She I Dare Not Name: A spinster's meditations on life

by Donna Ward

John Howard longed for Wisteria Lane. He, too, had a list of things he thought would not be missed. The year he was elected, 1996, he cast out the Sex Discrimination Commissioner, closed the Women’s Bureau and the Women’s Statistics Unit, slashed the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, and directed all complaints to the Federal Court. It cost $1000 to lodge an Equal Opportunity complaint. Complaints plummeted. But that’s not all. He decimated the Office of the Status of Women, cut childcare funding and refused to bring in paid maternity leave. He introduced policies that would eventually push house prices in our major capital cities beyond the capacity of a single working woman, never mind a dual-income family. And he let social housing stagnate. Those on low incomes, mostly women with children, some spinsters, were one pay cheque away from homelessness. Then, in 2004, his treasurer, Peter Costello, instituted a baby bonus of $4000 per child. Have one for Mum, one for Dad and one for the country, he said. The family fertility rate shot up. And into this Wisteria world, one gloomy afternoon, stepped the health minister, Tony Abbott. He believed feminism made women postpone family-making past the time when their bodies were most fertile. Abbott thought it folly for women to seek high office. He thought women’s aptitudes, psychology and interests were different. He thought they could never dominate or even approach equal representation. What the housewives of Austr...