fat?

Interesting juxtaposition of stories in The Australian newspaper today. In the first story, Britney Spears is panned for her controversial VMA performance. She’s described as being "out of shape" and "no longer boasting [a] buff body". Right beside it, a story about new rules limiting the use of underage models by fashion designers in response to "controversy about the fashion industry’s use of super-thin waifs to advertise clothes." There's a further photo gallery of Spears's performance thanks to News Ltd. Under one photo, the caption has the male dancer saying “Are you serious? I’m not going to lift you!”










No wonder teens have eating disorders. It’s not just the fashion industry. Look how quickly and gleefully the mainstream media describes the healthy-looking, normal shape of a woman as overweight.
I'm no fan of Spears generally, but gimme a woman over a waif any day.

elsewhere: similar thoughts.

who's loathing who?

Why do Miranda Devine and Janet Albrechtsen hate women so much? And why do they loathe Western culture so much, while projecting this loathing onto progressive Western women?
Each of these conservative commentators wrote a piece last week cynically using Hiyaan Hirsi Ali as a tool to attack progressive women, while under the pretext of championing the rights of Muslim women around the world.
Their argument is so convoluted it baffles me.
Continued at Surfdom (where over-long posts can be neatly concealed under a fold...).

(PS. More toons on their way.)

desperate careerwomen?

In response to Carmel Tebbutt's resignation yesterday, News Limited's Anita Quigley argued,

"By her own actions Ms Tebbutt is demonstrating you cannot have a career and motherhood."

Meanwhile, Anne Patty of the Herald asked Tebbutt if her decision could not be construed that way, and Tebbutt rightly said,

"I hope it sends a message to women that you can combine a career and being a mother. But there is nothing wrong with then taking some time out or to shifting down a gear or two while you focus on your family."

This is not a conflict between motherhood and career. This is conflict between work and family. There is a difference.
It has everything to do with the fact that Tebbutt and her husband both have full-on jobs. And when both parents work--especially in such high pressure, time-consuming jobs--inevitably they’ll be concerned about whether it is better to spend more time on family than on work. In other marriages the husband might’ve taken the time off work. This is something to be individually negotiated between parents.
It’s just a shame in Howard’s Australia that there is so much pressure on both parents to work (aka "aspire") in families where children are youngsters, and there isn’t much political encouragement of fathers taking a greater role in the raising of their kids. I mean, look at the Government’s low level of interest in genuinely improving the childcare sector. (This seems to have fallen right off the radar again. Where are we at with that one again?)
Curiously, above this story about Tebbutt in the Herald was an odd photo of Pru Goward the hausfrau stooping over to put a load of washing on. What the...? Can you imagine a similar shot of John Howard hunched over shoving his smalls into the machine? I wonder if he's ever used one before.

muse this

My contribution to blogging for International Women’s Day is related to Helen’s great post at Surfdom.


In today's Essential lifestyle supplement to the Sydney Morning Herald, the cover story was a reverential discussion of fashion designers and their muses ("Creature of couture", Kellie Hush; not available online). Uncritically, the paper notes:

[Calvin Klein's] head was the first to turn for this relatively unknown 18-year-old model [Kate Moss].
"She had this childlike woman-like thing...It’s a kind of sexiness that I think is very exciting."

Yeah, you and Humbert Humbert.
Why the fashion industry--including the fashion media industry--continues to give Klein so much positive mainstream oxygen is the question. Coincidentally, just the other day I stumbled across some particularly creepy advertising of Klein's, featuring in a roll-call of worst ever marketing campaigns. Corporate paedophilia, anyone?

the perfect woman is...made-up

This morning as I glanced at a perfectly groomed anchorwoman on telly, I was suddenly come over by a feeling of cold dread. What if, I suddenly thought to myself, the man I love turns out to be attracted to high-maintenance women? Maybe the majority of men are? What if the man I end up with turns out to be secretly (or openly) more attracted to the well-varnished woman than to a low-maintenance chick like me?
I think back to a moment a few weeks ago, as I sat with my sixty-year-old neighbor K. at a local playground and we watched my son scamper around. Having lunch at a nearby picnic table was a woman in a black business suit with the physique of an athlete. I nodded towards her.
"She looks like a triathlete or something," I said, looking at her well-defined calf muscles. K. whistled.
"You know, it’s the sexiest thing in the world, high heels," he remarked. Mildly irked, gaving down at my stumpish feet in their Havvies, I complained about how men find stilettos attractive when they cause women such pain, confinement and even disfigurement. He shrugged, and I was left to contemplate the fact that there is nothing one can do: Men are just attracted to women in high heels and that's final.
I have sometimes wondered if my lack of interest in heels stems from my dislike of the shape of my own legs. Perhaps if I had legs up to here with ballerina ankles, I’d be more keen to show them off. I don’t know if my stance on stilettos is mere jealousy. If sisters just wanna wear heels, who am I to judge, really? Still, I can never relate to women who are enraptured by their shoe collections. I own two pairs of thongs. I know that fact in itself makes me something of a freak.
I know I only make a half-hearted effort to conform to what is considered ‘feminine’ in our culture. Basically, I’m too lazy or too preoccupied with what I consider to be more important things to care all that much. Sure, I grow my hair long, but I reckon that’s probably more about having something to hide behind than trying to be ‘girlish’. I do shave my legs: I have been well-conditioned to hate my mohair stockings. I think underarm hair is ugly too, mainly because it looks like caterpillars escaping your armpit. I recognise this prejudice is social conditioning at work, but I’m happy to play along because there’s only minimal effort involved. As for make-up, I pretty much abandoned that entirely after I quit my office job and made my seachange. When we lived at the beach, I used to walk eight kilometres to drop Harley off at daycare, and on the way home I’d take a dip at two beaches. If I was wearing eye makeup I’d get home with panda eyes. Of course, there’s waterproof mascara but you practically need industrial solvent to get that off and I’ve got sensitive eyes. I still walk everywhere and makeup still sweats right off, so I don’t bother.
It once occurred to me that drag queens do women a favour because they lampoon the grotesque extremes of feminity and highlight the enormous degree of maintenance involved for serious players. Femininity really is a drag.
But I am not militantly against makeup the way my mother was and no doubt still is. I appreciate the theatre aspect of it and think there’s nothing wrong with humans enjoying playing dressups and being visually transformed. It’s fun. I’m sure if I ever have occasion again to doll myself up, I will probably enjoy it. I think my objection is more to the rigid strictures that dictate that women must wear makeup on a daily basis to "hide their flaws", to deny their age, to somehow compete with younger women in a culture that is obsessed with youth and beauty. Or that they must want to totter down the street in ridiculous shoes. Or must cut themselves open and insert foreign matter under their skin in order to appeal to men. Or have cosmetic labiaplasty. I also know that I think the costs involved in looking "feminine" amount to a kind of economic oppression. But I acknowledge that women have only themselves to blame for participating in the beauty economy. Personally, I don’t think I could’ve survived 2006 on the sole parent pension if I’d had to shell out for makeup or spent money on other "essentials" of womanhood. (The funniest product I ever saw advertised was a lotion designed specifically and exclusively to make the backs of your knees shine. Yes, really.)
I sometimes question whether maybe I am just too lazy, whether maybe there is some kind of implicit duty involved, a duty to maximise one’s femininity or something. Maybe dressing like a tomboy because it’s comfortable is just being slack. Maybe I just don’t put in enough effort. Without wanting to sound as if I have tickets on myself, the truth is I’ve never really suffered a lack of male attention, so clearly there are guys out there who aren’t looking for a high maintenance girl.
Then it occurred to me. The man I’m going to love--who I have to admit I haven’t actually met yet--isn’t going to care that I don’t wear makeup. He’ll like me for me, naturally.
But the small heavy dread remains even as I type this, particularly as I now recall an incident some weeks ago when I blow-dried my hair straight for a laugh (something I haven't done in years). On seeing me, Harley gazed at me with astonishment and said, "Wow, mum, you look really lovely today," and I thought, damn, how is it that even a three-year-old boy thinks women look better with straight hair than curly?

women scorned

Is Howard losing his grip? Have even the Liberals had enough of Howard’s style of governing? He’s often told us that he’ll stay leader of the Liberals as long as the party wants him. Is it possible they no longer want him, even though they’re stuck with him now, just like they’re stuck with Debnam in NSW?
Latest evidence of Liberal discontent with Howard comes from Sunday's The Daily Telegraph which ran a story headlined "Bishop blasts PM" and reporting that Bishop, angry at rejection of her nanny scheme, "has accused John Howard of treating women like ‘fools’". Well, we don't need Bronwyn Bishop to tell us the PM's out of touch, but it's nice. I’m just stunned she dares to speak outside the Liberal cone of silence.

PM has fertile imagination: feminist

Feminism dead: PM announces the giant banner headline in the news section of the Sunday tabloid. It is accompanied by a large photo of a smiling young mother and a subhead that reads Praise for younger mothers. The story, by Howard-friendly journalist Piers Akerman, reveals that John Howard believes younger women are abandoning careers they were once peer-pressured into pursuing, in favour of having children. But here's the funny part. While the PM is keen to attribute the rise in the birth rate to younger, ‘post-feminist’ women, Akerman goes on to contradict him completely by quoting statistics that demonstrate "the continuing trend of delaying motherhood" and the fact that "women aged 30 to 34 continue to have the highest fertility rate of all women". Um...
What irks me though, more than his distortion of the facts, is Howard’s contention that women have only pursued careers out of a sense of keeping up with the Ms. Joneses. He claims, "They thought: 'I’ll be letting the sisterhood down if I don’t stay in the workforce until I’m a certain age'". Not only is he a mind-reader, but he also conceives of women as pretty pathetic, gormless creatures. It does not occur to him that women might be motivated to work for much the same reasons men are--for intellectual stimulation, to use their skills, education and talents to be productive members of society, for obtaining financial benefit, for reasons of self-esteem, power or status, or whatever.
In rhetorical desperation, Howard brandishes the biological clock in our faces. He says young women have "a greater awareness now of the disadvantage of postponing having children too long." Well, this is probably true of all women these days. We are very much aware of the difficulty in reconciling a desire to work with a desire to parent, particularly in a patriarchal society where men are never criticised for wanting to 'have it all'. This does not mean women are ready to throw in the towel, though. Sorry, John. In the end, Howard’s arguments amount to nothing more than wishful thinking from an old-fashioned social conservative with a penchant for nostalgia about the male-as-sole-breadwinner model.

elsewhere @ larvatus prodeo

just one

This is my favorite quote from the Angela Shanahan piece referred to in posts below:

"And of course with all talk of self-definition through the 'career', another thing the fems [sic] forgot is that most women don't have careers, they just have jobs that they do, as I once did, for money. There is no great attachment to standing up for six hours as a checkout chick, especially if you are doing the Friday night shift."

Love it.

like a natural woman

Is our culture’s fixation on the pursuit of sexual attractiveness oppressive or adaptive for women? Some interesting perspectives on this in the papers lately. I’ve been considering the ideas of academic Sheila Jeffreys whose new book
Beauty & Misogyny was recently discussed in an interview with Catherine Keenan in Spectrum ("The bare-faced radical", September 24-25, 2005; no link apparently available). Then along came Ariel Levy selling her book on raunch culture.
Both Jeffreys and Levy are very concerned that the mainstream is becoming extreme and both accuse women of collaborating in their oppression. But is it really a slippery slope from lipstick to labiaplasty? I too have sometimes found it sad that we’re part of a culture so fixated on appearance and attractiveness. But I think I agree with Eva Cox, quoted in the Levy story, that perhaps raunch is healthy or at least adaptive. I could even reframe ‘raunch culture’ more positively as ‘fertility chic’. In Western cultures which have been vocally paranoid about their declining birthrates for many years now, this doesn’t seem all that surprising. Suddenly, it’s chic to be a young mum. Influential role models like Kate Hudson, Britney Spears, Bec Cartwright have made fertility fashionable. Gaudy Paris Hilton may have made her name with raunch but even she has waxed lyrical about how she intends to be married with children within two years. Similarly, raunch star Jessica Simpson made her squillions trading on moral values--on religiosity and on her virginity before and fidelity within marriage. Simpson is a poster girl for fertility chic because she’s sexing up marriage and most of her market still see marriage as coming before children. The interesting thing is that the role models mentioned above aren’t advertising the idea that you must give up your job to have kids. They’re saying, “I’ll just have the kids first”. Maybe the younger generations took on board the message that, if you’re not careful, career might come at the expense of children. Maybe they have figured out an answer: Careers don’t have a biological clock.
It's likely raunch culture will eventually give way to less extreme expressions of sexuality. Already pop culture is getting bored of the ‘skanky ho’ and is moving on to celebrating ‘nice’. Think the virginal but oddly pregnant Katie Holmes.
I have some sympathy to Sheila Jeffreys' arguments. Not only do women still earn less than men, they must spend a lot of money in order to conform to standards within corporate culture, possibly resulting in a kind of economic oppression. So there’s value in thinking about that. But it’s hard to know at what point Western beauty practices stop being just costume and theatre and become male-imposed oppressive beauty practrices. At what point does something cross the line from decorative to dangerous? I also don't see where she accepts that there can be beneficial aspect to beauty regimes, whether it's a psychological boost from using pleasantly-fragranced products, or from taking 'me time' out, or just from prioritising health and care of the body.
Isn’t it all just fashion and costumes and uniforms for different worlds and subcultures and milieus? For example, the ‘dangerous’ practice of wearing heels to the point where they lame you is probably limited to pockets of the corporate world. It’s the extremes that are dumb, but it’s only ever going to be a few idiotic women who have toe surgery to fit into Manolo Blahniks. At the other extreme, there’s someone like me, who only ever wears thongs. The bulk of ‘normal’ women will probably wear a shoe to work that doesn’t hurt them and save the nine inch nails for dressing up.
And maybe the percentage of women who’d undergo cosmetic labiaplasty is similar relative to the numbers of men who have penile implants? Numbers might be increasing for either group, but that could just be because there was a previously untapped market for that kind of thing.
There seems to be a certain logic behind some things, though, like shaving. Men and women are physically distinct. Men tend to be larger and hairier. Therefore, in our concept of “the feminine”, we have “that which is not masculine”. And we trying to differentiate ourselves as much as possible from the masculine to the feminine end of the spectrum. We shave; and men continue to desire hairlessness. Seems fairly simple and harmless to me.
Jeffreys objects to lipstick, I believe, because of the same argument I grew up hearing from my mother: that lipstick, which you eat off your lips, is toxic. Well, there’s the solution to that problem: there are companies that make lipsticks that are non-toxic. Problem solved. The fact that it’s a practice imported from prostitutes doesn’t scare me. It’s also been used in opera for some time. Apart from these arguments, it feels as if Jeffreys is really just objecting to decorating the body, which doesn't seem reasonable. Who hasn’t observed a woman doing her face on the bus, like a master painter. Maybe it is art.
What’s more, in many ways men are as much a victim of prevailing fashions as women. They conform by shaving their faces daily; they wear ties and suits, stress about going bald. They are more limited in ways they can alter their appearance as they do not have as socially-sanctioned access to methods of doing so, though with the rise of the “metrosexual” this is changing. You could even argue men have been disadvantaged by not being able to wear makeup to conceal flaws and accentuate positive features as we can.
Clearly, we should draw the line in encouraging practices which involve pain or illness. But maybe we should ease off on hassling women for decorating themselves, or for advertising their fertility or availablility by trying to conform to ‘sexy’.
Mia Freedman, editor-in-chief of Cosmo, Cleo and Dolly magazines is quoted as said in another story on raunch culture:

Freedman believes it is important to distinguish between the benign, even positive, facets of raunch culture and those that are a cause for concern. "The poster girls for raunch culture would be Paris Hilton and Jessica Simpson and they are our two top covergirls in this market at the moment…I find it alarming that one is famous for making a sex tape and having no job, the other is trading on the idea of being stupid."

Notice it alarms her--but not enough to stop her sticking these women on her covers. How typical of a magazine editor to pretending they are reactive, when in fact they (or rather their advertisers) are influential opinion-makers for teens. I noticed a similar sentiment expressed in an article on the supposed death of cool (via Jozef):

"Marketing people, in general, are always engaged in producing this fiction whereby they claim that all they're doing is responding to stuff that's already out there," says William Mazzarella, a University of Chicago assistant professor of anthropology and social sciences, whose expertise includes mass media. “The critical response is marketing and advertising create trends or steer us, rather than responding to us."

Watch out for those Katie Holmes covers.

hurts so good

I read somewhere the other day that Britney Spears said she chose to have a Caesarean "to avoid the pain of childbirth". I'm always amazed that a woman would choose to have major abdominal surgery and be in a lot of pain for about six weeks, rather than just be in a helluva lot of pain for about a day. Besides, labour is amazing--even if you think you're going to die of pain.
The whole pain thing reminds me of the debate about Intelligent Design and to me it seems like incontrovertible proof that the design is Pretty Dumb.

sweeping statements

Pru Goward's surely fighting a losing battle trying to sell housework to men, when women are still being told to shut up and love it:

"Blame Teri Hatcher and the rest of television's Desperate Housewives--domesticity is making a comeback! Don your plastic gloves and apron and take a break from the personal trainer, because sweeping floors and scrubbing bathrooms are great for muscle tone, and make your home sparkle as brightly as your personality."
- InStyle magazine, August 2005

Maybe feminism is dead.

boys meet girls

Has feminism failed? Elizabeth Meryment thinks it has, and draws on Big Brother to prove it:

"[T]he reality is that the failure of feminism, and the failure of young women to take up the cause of feminism, is beginning to have an impact on society; the behaviour in the Big Brother house is one piece of evidence of this.
...
"It hardly should be surprising that sexual harassment, racial vilification, poor manners and abuse should be common in the [Big Brother] house given that such behaviours are common in the community. One might believe that young people would know better, being the recipients of good generalist educations, having access to information via the internet and living in an open-minded society. Yet decency and respect for minorities and women seems to be regressing."

It's important to remember at the outset that this is not a random sample of individuals. These particular people are sampled from a small, statistically insignificant group of people--those who audition to appear on a show in which they will go to the toilet on camera, shower nude, get pissed alot and possibly engage in sexual activity. Extroverts and exhibitionists, these people are hardly a representative group of their cohort and we can't generalise.
Still, this group has shed some light on relations between the sexes. I think a lot of the problems in this year's House stem from the fact that most of the males appear to be extrinsically motivated to be there--they are interested in scoring booty of the traditional kind and keep their eyes on the prize. After any sexual pairings that were going to happen had happened, and it became clear it was unlikely for other pairings to succeed, the males separated off into a pack, led by the most dominant and self-interested male, and appear to lie around waiting for (a) the end of the game and the prize-money to happen; and (b) meanwhile, the arrival of female 'intruders' to pass the time.
The girls, who are apparently more intrinsically motivated to be in the House ("I'm there for the experience, to have a good time, to make friends, etc"), have responded by turning to each other for their emotional needs and by disliking the men.
But still--we're talking about a pretty 'abnormal' group of people, so it's impossible to infer that all men are sleazy assholes who sexually harass women. I also think you can't argue, as Meryment does, that this show reveals that women generally are still oppressed.
Are the girls in the House oppressed? They seem to be more than anything confused by the men's lack of emotionality, but you still see them try to work it out in the way women are socialised to do--by analysing relationships in alot of detail, by openly talking to about how they feel, by directly confronting the men, and by being very nurturing towards each other, in the absence of any "compassionate men". They don't curl up in a ball just because these men won't listen to them or be kind towards them. I don't think they are cowed by the behaviors of the men, even if they don't like it. It just seems to make them think less of these men.
I disagree with Meryment when she writes,

"These young women are more concerned with being sexually attractive and available to stupid men like Hotdogs than with standing up for their rights."

First, I think the women often pragmatically take the route that causes the least conflict, maybe because they figure they're only in the House for a certain time and don't have to put up with it for long. It's impossible to know how they would act if they were stuck with living with these blokes in real life. I also think it's wrong to criticise the women for flirting and seeking romance--normal for people of their age group, and geez, it's not the 50s. Young people have sex, big wooop.
However, it is sad to hear that the girls in Meryment's university lectures are clueless about feminism, unaware their grandmothers had to fight for what they now take for granted...but maybe that's a win for feminism anyway. If girls have internalised feminism--if they take for granted that they can go to university--then aren't they equal to men, who also take it for granted? It should be a given, so it's not surprising that women now expect that it's a given. But I do agree that something's probably been lost in the translation as far as how feminism has been explained to the new generations. It probably is crying out to be re-imagined and re-told.

PS. If anyone's wondering how my namesake housemate fared, well, she got booted early. This was a good thing, because she had my name and she was really wearing it out. (And she pronounced it wrong too.)

smells like twentysomething spirit

Now that BB has replaced Home & Away in my affections as preferred soap to watch while I cook dinner, I should warn everyone that I'll probably blog about it from time to time. Not everyday though, I promise...
For those of us who have a genuine interest in social and personality psychology, and like to think BB is a big social experiment, it's shaping up to be a good season.
For starters. Confiscating everyone's toiletries on day one (replaced by a bare minimum of basics to share) is a master stroke. Almost every girl is a high maintenance chick! One has already been to the Diary Room pleading for her foundation. It's going to end in tears, you just know. But you know why they're doing this, don't you? Not just to stop people hiding behind artifice, but to give everyone's pheromones a chance to work without the interference of fragrance.
Another thing I find funny is how you see some of these "don't-hate-me-cos-I'm-beautiful" girls complaining how girls often don't tend to like them, and then you watch them in action and think, "baby, maybe that's why". They're falling over each other in attempts to secure the most alpha of males, and meanwhile ignoring the girls who aren't a threat to them, while being competitive and fake with the girls who are.
We humans so stupid sometimes.

desperate non-wives

This is really starting to piss me off. On the one hand the Howard Government is always carping on about wanting women to have the option of being "stay-at-home mothers", but on the other hand, Howard is preparing to force single mothers back into the workforce, ready or not.
Why this discrimination against sole parents? They're doing just as important a job as married or partnered parents, aren't they? And (unlike me) many sole parents did not choose to be sole parents. I feel very sorry for people who are not only doing a difficult job on their own, but may also be suffering from the trauma of relationship breakdown at the same time.
Here's something Ross Gittins had to say about this subject the other day:

"Howard has greatly increased the family benefits paid to dependent wives to permit them to "choose" to stay at home with their children. These benefits are essentially independent of the extent of the husband's income. But in the coming budget we'll see the extent of the Government's renewed efforts to get mothers on the sole-parent pension back into the workforce where they belong.
What's the difference between the two classes of mum? The winners under the Howard changes are stay-at-home mothers with a husband to support them, who thus tend to have higher incomes; the losers are stay-at-home mothers without husbands, whose income is so low they need to be on a pension."

It seems really unfair to me. After all, people who have a partner are already much better off, not just financially or because they have help in raising the kids, but because of the emotional support and resilience provided by a loving relationship.
Sometimes you also hear related criticisms of people on the single parent pension, who are ostensibly "refusing" to enter into live-in relationships because they would be financially worse off since the new partner may earn less than the pension (hard to imagine that, but anyway). Here's an idea: maybe don't make it a disincentive to cohabit. Maybe don't take away people's pension as soon as they move in with someone else. Why not give the fledgling relationship a chance to develop first? Allow bonds to form, before a new partner is expected to support someone else's kids. "If I were PM"...hey, I'd let people live together for a year, or maybe even two, before taking away sole parent benefits and putting economic pressure on the new relationship. It's generally accepted wisdom that many relationships suffer and ultimately fail because of chronic economic stress. So why put that kind of pressure on new relationships, if the aim is to get people to partner up for the long term? Especially given that it has been noted that it's unskilled Australian men who are finding it hardest to find partners, because they just don't earn enough to support a family.

having it all

Two particularly loathsome arguments by women writers in the mass media lately (both via Tim).
Over here, we have Glenda Korporaal telling us we Aussie chicks can have it all, so long as we're prepared to walk over our Asian sisters to get it. I don't know...paying a Filipino maid peanuts to scrub your house and look after your kids sounds like a recipe for "shaken baby syndrome" to me. No thanks, sweetheart.
Meanwhile, over here we've got Miranda Devine telling us we really just want a rich man. Makes you wonder, is Miranda married? If so, is he a prince, or just some other really rich guy? And if not, heaven's, what's she doing wasting her time on a career in journalism, when she's just been arguing we should give in and focus all our efforts on our true ambitions of being a wife.
You go, girls...and stay gone.

single entendre

Naturally, being a single mum, I have a vested interest in the debate about the Howard Government's welfare 'reforms' which are supposedly going to force all single parents back to work once their child is five years old.
It's not that I think five years is such an unreasonable timeframe. Me, I always imagine I'll be working by the time Harley is about three or so, but definitely by five. I mean, welfare is such a crappily paid job. That's certainly the biggest incentive to get a job again as soon as you can.
And obviously I'm not alone in thinking this way: 71 per cent of sole parents move off income support after five years.
Well, if they do it voluntarily then why act as if they need to be whipped into doing so? It just perpetuates the stigma that welfare recipients are lazy bludgers who need to be forced into work. So I disagree with the arbitrariness of the Howard deadline. And I find it kind of mean-spirited.
If Howard really wants to encourage single parents to work then create the optimal conditions for it. Why doesn't he start with reforming the childcare sector? That would be far more productive for everybody.

retrograde

Yeah, people should be allowed to express their opinion. But I'm sorry, I'm just not going to buy into any debate with them, when the simple fact is that they want to take away some of our fundamental human rights as women. So unless they can explain to me how they can get around that little problem, they can just leave us alone. Mind you, I admire Zoe for being really feisty about it. I still think it's a case of, "The judges' decision is final. No correspondence will be entered into".