most of the benefits you list are directed at child or parental support. If a relationship breaks down and the woman is receiving child support her ex partner still benefits, because as a taxpayer I am subsidising the cost of raising his children. Why on earth should a man who is not the primary carer of his children be subsidised by me?

Houellebecq
I have some sympathy for many of the posts here attacking radical feminism, but I don’t see any radical feminism on display. In fact, the disproportionate vitriol attacking women in general on display here is a close parallel of the anti-male vitriol that radical feminism is accused of. As you concede, it is “woman hating bigotry”. And such bigotry is wrong whoever displays it.

The flow of money is not the only measure of social and economic contribution. The OECD estimates the value of unpaid work in Australia as equivalent to about 46% of GDP. Women on average work 138 more minutes a week at unpaid work than men. Men work an average 146 minutes a work more at paid work or study than women. Australia's difference in total hours worked (7 minutes) is one of the lowest in the OECD.

www.oecd.org/els/social/indicators/SAG

'And such bigotry is wrong whoever displays it.'

Well, the feminists display said bigotry in the national newspapers, published books and in the mind moulding universities of the nation, while the posters here are read by a few bored housewives and retirees.

'The flow of money is not the only measure of social and economic contribution. '

And the accumulation of money is not the only measure of power or independence or happiness. But it's somehow the only measure feminists are interested in. Would you rather be the one who earns more money or who spends more money?

I don't pay attention to estimates of whether bathing a child you love is work or whether mowing the lawn or commuting to work counts. It's all subjective rubbery nonsense. You cant put a dollar value on a hug from a mother for a start.

But it stands to reason that men and women would do an equivalent amount of work, seeing as couples generally work together. The spiel you always hear from feminists is that the provider has all the fun in life and has all the power and all the money and all the choices.

Back in reality land, families decide what mix of paid and unpaid work each partner does, according to values, attitudes to childcare, working opportunities and conditions, previous education and earning power, choice of partner (Women still like to marry up), a billion different considerations.

Often the guy takes on a traditional role, as does the woman as it's easier in life to swim with the tide, and it's in line with the gender roles and values they were raised with.

All that is by the by.

What gets me is that there is zero concession by feminists that men give money to women, or that women might have better family relationships in compensation for a super balance, or that men and women have equal ability to negotiate their role in the family unit in the first place.

It's all women = victim, the downtrodden martyrs of society, men = living the life of riley.

Rhian, if I have inadequate super when I retire, then I will be dependent on the aged pension. The same applies to women who prioritise having children over making money. The article is not satisfied with that, however, it is trying to justify the idea that this choice represents a social injustice in need of redress, which I say is nonsense.

I'm interested to see that there is such little difference in the total amount of work done by both genders. I suspect that for many single men there is almost no time spent on unpaid tasks whilst for most women, single or not, there is a reasonably consistent amount that is considerably larger. This implies that the women are choosing to do many of the unpaid things they do for reasons that have little to do with necessity and a lot to do with preference, informed by social expectations (we regard slovenly women less highly and the same does not necessarily apply to slovenly men), or by simple personal motivations. In a ddition, as has been discussed elsewhere, much of what is claimed as "work" is regarded as recreation in other contexts. My daughter, for example, thinks the height of entertainment is to go shopping for clothes and her mother loves nothing more than doing it with her. Nonetheless, I'm sure she'd include it as part of her "unpaid work" if faced with a questionaire defining it that way.

In a relationship, the woman has traditionally been compensated for this work by the increased income that married men have traditionally been able to earn and the social opportunities that were available to married but not single women. That's the nature of a contractual arrangement: there's a quid pro quo. Unfortunately, feminism has been largely about removing the quo whilst demanding the quid grow ever-larger.

I must say it's a nice change to have a proper discussion on a subject related to gender. Few who call themselves feminists are prepared to examine their own views very closely, so their expression of those views is necessarily jingoist at best.

Rhian, I missed a point. On the subject of compulsory super, it is entirely an employer's responsibility and forms part of the "on-costs" of employment, rather than being a part of one's wage. When it was introduced it was expressly not a trade-off for wages, except for the first 3%. The remaining portion was always in addition to wages that previously existed and was specifically an employer contribution.

However, that wasn't my point. Whether it is an employer contribution or not, it is not part of the employee's cashflow and employees don't consider super as part of their income in most cases. Job advertisements don't mention super unless the employer is offering more than the SG. For self-employed people, the money that is paid in super might be the difference between staying in business for another year or shutting the doors; being stuck with an old an obsolete piece of equipment or purchasing a new one and so on, so very many of them decide not to take it.

The interesting thing about that is that one of the motivations for the scheme was to redress an inequity that existed previously, in which the self-employed were more likely to have super because the tax implications were favourable for them.

Houellebecq
Yous say “It's all women = victim, the downtrodden martyrs of society, men = living the life of riley.” If you read the posts in this thread, you overwhelmingly get the opposite impression.

Antispetic
I see the inadequacy of private savings to support retirement incomes for a significant proportion of the population as a matter of economic policy concern.

The data suggest that the bulk of unpaid work is housework (cleaning, cooking, maintenance etc) followed by caring for dependents (children, elderly) then shopping. Women do spend more time shopping than men, but I couldn’t find a breakdown by type of shopping. Undoubtably there are people who enjoy clothes shopping, but I find it hard to believe that accounts for most shopping time. And there are people who enjoy gardening too, but it’s also part of household maintenance. “Retail therapy” is hardly enough to account for the difference in unpaid work between men and women.

The data suggest that young people do less unpaid work than older people, which is consistent with your idea that young single men do least unpaid work. I’d guess the same is true for young single women.

Yes, superannuation is the employer’s responsibility. But whatever the government’s rhetoric, the economics of an increase in labour costs are identical whether that increase is in the form of direct wages or benefits. It’s the difference between the “initial incidence” of a tax or impost (who is responsible for paying it) and the “final incidence” (who actually carries the cost). Employers may not have cut wages to offset super, but subsequent wage increases would be lower than they otherwise would have been. There are no magic puddings in the labour market.

Jobs ads don’t mention super unless it’s above the legal requirement because people take for granted that they will get their legal entitlements. The very fact that payments above the minimum ARE mentioned and are used to attract employees demonstrates that employees consider it part of their remuneration.

As a self-employed person you at least you had access to favourably-taxed supernnuation if you wished.

Rhian,

As I said, they do it in refutation of the feminist social commentry, which enjoys a much more widereaching audience. The constant message we're fed is how bad women have it, and how it's all mens fault, how men need to do better, and how women are victims in any gender conflict. So this needs some evening out. It cant go unchallenged! Surely. It's only natural for people to defend themselves. This constant barrage of one-sided commentry that doesn't align at all with their life experience must be really frustrating.

Imagine if you have never seen a woman with a black eye, as vanna always says, and you are told there is an epidemic of battered wives and it's everywhere, and men need to wear a ribbon to prove their innocence, and it's the innate nature of the abusive male. Imagine if you've actually been attacked and would never dream of hitting a chick.

Imagine if all your friends fathers were hen-pecked, and their mothers ruled the house, yet you see this constant propaganda that men have controlled women and kept them barefoot and pregnant all these years.

I think these men post in the mistaken belief that the author may read the comments and accept the opportunity to defend their case. Notice how with each deafening silence, the natives get more and more restless. They're dying to have their voice heard I reckon.

All that ever seems to come back at them in response is 'misogynist!', and none of their challenges to the content, to the biased use of statistics, the agenda driven research ever get addressed.

I reckon if someone came on here and adressed their actual points they'd behave much better. Maybe it's too late for some of them though, they seem to reflexively bark at cars these days.

In the end though, I reckon they're all coming from a position or a feeling of powerlessness.

Well that's the vibe I get.