Mel Yuan for Brunswick

Facebook user question: I see that you advocate for the needs and priorities of women. You have also acknowledged in your candidate statement that women have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic. This has been grossly undervalued in the national budget, unfortunately, so it isn’t a priority on a national platform. What specifically will you do as mayor to work towards supporting women in Moreland?

As South Ward councillor I would work to address women’s disadvatage in a number of ways – and others may have other ideas and suggestions that could be part of the mix:

• Specifically target women-owned local businesses or businesses that employ a lot of women, for support. Examples might be better shop signage on hairdressers (just as an example) with a “my business has a COVID-safe plan”; ensuring precinct marketing plans specifically include where women’s businesses are. You don’t manage what you don’t measure, so any small business support should be aware of, and sensitive to, the extent to which they support women businesses.
• More women are unemployed. So Libraries, Neighbourhood Houses, and other employment support services should ensure they have women-specific programs and resources.
• Women have borne the brunt of domestic, schooling, and caring responsibilities. Services that support women should be protected and strengthened where possible. Small things like timely childcare maintenance, extending waiting lists for childcare (or having a centralized waitlist system), and communicating the families using Family Daycare with details of referral services or ways they could more flexibly use the services, could help.
• We are all suffering from isolation to varying degrees. Helping community groups get safely back into community spaces, or helping them to shift outdoors, and getting people re-connected is key to us all getting back on our feet. Women are often the organisers of community events, so supporting this activity is important.

As we emerge from the “hibernation phase”, we will all look around and see how things have changed. We need to be actively looking for ways to intervene to target, adjust, reorient, or scale services to help.

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