It is great to see women's employment issues and problems - such as lack of equal pay, lack of child care, lack of paid maternity leave - finally being acknowledged and put back onto the political agenda.
While in my last blog I suggested the government has done well in promoting women to senior roles in cabinet, it is important that it does not commit the mistake of typecasting women as mothers, thus alienating those who have yet to have kids, or whose kids have already grown.
I was disappointed that the Rudd government decided not to reverse the previous government's downgrading of the women's policy advice function from the Prime Minister's department to the welfare area.
As you will recall, the Howard government not only downgraded the Office of the status of Women but also changed its name - to the Office for Women. We lost our power - and our status.
The Rudd government has given us back the status, at least in the title Tanya Plibersek enjoys as Minister for the Status of Women - but not the power. There is now an Office of Work and Family in the Prime Minister's department, but not an Office of Women. I am not being semantic here. As I will point out in a moment, not all women are in the workforce and not all women are in what is generally understood to be a family - and many don't want to be. An office of women covers all situations. An office of work and family is already premised on a certain set of choices.
Equally problematic is the removal of EOWA from the Employment portfolio to the department of Family and Community Services. This is no doubt so that it can be attached to the Office of Women and Tanya can administer it. Nevertheless, removing equality of employment functions from the Employment Department is a significant change in policy. As is the fact that none of women's policy is now represented in Cabinet. One to watch.
At the same time, I do welcome childcare being removed from the welfare area to Julia Gillard's powerful education and employment portfolio where, finally, the policy looks like it might receive the serious treatment it has long been denied.
I hope that the government will restore the previous practice of monitoring and reporting on trends in employment, income and so on. We suffered greatly under the Howard government, but it was difficult to document the details because all the monitoring mechanisms were silenced or shut down.