The hashtag #crediblewomen has gone viral. It was born out of frustration expressed by many commentators that the budget hadn’t delivered for women - and an allegation that the Prime Minister’s office told journalist and gender advocate Georgie Dent that no one “credible” shared her views on this topic.
It all started when Women’s Agenda journalist Georgie Dent tweeted her critique of the budget on Tuesday night, and later wrote an article on . Then on Wednesday morning, Dent claims she received a phone call from Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s office.
“They were unhappy with the claim that I had made in a number of tweets and also in an article in Women's Agenda that the budget only allocated $240 million, or one-third of one per cent of the whole budget, specifically towards women,” Dent told The Feed.
“I ended up having sort of a fairly heated but civil exchange with the office. And I said, ‘Look, I'm certainly not the only person who is making the characterisation that this budget doesn't deliver for women’.
“And the remark was made to me that no one credible is saying that.”
Dent’s claims haven’t been confirmed by the Prime Minister’s office.
The claim that the budget only has an allocation of $240 million - or 0.038 per cent of the whole budget - to women has been backed up by Per Capita, an independent progressive think tank.
Dent says, as the day went on she began contemplating what was said on the call. And as she read a number of different economists, journalists, and business leaders arrive at the same conclusion, she thought adding the #crediblewomen hashtag to her online comments would be a good way to create momentum.
“So I started [the hashtag] yesterday afternoon,” Dent told The Feed.
After tweeting #crediblewomen, Dent put her phone away, and an hour later the hashtag was trending on Twitter.
It currently is the number one trending topic on Twitter in Australia. And Dent believes the reason it’s caught fire, was because in her view there was “already consensus that this budget didn't deliver for women.”
Who are the #crediblewomen?
Women from a number of industries from politicians, journalists, lawyers, and academics joined in on the hashtag. Former MP for Wentworth Dr Kerryn Phelps said #crediblewomen wanted a budget that delivered more to women and acknowledged the impact of COVID-19.
Dr Neela Janakiramanan tweeted that in her view any budget that was “blind to gender” is discriminatory.
ABC The Drum’s Julia Baird said conservative parties globally had, in her view, politicised the word ‘women’ as a “prefix to belonging to the left”.
“Women inside the Liberal Party are perennially sidelined and frustrated, but fear ostracism if they speak publicly. #crediblewomen,” Baird tweeted.
They weren’t alone. Messages from women announcing that they are #crediblewomen flooded through social media.
Labor party leader Anthony Albanese added his voice into the mix. He tweeted a photo with a group of women, saying: “Some who know the Liberals’ Budget leaves women and girls behind.”
What is gender budgeting?
means taking into account the different impacts and analysing the discrepancies between men and women in a country’s budget plans, and allocating funding were necessary.
Australia was the first country in the world to include gender budgeting into their budget plans. In 1983, Bob Hawke introduced the statement for women in his budget. The policy of gender budgeting has been recognised as.
Among OCED countries 17 have adopted the policy as of 2018, and countries like France and Turkey are planning to introduce the policy in the future.
In Australia, the statement for women was continued in the federal budget until 2013. Then prime minister Tony Abbott and treasurer Joe Hockey didn’t include the statement in that year’s budget.
And it’s not seen a return since.
“[The women’s statement] was a really comprehensive, substantial document. It would have meant that these conversations about whether or not the budgets delivered for women could be answered on budget night in comprehensive detail. But we don't have that analysis anymore,” Dent said.
Why does it matter?
Dent believes women have been disadvantaged in Australia even prior to the pandemic, she gives the example of suffering homeless.
In 2019, of 10 per cent, compared to men who had a rate of 6.2 per cent.
“The reason that women retire in poverty is because they spend their lives disadvantaged in their ability and capacity to participate in paid work, because of the role they play, taking up unpaid work,” Dent said
“COVID exacerbated all of the fault lines, I suppose that have conspired against women achieving financial security. And this budget did absolutely nothing to address that.”
Statistics indicate that women are over-represented in casual work, and it’s an example Dent says shows how women have been impacted by COVID-19. To be eligible for JobKeeper as a casual worker you needed to have been working for a company between July 2 last year through to July 1, 2020.
In May, Bankwest Curtin Economic Centre looking into the government’s stated one-year benchmark. The report found women were more likely to be short-term casual workers than men.
In Dent’s view, a gender blind budget will inadvertently exclude women.
She quotes the former sex discrimination commissioner : “If we don’t actively and intentionally include women, the system will exclude them.”
The Feed reached out to the Prime Minister's Office for comment but they have not responded by the time of publishing.
