‘Gillard’s Dilemma’, The Sexual Contract and Maternal Citizenship: The Case of Australian Single Mothers

Abstract

This chapter examines former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s withdrawal of welfare benefits to 150,000 single mothers on the day of her historic ‘misogyny speech,’ 9 October 2012. The contrast between the rhetoric of equality and the Fair Incentives to Work Bill was striking because it symbolised the discrepancy between women’s standing as ‘individuals’ in liberal-democratic societies and their standing as mothers. This chapter develops the argument, outlined in the author’s new book, that women are normatively free as ‘individuals’ in liberal-democratic societies, but remain constrained as mothers performing unpaid, invisible care work. Redefining women actively engaged in mothering as ‘unemployed’, as the Fair Incentives to Work Bill did, is a pernicious outcome of unfettered liberalism, which presupposes that all individuals are free to compete on the same terms. In the context of declining marriage and declining welfare, it is argued that this erroneous assumption has produced the problem of women’s poverty.