Fighting for women’s liberation

Women continue to experience discrimination, violence, abuse and oppression. The gender pay gap stands at 21.1 percent of total remuneration, meaning women earn 79 cents for every dollar men earn. Work in female dominated industries is undervalued and underpaid and women continue to carry out domestic labour and care for children at disproportional rates. Women aged 35 to 44 are now the fastest-growing group experiencing homelessness in Australia, with women's homelessness overall rising 10 percent since 2016 compared to just 2 percent for men. Instances of domestic and family violence towards women have surged while funding for survivor support services remain chronically underfunded relative to the scale of need. Abortion services are not freely and easily available. Sexist advertising, the beauty industry, and social media platforms profit from sexualising and objectifying women while algorithms amplify content that degrades and demeans. Socialists understand that sexism is structured into the system of capitalist exploitation and will fight women's oppression at every level.

What we think

1. Human freedom and equality depend on the liberation of women.
2. Women’s oppression is not simply a product of individual attitudes or cultural norms, it is central to a system that depends on women’s unpaid domestic and care labour, lowers the wages of all workers by paying women less.
3. The burden of childcare and associated domestic work should not fall disproportionately on the shoulders of women; raising children, and caring for the elderly, and for sick and vulnerable people is the responsibility of society as a whole.
4. Our fight for women’s liberation includes and affirms trans women.

We’ll fight to

Economic justice

1. Expand public housing to allow all women the choice to live independently.
2. Establish universal access to free, quality early childhood education and childcare services.
3. Re-establish public disability and aged care services.
4. Reduce the gender pay gap through pay rises in majority-women industries including teaching, nursing, aged care, social work and other care-provision jobs.
5. Introduce a Victorian paid parental leave scheme to top up the federal Paid Parental Leave scheme to 12 months at full wage replacement for the primary carer and 6 months at full wage replacement for a secondary carer, and advocate for the federal government to adopt these standards nationally.
6. Mandate paid reproductive leave across all Victorian workplaces.

Reproductive rights

1. Provide free contraception as part of basic healthcare provision.
2. Make abortions available in all public hospitals and remove any religious exemptions on the provision of reproductive health services.
3. Increase access to medical abortion by funding training for GPs and developing nurse-led models of abortion care.
4. Recognise women’s right to control their bodies and reproductive function at any point in a pregnancy.

Safety and support

1. Significantly increase funding to women’s, community legal and crisis support services and make funding permanent and reliable.
2. Urgently increase the capacity of accommodation for survivors, and their children, seeking temporary or emergency housing.

Education

1. Expand and mandate the Respectful Relationships curriculum to provide comprehensive education about sexism, women's oppression and women's resistance to oppression.