Women don't benefit from the budget 'nearly as much as men'

Journalist Georgina Dent says women don’t benefit “nearly as much as men do” from the budget measures revealed on Tuesday by Treasurer Josh Frydenberg. “All of the early indicators are that men are disproportionately advantaged by all of the general budget measures, which is a function of the fact that men and women are certainly not on equal footing, certainly when it comes to employment and financial security,” she said. “We know that women don’t earn as much as men do.” Ms Dent said there were many reasons women earn less than men, a number of which were structural. One example was Australia’s lack of adequate investments in early education and care, she said. “When a country has got a really universally accessible high-quality early education and care, they have much more women participating more in the economy, and that means those women will earn more,” she said. “In Australia, because we have highly expensive childcare … a lot of women don’t work more than three days a week.”