This is Event 2 of Victorian Fabians' Autumn Series on 'What do we mean by Equality?'
Please note the date for this event has changed to Friday June 15 (from May 30), we apologise for any inconvenience from this change of date. Our second speaker has also now been confirmed as Prof Janet McCalman.
Inequality is bound up with demographic factors beyond the purely economic. Class, race, gender, age and disability also determine one's life outcomes and experience of inequality.
We are at a moment in time when race and gender are much in discussion. Less acknowledged are notions of class, disability or age as contributors to inequality. Many of these are further bound to economic inequality in complex ways. They also have social status implications well beyond that conferred by financial status, but are intimately connected to both equality of opportunity and life outcomes.
How can we think about cultural inequality inclusively, to make sense of all of these factors?
Speakers:
Tony Moore
Tony is a Former Fabians editor, and currently Associate Professor and Program Director for the Master of Communications and Media Studies at Monash University.
He has recently authored a book chapter on the role of class in inequality.
(Moore, T., Gibson, M., & Lumby, C. (2017). Recovering the Australian Working Class. In D. O’Neill & M. Wayne (Eds.), Considering Class: Theory, Culture and the Media in the 21st Century. Brill.)
Phillip Adams interviewed him about it on Late Night Live.
Janet McCalman
Janet McCalman is Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor in the Melbourne School of Population & Global Health and a much published author of books which have changed Australians understanding of themselves. Janet will talk on how life inequality is heavily influenced by circumstances of birth and early childhood.
Janet asks: "Do we need a new tack? There is a lot of science now showing that inequality starts in the womb (and with grandparents) and accelerates during the first 5 years of life so that by the time children who have grown up amidst domestic violence, neglect, substance abuse, and deprivation in all ways, are up to 2-3 years behind their peers when they start school and that they have measurable cognitive impairments and underdevelopment. Perhaps we need to spend some time discussing the deep structural nature of inequality not only in the human life course but in inheritance and property."
Janet is a Victorian Fabians Board member.
