Patriarchy. A ruinous affliction for many solitary older women.

200 years after Jane Austen's novels told tales about the plight of women in a patriarchal society, how far have we really come? Women over 55 are now the fastest growing cohort of homeless people in Australia.

Patriarchy comes from the Greek patriarkhia, meaning "system of society or government by fathers or elder males of the community." Robert Morrison notes Jane Austen's fascination with the power of men, which for many women meant a life "submerging their individual identities in their responsibilities as daughters, wives and mothers. Women were considered politically, economically, socially and artistically subordinate to men. It was a life that condemned many women to half-lives of humiliation, loneliness and abuse."

Carol Shields astutely writes that the happy ending Austen repeatedly devised for her resilient heroines, was the one that Austen herself was unable to achieve. Obtaining "refuge furnished with love, acceptance and security", including "a home of her own."

Patriarchy, power and inequality

Patriarchy as a concept is back in vogue with the global #MeToo movement shining a spotlight on today's power in-balance between men and women. Powerful men have been able to commit acts of sexual abuse, harassment and violence against numerous women for decades without consequence. Whilst people (mainly men) in positions of power who could have done something about it, did nothing.

Whilst we may celebrate the great strides feminism has achieved over the past century for women in developed countries, the facts about gender equality in Australia, a developed country, remains concerning.

What if we looked at Australia through the lens of patriarchy?

• Men are significantly over represented in politics and leadership roles in the private and public sectors organisations, whilst women are significantly over-represented as part-time workers in low-paid industries and in insecure work.
• Women spend almost twice as many hours performing unpaid care work each week compared to men. 
•  Women are more likely to experience poverty in their retirement years and be far more reliant on the Age Pension.
• More than one in three Australian women has experienced physical or sexual violence in her lifetime, one in two experiences sexual harassment, and one in five experiences domestic violence by a partner.

For an increasing number of Australian women today, obtaining "refuge furnished with love, acceptance and security", including "a home of her own", is as impossible as it was for women in Jane Austen's day.

So as Charlotte Higgins says, "Patriarchy seems exactly the word to explain the continued existence of pervasive, seemingly ineradicable inequality."

Inequality and single older women

The mini-documentary Hidden Women shared the experiences of single, older women who are homeless or in insecure housing.

• "Decades of wage and superannuation inequality, compounded by a disproportionate amount of time in unpaid caring roles, older women can often find it hard to manage when relationships go awry, when domestic violence forces them from their homes or when their spouses pass on.
• Out of shame and fear their situation becomes hidden; shame that after a life of conventional housing tenure and caring for others they now find themselves dependent on others for shelter and fear for their safety when they are forced onto the street or into emergency shelters.
• Making an already terrible situation insurmountably worse, is the fact that common eligibility criteria for traditional public and social housing models often inadvertently exclude single, older women."

Age discrimination is experienced by both genders, recent research found almost a third of people interviewed experienced discrimination based on their age, compared to gender (8.8%) and nationality (7.7%). “This means that those over the age of 55 are finding it difficult to find work, despite a willingness to participate in the workforce."

Women's rights and inequality, a worsening human rights issue for Australia

Gillian Triggs, the former President of the Australian Human Rights Commission, recently warned that equality for Australian women has worsened dramatically since the beginning of this decade, with high levels of sexual harassment in the workplace. On the World Economic Forum's annual global gender gap index, Australia's overall ranking has worsened from 23rd position in 2010 (eight years ago), to 25th in 2012 (six years ago), to 35th in 2017.

The University of Sydney's Professor of Gender and Employment Relations, Marian Baird agreed, saying 

"Australia does seem to have a problem with women in leadership positions … respect at work is seriously lacking."

Dr Klugman, a fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, commenting on national government said,

"The underlying factors that appear to explain Australia's relative poor performance include the lack of gender quotas, which have been widely used around the world, lack of proportional representation [in the lower house], women do better under the [proportional representation]  systems, and the norms and culture which pervade political parties.

Turning to economic opportunities — we don't see much improvement in either levels of female participation, nor any closing of the earnings gap in Australia."

Disadvantage and discrimination also increases levels of gender inequality experienced:

• "Aboriginal women are almost ten times more likely to die from assault than other women.
• Women from culturally diverse communities face additional barriers to education and employment.
• Limited telecommunications and lack of connection to public services, rural and regional women are at risk of poorer health outcomes and have greater vulnerability to family violence.
• Women with disabilities are more likely to experience family violence and sexual assault, are less likely to be in paid employment and are paid comparatively less than men with a disability or women without disabilities.
• Trans and gender diverse people may feel forced to hide their gender identity when accessing services, when in the workplace and in social settings. They are more likely to experience mental illness, verbal abuse and physical abuse, as well as cyberbullying and social exclusion."

What if patriarchy didn't exist?

Charlotte Higgins asks the question,

"Once you see the world through the lenses of “patriarchy”, the thought naturally arises: what would the world be like if it weren’t there?"

How might the troubling level of disrespect for women in the workplace, lack of empowerment politically and financially, and violence experienced at home and in society as a whole, be reduced if patriarchy didn't exist in Australia?

Rosie Batty at a recent Unite Against Family Violence Forum, said

"I look out at a sea of women's faces and I ask yet again — where are the men?"

If patriarchy didn't exist and men were as active as women in working towards achieving respect and safety for all women, would the statistics of Australian women abused, assaulted and killed - on average, one woman a week is murdered by her current or former partner - be so gut wrenching?

If women were properly represented in leadership positions and the gender in-balance in power and decision-making disappeared - in politics, in workplaces and in society - would women still face current levels of economic and employment discrimination, and escalating abuse and violence?

In the article World Economic Forum says it'll take 100 years before women achieve equality, the gender gap in political representation is the widest and most challenging to close, globally.

More than anything else, we need more women in all levels of government.

Patriarchy. A ruinous affliction for many solitary older women. 

Dr Sharam, in Australia's 'tsunami' of homeless older women something 'we should have seen coming', says

"We have a manmade problem and we could undo that problem if we chose. Older women are requiring social housing assistance into retirement and governments need to reallocate existing affordable housing."

Many community, women and social service organisations are involved in responses to rising poverty and homelessness of older women. Like Family Life's Catch-Up project to "amplify voices and efforts that strengthen women’s understanding of the risks they face as they age; enable women with information, skills and actions to build protective factors and mitigate risks; and support women to age with social connections in a caring community."

Housing All Australians is focused on "the private sector, working with the community sector, providing immediate short-term shelter in buildings that are vacant pending a planning and development process. The YWCA has been able to provide housing for 38 women over 55 years of age, in a building that would normally have been empty for several years." They also call for Australia's superannuation funds to start investing in local affordable housing projects, rather than offshore, with billions already invested in the build-to-rent developments in America.

Leaving you with the excellent Charlotte Higgins' concluding comments, patriarchy as a concept,

"helps to recognise the subtle depth of the forces that keep oppression in place, from the expectations about the behaviour of women in the workplace to the way they are portrayed in fiction.

It will be harder to unravel the effect of this cultural inheritance than it was to get the vote.

As Max Weber observed, it is the very longevity of patriarchal traditions and norms that serve to prop it up – “the belief in the inviolability of that which has existed from time out of mind”.