How do we achieve substantive equality for women without denying difference or reinforcing culturally constructed gender roles? How do we move beyond a framework that assumes the male body as the norm, that defines woman as other? At a practical level, how do we share the heavy financial (and other) burdens that raising children imposes overwhelmingly on women?
These are fundamental problems in feminist discourse with real world implications for women and gender equality. They are tensions that feminists have long been grappling with, both explicitly and implicitly, in efforts to not only achieve ideological coherence but also pragmatic political and legal strategies that will best bring about substantive equality for women.
Over the past week, these unresolved tensions have played out in the Australian media as the relative merits of the two major political parties parental leave policies have been debated. Put simply, one party has framed paid parental leave as a welfare measure and the other as an industrial right, an entitlement no different to other types of leave paid at full wage.
The debate that has taken place in mainstream and social media has been fueled by the politics of a looming election campaign and a high degree of cognitive dissonance from all sides. A conservative leader who in the past has described the concept of paid maternity leave as "radical feminism" (not meant as a compliment!) has come up with a plan that could well have been written by a radical feminist. And feminists from the governing Labor party have been heard complaining that this plan goes too far, imposes too high a burden on business, is economically irresponsible and treats women unfairly in relation to one another even though the policy (if implemented) would increase gender equality overall.
The language used to debate these policies in both traditional and social media has revealed the degree to which Australian society has become steeped in neoliberal ideology, valuing individualism, choice and self-reliance over community and interdependence. Commentary has also revealed a discomfort, even hostility, towards the small minority of women who have achieved a high degree of 'success' in terms of career and income.
At heart, Australia is grappling with the question of whether the raising of children is an individual lifestyle choice whose costs should fall primarily on those who "choose" to bear them or a social good whose burdens should be shared across society.
Australia's approach to parental leave falls somewhere in between the extremes of the American model (where the female body is so 'other' that pregnancy is treated as a disability) and the far more generous Northern European model, but the language in which the debate is framed - even by progressives - seems to have more in common with our American counterparts than many would care to admit.
