Current projects and activities

• Women's work-force and child care reform

  • NFAW recognises and respects the improvements to child care standards and fee relief systems which the current Commonwealth Government has brought about, including through important cooperation with the States and Territories.  AFR: Corpororate Women and Childcare article by Catherine Fox.

• Housing
  • On 28 February Ruth Medd and Marie Coleman met with Minister Tony Burke to discuss affordable rental housing and the future of NRAS. The Housing Adviser to Minister Macklin also attended. The Housing workshop at Parliament House on 28 February was a valuable opportunity for developing networks between the housing sector and women's organisations- a report on discussions is in preparation. Professor Judy Yates' overview of the shortfall in home ownership and affordable housing is at yates.ppt.  Marie Coleman joined representatives of YWCA housing providers for a meeting on 1 March with advisers to the Hon. The Prime Minister, Julia Gillard MP. Some ideas arising from the workshop were presented. YWCA representatives outlined their support for NRAS and their difficulties in accessing it.
  • NFAW with women's Alliances launches important new project to expand affordable rental housing. Women's housing stress is a major emerging social issue as identified in the Alliance briefing note. The importance for young women, female headed families and older women of ensured long-term access to housing which is affordable, accessible and sustainable is of primary importance. The Hon.Tony Burke MHR, Minister for Affordable Housing, will open a workshop on affordable rental housing for women in February 2011. NFAW's representative on the Australian Bureau of Statistics Gender Statistics Advisory Group has obtained ABS agreement to include housing data in its upcoming new gender indicators. NFAW, with the YWCA of Canberra, has negotiated an agreement to establish a demonstration affordable rental housing project in the ACT. Formal announcements will be made in 2011

• Statistics - The Australian Bureau of Statistics, supported by the Commonwealth and State Ministers for Women, is developing an important project on gendered statstics. A new page on the 'People' element of the ABS web-site has been established .  NFAW has been invited to be represented on the Advisory Group to GSAG. (Click here to view letter) The new gender indicators will be launched in early 2011. The web-site will become more interactive, and indicator data sets will provide internal links to more detailed data available from ABS surveys, the Census, and other agreed official data sources.
  http://www.abs.gov.au/websitedbs/c311215.nsf/web/Gender

• Australian Women’s Archives Project – a strategy to identify and support preservation of women’s records and make them accessible to researchers, and it includes an online Register of the location and content of women’s records
• Social policy work - This group is working on women and tax, paid maternity leave, sex discrimination and pay equity issues.
• National History Challenge - This contest encourages Australian school students to learn about Australia's past.  NFAW sponsors the Women's Category prize to raise awareness of the role women played in Australia's history.
• NFAW preferred donor fund supports a diverse range of activities. Examples include supporting the Holroyd High Fund for education of refugee and migrant girls and supporting the Pamela Denoon lecture presented on International Women’s Day every year (speakers have included Professor Hilary Charlesworth, Judy Horacek and Anne Summers).

Membership of NFAW is open to anyone interested in supporting the goals of NFAW.

Donations to NFAW are tax deductible, and donors can also choose to make tax deductible donations to our own specific projects (Australian Women’s Archives Project, the Social Policy Committee and the National History Challenge) as well as to other women’s organisations and projects through the NFAW preferred donor arrangements.

Protecting our IP we are often asked for permission to reprint material from our web-sites-www.nfaw.org and www.womenaustralia.info. We welcome use of  our  material, but ask that it be acknowledged on each occasion it is used or cited. If anyone wishes to reprint items in full, then links to our  relevant web-site should be provided.