Using the lessons of COVID-19 to create a brighter future for women

Through rich research and personal anecdotes, Kristine Ziwica’s debut book Leaning Out asks us to mend the “fragile foundations of women’s working lives”.

Leaning Out: A Fairer Future For Women At Work In Australia unflinchingly addresses the disproportionate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on women, and their ability to work, earn and save. 

The title is a direct nod to the cultural phenomenon of ‘lean in’ feminism spearheaded almost a decade ago by Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, who proposed that gender inequality in the workplace could be overcome through willpower and self-empowerment.

“Now, a decade on, another crisis – the COVID-19 pandemic – has prompted another opportunity for a reimagining. But, too often, women in Australia are still being told to lean in – ironically at precisely a moment, mid-pandemic, when so many are tempted to ‘lean out’,” reads Leaning Out’s opening pages.

Author Kristine Ziwica, a Melbourne-based journalist and columnist, intertwines current affairs with personal anecdotes centering on her lifelong feminist activism, which has taken her around the world to stints at Ms. Magazine, Our Watch and the UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission.

Each chapter dissects a separate key issue about women and work, including the gender pay gap, workplace safety, costs of childcare, mental health and burnout, and the politics of bearing caring responsibilities.

The book is thoroughly researched, using contemporary statistics, government policy on gender equality and topical conversations with the likes of sex discrimination commissioner Kate Jenkins and Multicultural Centre for Women’s Health executive director Adele Murdolo, all set against a backdrop of the evolution of feminism. 

The result is a punchy and engaging read, which uses the pain of such recent – and likely for many readers, life changing – experiences to beg us to listen to the lessons learnt about women from the COVID-19 pandemic to inform the future of employment.

“We are at a crossroads. What can the world of work look like? Who can participate and on what terms? The pandemic has dramatically changed our ideas about what’s possible, upending almost a decade of stasis when we looked at these issues through a narrow lens. From crisis comes change,” concludes the book’s introduction.

Leaning Out is the third book in The Crikey Read series, an initiative of Crikey and Hardie Grant Books, which brings an independent eye to topical Australian and international issues.

Other titles address the unprecedented teal wave of the 2022 federal election, vaccine hesitancy and misinformation, young Australians and the Morrison government.