When people ask me what I do for a living I tell them, then I bite my tongue. You see, I’m a community development worker.

In my outer-suburban neighbourhood centre I manage a host of programs for people who need support: grandparents who’ve taken custody of their grandkids in distressing circumstances, playgroups for toddlers with teenage mums, skills training for long-term unemployed, to name a few.
You could put your last $5 on the response (and I am often down to my last fiver so maybe I should). “Oh, you must be an angel!” they say; and, “it must be great to have such a rewarding job.”
I bite my tongue, because expletives from a woman of my years might come as a shock.
But no, I’m not an angel. Here’s how I know:
- I have three different tertiary qualifications and I’m midway through a masters degree. I’m not sure about the current angel registration scheme, but I don’t think it involves university.
- I live with constant financial stress. Watching me try to balance my household budget when the car rego comes in is not an angelic sight.
- I don’t appear in any ads for Philadelphia cream cheese.
As to the job being rewarding, well yes, it is. I help people who’ve been dealt difficult hands in life. I save the government a packet of money by helping communities function better and keeping people out of crisis.
Community services like ours benefit all Australian families at some point, whether through playgroup, drug and alcohol rehabilitation, mental health support, bereavement counseling or domestic violence intervention.
All of these things make me proud.
But I get paid a pittance to do it; and that makes me mad. No amount of Warm Inner Glow will pay the electricity bill.
Across the country there are 200,000 community workers like me - 90% of us women – refuge workers, youth workers, crisis workers, counselors, social workers, or like me, community development workers.
Most of us are highly educated and experienced – I’ve been in this sector 25 years – and we usually earn $40,000 to $50,000 a year.
There’s no doubt in my mind that were the figures reversed, and 90% of us were men, our average income would be significantly higher.
That’s why I’m getting involved in a pay equity case launched by unions today, which takes a new approach to measuring the pay gap between men and women. We will be comparing pay between jobs in male- and female-dominated industries, rather than pay between men and women in the same industry, doing the same job.
It’s not just we community workers feeling the financial pain of outdated attitudes that fail to recognise the reality of women’s roles as workers and breadwinners in 2010.
Our mortgages and our families rely on women’s financial contribution more than ever. Yet full-time working women in Australia earn 17% less across the board than full-time working men – that comes to a million bucks over a lifetime.
It’s true that there are more of us in ‘caring’ and ‘people’ professions – whether nursing, teaching or community work.
But frankly, emotional satisfaction – and let’s be honest, dealing with people is a very mixed bag – isn’t part of the salary package. I think I’m speaking on behalf of many working Australian women when I say, “show us the money!”
I look forward to playing a role in our community sector pay equity test case in Fair Work Australia in the coming months. I’m proud to stand up for community workers as career-driven professionals and demand recognition of our social and economic value to Australia.
As for angels, until they’re covered by a comprehensive award with decent pay, you’ll not find any at my neighbourhood centre.
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