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

by Donna Ward

In the spring of 2013, Tony Abbott became prime minister, and he had a bloody list. He gutted women’s refuges, raised the pension age to sixty-seven, presided over an increasing gender wage gap, and watched women’s superannuation shrink to 30 per cent less than men’s. Eighteen months later Malcolm Turnbull became prime minister. Nevertheless, under Wisteria Lane governments an unemployed woman in her fifties finds getting a job difficult and social security insufficient to put food on the table and keep a roof over her head. Unmarried women, childless or not, who work hard and save their money, continue to be paid inadequately and are subjected to humiliation and vilification even if they hold high office. By 2015 Whitlam’s grand tapestry was unravelled. Summers’ shiny ifs screeched like harpies in the night.