Economic Security and Wellbeing

We work towards women, girls and people of marginalised genders:

• enjoying economic rights and wellbeing as citizens more than consumers in a market economy;
• having the power needed to make decisions about their present and future, including decisions about how and when to have a family;
• having all the types of work they perform being seen and valued, including paid and unpaid, caring and community-based work;
• having real access to education, income and social security to protect from poverty at all stages of life;
• having access to trauma-informed, free / affordable and accessible primary and preventive healthcare and medicines;
• enjoying gender pay equity, both between individuals within an industry and across similar work being performed in different industries;
• having sufficient superannuation for a safe, dignified and fulfilling retirement;
• having safe, accessible and affordable housing located within a reasonable distance of work and accessible transport infrastructure;
• having access to quality, accessible and affordable childcare;
• benefiting from a strong universal safety net and proactive and affirmative measures that recognise and reduce disadvantage; and
• seeing their rights upheld by proactive, gender sensitive and transparent public institutions. All governments should implement gender responsive budgeting and gender impact assessment on policy to ensure fair and sustainable collection and distribution of resources.

Our vision sees women as self-determining agents of change including in the evolving climate emergency. We aim to see women drive and benefit from the transition to net zero, play an active leadership role in the development of climate change responses and in community re-building in the wake of emergencies and disasters.
Women’s economic security and wellbeing is underpinned by safety. Safety is more than freedom from fear or physical assault. Safety includes access to public health, safe public transport, clean water and sustainable housing. ERA supports primary prevention as a key strategy for changing the deeply entrenched values which foster and encourage gendered violence.

Our vision is one of equality between women, girls and people of marginalised genders, as well as between men and women. The degree to which women currently enjoy economic rights and wellbeing is significantly impacted by intersecting disadvantage and discrimination on the basis of race, class, Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander identity, disability, gender, sexuality, criminalisation, migrant and visa status. We acknowledge that mainstream feminism has failed to understand the importance of walking together in the past, and we commit to addressing this in all our work.

ERA’s vision upholds the notion of the ‘commons’ to counter the relentless encroachments of corporate, political and other systems of power working against the interests of women and all groups of marginalised people. We acknowledge that any notion of the ‘commons’ should first centre the sovereignty, governance and communal kinship structures of the many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nations that have existed on these lands since time immemorial.
A more detailed version of our economic security vision statement can be found here.