Win some - Lose some !

The fickle finger of fate will deliver vastly different financial outcomes to women at the close of this year.   For workers in the Social and Community servicing industry it will deliver pay increases of up to forty-five percent, finally bringing this vastly underpaid industry up to parity.

This workforce represents 150,000 people, of whom 120,000 are women.   In the past, they suffered low wages because it was argued that the services they provided could not withstand a pay upgrade because it would move these vital service out of financial reach of families.    The new pay rates will come into effect from December, and they will cost an extra $ 2.8 billion.

Just how this pay rise will be handled is yet to be determined.   It seems inevitable that it will impose new cost pressures on the child industries of kindergartens and pre-school centres, and many of these are on council or government payrolls.   It seems inevitable that we will see fee increases, but the workers in these areas are increasingly required to have professional standards of training.    Not only are the imbalances between male and female pay being steadily reduced but higher training standards require a move to professional pay levels.

As one level of women move up the pay scale, their sisters receiving parent welfare payments will suffer a reverse.    From January 1 the age requirement of children under their care to receive these payments will decrease - to a new level of just eight years of age.

Once the youngest child has an eighth birthday, the mother will move from a parent allowance to that dreaded category of  " NewStart".    Basically, they will be regarded as " unemployed " and be subjected to the dole, with all the reporting requirements and job interviews that entails.

For many, it represents a decrease of $ 140 per week and charities are bracing for a surge i n demand for their services.

There are few winners in the ever tightening regime of " welfare " payments.   The ultimate losers must be those women who came to our shores as migrants and strictly adhered to the standards of their former country.   This required them to to be classified as a " homemaker "by their husband  and be the prime carer of the children they produced.   In most cases they never held a paid job and some never mastered the English language.

What a shock when - a few years short of retirement age - they suffer the bereavement of their husband's death, only to discover that there is no longer a widow's pension, and be subjected to the requirements  of trying to access the work force under the regimen requirements of NewStart.

For some, this twenty-first century brings opportunity and a better life.   For others - sadness for kinder, gentler times !