A sorry tale for women, from childcare strikes to blokey executive suites

But a significant number of women do still want and have children. Both individuals and society benefit when those women can work in senior roles without giving up everything else.

A number of women have cracked the code. Surprisingly, they seem unaware of it, or unwilling to share it. Author and columnist Kristina Ziwica argues that the focus must shift from providing childcare “so that women are able to actively participate in the workforce”. Ziwica was supported by an East German au pair while writing on the joys of the inflexible (and more or less compulsory) childcare centres installed by the Soviets.

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But the form of childcare she used herself wasn’t rigid, it was flexible and actively supportive. The facts get us closer to the truth than the theory: mothers with successful or high-powered careers almost always manage it by tailoring their childcare to their circumstances.

That’s great for those who can afford it. But in our current system, it’s not great news for a low-income family or a single parent hoping to climb the corporate ladder. If more flexible care was affordable to these parents, many inequities could be solved at once.

It would help single parents who are already dependent on finding alternatives to complement centre-based care. The Australian Institute for Health and Welfare finds that “75 per cent of children from one-parent families where the parent was employed usually attended care. Of these, 61 per cent were in informal care, while 34 per cent were in formal care.” Informal can mean a combination of grandparents, babysitters and other arrangements.

It would also support parents who work irregular hours, such as shift workers. Not to mention women who need to network, take extra hours or jump at the opportunity to meet the big boss interstate.

It would support women who breastfeed if a carer looking after the baby could pop in for a quick feed between meetings. And it would support women who want to eek out a few extra moments in their busy schedules to have lunch with their families, as we did in the pandemic.

In short, it would make it easier for women to be both mothers and executives.

But wait, there’s more. Remember how I mentioned that my cleaner earns more an hour than a childcare worker? There’s a simple reason for that: she has an ABN and she works for me directly, on my premises, choosing hours that suit us both to work around her university studies. Centre-based childcare has overheads, such as property, management, administration, union fees and cooks. Government spending on childcare is currently about $9 billion a year, while parents have been paying up to $200 a day at some centres. I can tell you one thing: the extra money doesn’t go to the childcare workers.

When the government makes childcare free (that is, when taxpayers pay for it indirectly rather than directly), even more money will be wasted on administration and there still won’t be much left for the wonderful women potty-training your babies.

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Instead, the government could stop being the middleman and make childcare tax-deductible. That wouldn’t mean childcare centres would disappear – they work well for some people. People who don’t earn an income to deduct against could still be offered a centre-based option.

But it would solve the twin challenges identified by CEW and childcare workers last week: dignity would finally support aspiration.

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