JOURNAL WEEK13/WOMEN STUDIES1/FEMOCRACY/A STORY OF WEL-70S

1) Beatrice Faust was a Melbourne woman who believed that,The Women's Liberation Movement in the early 1970's consisted of too much talk and not enough enough action.

2) Beatrice Faust galvanised the Australian Women into action by carrying out a political survey of all candidates in all jurisdictions in Australia, an idea she got from reading an article in the 'Ms Magazine".

3) The six demands in the 1972 WEL cammpaign were ;equal pay, equal employement opportunity,free copntraceptives,abortion on demand,and free 24 hour chilcare.

4) When the Whitlam gorvernment was elected in 1972 WEL hoped that this would be the era of the birth of a new age of tolerance and increased recognition of equality of women in Australia.

5) The changes that happened regarding women's participation in the period 1972-1975 were rapid and major in Australia with the election of the Whitlam Gorvernment.First, Elizabeth Reid was appointed as assistant to the Prime Minister on Women's Issues in 1973.There was the introduction of Women 's Affairs section in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.Also,the Government contributed money to the United Nations International Women's Year,1995, this funding was used for rape cases and health centres.The Government also contributed funding to support non-profit child care centres.Women were eventually awarded the male rate of pay after much lobbying.

6)During the Fraser years ,WEL had campaigned and won the office of the Status of Women, this was an office within the Prime Minister's Department which was responsible for developing policy which took account of womens's needs, which evaluated all policy and legislation in light of its impact upon women.They developed pro-active strategies for readressing some of the long standing institutional problems facing women. It was a great step forward ,since for the first time women were guaranteed some formal say in the development of policy and legislation.

7)
Women's Electoral Lobby Australia.( www.wel.org.au )

HEALTH.
Tuesday, 16 October 2007

1. COST OF HEALTH CARE INCLUDING BULK BILLING AND DENTAL CARE.

In keeping with the principles of the Australian Women's Health Policy and the World Health Organisation, WEL affirms the view that health is a state of complete physical, mental, emotional and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. This social view of health acknowledges that health is affected by a wide variety of social, economic and political factors, not just illness episodes and access to treatment services.

Only where publicly funded services are available, will low income people have adequate access to services. Equity in health care financing should be based on "contribution according to ability to pay" which is the principle underpinning the Australian income-tax system.

Public funding is particularly important for women, partly because of their lower incomes, partly because they experience more ill health themselves and partly because they access services on behalf of others, particularly the children and elderly people for whom they are the main carers.

The well-known RAND study in the United States in the 1970s found that if people had to pay at the point of service, they used fewer services across-the-board. Charges, they found, deter people from seeking treatment, especially poor people. User charges for medical services in Australia are among the highest in the OECD and constitute a serious barrier to access. Research shows that around 14% of people do not go to the doctor when they think they need to because of cost and another 17% of people reported having problems paying medical bills.

Charges for pharmaceuticals also constitute a barrier to access for Australians, especially women. Research in 2003 (before the biggest price increases) showed that 23% of Australians did not get prescriptions filled because of cost and another 9% of people skipped doses to make their medications last longer. In addition to being an equity problem, there is considerable evidence that people who go without services, including medicines, may become unnecessarily ill, imposing high costs on the health system including hospitalisation.

Private dental services are beyond the reach of many low income Australians, impacting severely on women, their children and the other people they care for. The abolition of Commonwealth dental scheme in 1996 greatly reduced the number of publicly funded dental services and since that time the States and Territories have been struggling to make up the difference. Low income Australians are in urgent need of basic dental services. There are 650,000 Australians on waiting lists for access to public oral health care, with average waiting times of two years and as long as five years in rural areas.


WEL Recommendations


1. WEL affirms the central role of Medicare in providing equitable, quality health care in Australia and calls for additional measures to be put in place to promote bulk billing.

2. The Federal Government should ensure better access to dental care for those on lower incomes.

3. The Federal Government to budget an additional $800 million annually to provide two yearly health checks for low income and disadvantaged Australians including women and the children and elderly in their care

4. The abolition of the 30% rebate for private health insurance.

5. An increase in funding for public hospitals.

6. The establishment of comprehensive community health centres providing a whole range of services across the country including the training of rural and indigenous women as medical practitioners, nurse practitioners, midwives and associated health professionals in their local communities

2. Indigenous Women's Health Issues

Aboriginal women and girls have the worst health in the country and their health status compares very unfavourably with their sister groups in other settler societies.
WEL Recommendations

WEL endorses the following NACCHO/OXFAM recommendations:

Improve access for Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islanders to culturally appropriate primary healthcare, and to a level commensurate with need.

Increase the number of health practitioners working within Aboriginal health settings, and provide further development and training of the Indigenous health workforce.

Improve the responsiveness of mainstream health services and programs to Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islander health needs.

Greater targeting of maternal and child health and greater support for Indigenous-specific population programs for chronic and communicable disease.

Greater funding and support for the building blocks of good health such as awareness and availability of nutrition, physical activity, fresh food, healthy lifestyles, and adequate housing.

Set national targets and benchmarks towards achieving healthy equality, by which progress can be closely monitored.

MY VIEWS ON THIS ISSUE

Health as we all know, is an important aspect of our lives but then, it is affected by lots of factors.These factors are finance and availability just to mention a few. The low income group is the most affected since they have to pay at the point of service but are unable to do so due to financial constraints ,these deters them from seeking medical treatment even when they need to do so.High Pharmaceutical charges also make accesssing the health services almost impossible for the low income group.Dental services are beyond reach.Until these services are publicly funded and are made readily available ,the health system would continue to be be inadequately used and underserviced.

JOURNAL/WEEK 11/WOMEN STUDIES 1/THE SECOND WAVE OF FEMINISM/BETTY FRIEDMAN

Betty Friedan was an American Feminist Activist and writer.She was originally known as Bettye Naomi Goldstein. She was born on the 4th of February 1921 in Peoria,Illinois USA. Her mother traded in buttons and latter owned a Jewellery shop,she had quit her job as a newspaper editor when she became pregnant with Betty, her father run a family shop in which he sold miscellaneous items.She went to high School in Peoria, finished in 1938, then went on to attend
Smith College,graduating in 1942.Betty Friedan edited the campus Newspaper and was also active on the staff of her high school newspaper. She went to the University of California,Berkeley doing graduate work in Psychology.Afterwards, she went to work for the Leftist and Union Publications as a Journalist.For a period of about ten years ,she worked for two labour journals, namely ,The Federated Press and The United Electrical Workers UE News.In 1947,she married Carl Friedman,a theatre- producer.The'm'was dropped after marriage.They had three children .In 1952, Bettty continued to work after marriage as a Freelance Journalist.She and her husband divorced in 1969.Betty claimed in her memoir 'Life so Far'[2000]that Carl had beaten her during their marriage.Carl of course denied abusing
her.Discovering in 1957 that several of her college classmates were as dissatisfied with their lives as she was with her own, she began a series of studies that eventually resulted in the landmark work 'The Feminine Mystique' (1963). The book's thesis was that women were victims of a pervasive system of delusions and false values that urged them to find their fulfillment and identity primarily, through their husbands and children's achievement. An immediate and controversial best-seller, it is now regarded as one of the most influential American books of the 20th century. In 1966,Betty Friedan co-founded the National Organization for Women (NOW), which was dedicated to achieving equality of opportunity for women. A founding member of the National Women's Political Caucus (1971), she was a leader of the campaign for the
ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. The Second Stage (1981) assessed the status of the women's movement. The Fountain of Age (1993) addresses the psychology of old age, seeking to counter the notion that aging means loss and depletion.
Also her insights into what she described as the soul-draining frustrations felt by educated, stay-at-home women in the 1950s, "the problem that has no name," startled a society that expected women to be happy with marriage and children. Her memoir, Life So Far, appeared in 2000.Betty Friedan is remembered as being central to the reshaping of American attitudes toward women's lives and rights. Through decades of social activism, strategic thinking and powerful writing, Friedan is one of contemporary society's most effective leaders."The Feminine Mystique" made Ms Betty Friedan world famous. It also made her one of the chief architects of the women's liberation movement of the late 1960's and afterward, a sweeping social upheaval that harked back to the suffrage campaigns of the turn of the century and was called feminism's second wave.She died on her eighty fifth birthday in her home in Washington DC of congestive heart failure.