BY KATHLEEN NOONAN
Because Tuesday is International Women’s Day and because it has been such a tumultuous year for women in this country and because a war is going on in the world, I’d like to read some of Second co-founder Dale Spender’s most famous words:
“Feminism has fought no wars. It has killed no opponents. It has set up no concentration camps, starved no enemies, practiced no cruelties. Its battles have been for education, for the vote, for better working conditions, for safety in the streets, for child care, for social welfare, for rape crisis centres, women's refuges, reforms in the law. If someone says, 'Oh, I'm not a feminist', I ask, 'Why? What's your problem?”
Dame Quentin Bryce says after men fight wars and bomb countries, it is women who knit it back together again, doing the emotional heavy lifting, caring for children and elderly, making sure everyone doesn’t go mad. They literally knit society back together. The work of piecing together society after wars or pandemics or family violence or floods is not easy. It’s messy. Think about your own families. After the physical heavy lifting - comes the emotional heavy lifting.
The Invisible Women’s Work of caring for others – unpaid, unseen. We do it all the time. Every woman in this room does. So today - International Women’s Day - make sure you make some time for yourself. Demand it.
Supporting other women has been central to Second Chance for 20 years. We assist homeless women, women at-risk AND their children. Old and young. It's not just women fleeing domestic violence. It is young mothers and babies. It is women with mental health challenges, immigrant women and older single women at risk of homelessness – and that number is growing every year. We do it through a range of partners – like Brisbane Housing Co, through fantastic Combined Women’s Refuge Group, through Anglicare homelessness services or Bahloo indigenous shelter.
There was a crisis in affordable housing in Qld before the pandemic and floods. Now…think about this. …the women we assist would usually be housed in lower-rental suburbs – the same suburbs now flooded and unlivable. Floods are gendered. Those at the bottom of the housing pile are hardest hit – and that is women and children.
We assist women all over the State. In Gympie even before this last flood you had women living out of tents. Now I read they have run out of tents.
We aren’t interested in Band-Aid solutions. We assist women onto a pathway - from shelters to transitional housing to private housing market or public housing – with wraparound support to help them succeed. The aim is a life of dignity and safety.
There’s a lot to do – we can not do it without your wonderful generosity.
Kathleen Noonan is a Brisbane-based journalist and columnist, who has reported in South Africa, the UK and Australia over three decades. Her weekly column and reporting appeared in newspapers throughout Australia for 16 years. She has a long-standing interest in what makes society fair.