Funny how women still manage to keep some things hidden from the rest of us – hidden unemployment eh?

Marie Coleman : “My grandmother was a single parent of four children, one with a developmental problem: she worked. She scrubbed shop floors, she kept a boarding house - she had no retirement savings. My mother worked, as did her husband - she was able to fit work around child rearing. I worked as did my husband - in my generation women married younger, had their children younger than do the current generations. I relied on friends and housekeepers for after school care - just as the current occupants of The Lodge rely on paid housekeepers.

Most women can’t afford that, and they want some decent Commonwealth policy to help them with out of school hours care, changes to retirement incomes policies and better access to re-training options.”

How about making housekeepers more affordable and solve some of this hidden unemployment problem at the same time? Would that be a good Commonwealth policy? Did they perchance lose sight the basics when making all those other grandiose policies they’re so busily making?

How about recruiting women who have paid the least amount of tax into this very worthwhile social service? Or how about those that have not paid back their HECS debt after 15 or 20 years? Or those with insufficient super. Fascinating.

Pelican.

That just wont do. Women are SLAVES.

Your post, while making absolute sense, is deserving only of the following response...

According to Slam-the-Bitch Misogyny 101, this is all because of women's CHOICES, and nothing to do with a society that treats women like lepers if they don't take primary responsibility for raising the kids.

Grow up, you sad little woman!

"The surviving partners of judges are entitled to a lifetime pension worth 62.5 per cent of what would have been payable to the retired judge."

Not a bed benefit for the hidden unemployed

In the 1960s young women were judged by the status and earning capacity of the man they married, and obviously those women who snared [and kept] a young man who became a judge or company director would reckon they did very well.

Given what's at stake it's obvious that men of low socio economic status remained single and even today that remains the case.

Its all very well assuming that people will be rewarded for their efforts but in Australia men are better rewarded than women for doing the same job. And there are jobs available for men that women, and minorities will not be considered for.

Hidden unemployment means people who are looking for work but are not counted as unemployed because
- their partner works
- they have assets ie more than $500 in the bank
- they have worked more than "1 hour per week paid or unpaid in the survey period"

When a number like unemployment rate is used to congratulate or castigate politicians for managing the economy [sic] then it is liable to manipulation, as currently occurs.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics also publishes Labour Participation Rates which give a better picture of the workforces ability to earn enough money to feed, house and clothe themselves.
The unemployment rate is such a warped figure its really dangerous to use it to develop policy for social support or superannuation or pension or labour force availability projections.

DVD

‘Dane & Peter,well put and great insight from different points of view and all done without spiteful personal attacks.’

What rubbish. Declaring that this is just another bid by women for more handouts (Peter) and patronising women with a ‘Poor you’ comment (Dane) because she reasonably pointed out that women who work for nothing in the home are financially disadvantaged is NEITHER insightful or respectful.

Your comment is male-centric vindictiveness disguised as praise.

Houllebecq

Sorry to burst your little suburban Madonna bubble, but anyone who employs someone else’s labour without paying them is in breach of every labour law in the Western world. However, we don’t apply that law to housewives, because women and men are indoctrinated from birth to believe that it is a woman’s social duty to ‘CHOOSE’ to work in the home for nothing once she becomes a mother.

I guess dane doesn’t have to grow up after all, because he is in the company a lot of equally sad little dudes here who still think that women’s financial existence begins and ends with their husbands’ paypackets. Of course, this feudal protectiveness suddenly evaporates when the marriage becomes one of the 50% that now ends in divorce – then it’s a case of how dare that greedy bitch think that she has a right to ‘my’ money!

billie and pelican

Another statistic – unpaid work done in the home (mainly by women) comprises approximately 60% of GDP.

Seeker
“How about making housekeepers more affordable?”

Easy. Just abolish the single mother’s pension, the dole and the minimum wage.

Billie
If we put aside the laughable and false notion that politicians “manage” the economy, the entire argument for handouts doesn’t make sense. It is mere anti-social greed and grasping parading as concern for the disadvantaged.

SJF
Ho hum ad hom.

Your entire argument is based on the assumption that we can magically create benefits out of thin air, just by passing a law. The state has the ability to shape society at will, by declaring whatever it wants. But reality doesn’t work that way.

However, if you are right, why don’t we just pass a law that the husband must pay to the wife $1,000 a week, as well as superannuation, workers compensation and income tax, and see what happens?

The fact of the matter is, anyone’s work at home is paid at the market rate, because they agree to do the work for that amount. The rest is simply a delusion that reality is whatever the state says it is – a violent anti-social delusion of total government power of social engineering at that.

Whenever people engage in any social co-operation whatsoever, they are “employing someone else’s labour” to use your phrase. When you buy a cake at the fair, you should be imprisoned for “employing the labour” of the CWA ladies at a rate below that which all-wise government has decreed.

If a woman agrees to have sex with a man, but only after he has expended many hours of valuable consideration to induce her, then she should be imprisoned for exploitation under the labour laws, because she obtains the benefits from “employing someone else’s labour”?

“Another statistic – unpaid work done in the home (mainly by women) comprises approximately 60% of GDP.”

So what? Why should economists' arbitrary definition of GDP decide the matter? You are failing to deal with the essential issues.

The forced redistributions you are advocating have the same ethical basis as gang rape.