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May 27, 2025 | 5:10 am

The F Word: Feminism for Fairer Care

At Whiz Kids Therapy, we’re part of a virtuous circle—empowering parents, centring children, and strengthening communities through evidence-based speech pathology. As a woman-led practice, we champion feminism, not as a women-only movement, but as a call for fairness, where everyone can participate equitably, with diverse needs acknowledged. Yet, funding constraints in the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) and male-centric service models create barriers, particularly for women in allied health and caregiving roles. This post explores these challenges, celebrates the NDIS’s potential, and advocates for empowering care models to enhance outcomes for families.

Women in Allied Health and Teaching

Speech pathology in Australia is overwhelmingly female, with 97.1% of practitioners being women, yet only about half of leadership roles are held by women (Nancarrow et al., 2023; Cohn et al., 2021). Similarly, 80% of occupational therapists (Occupational Therapy Australia, 2024), 80% of psychologists (Fletcher & Beauregard, 2022), and 70% of teachers (Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership, 2022) are women, but women hold just 50% of executive OT roles, 48% of senior psychology roles, and 45% of senior education roles. These fields attract caring professionals who prioritise client outcomes (McLeod & Verdon, 2015).

Despite their dominance, women face a leadership gap due to systemic barriers like caregiving responsibilities and workplace norms that favour male-centric models, often built on men’s unacknowledged privilege of relying on women’s unpaid labour (Cohn et al., 2021; Carey et al., 2021).

What Are Male-Centric Norms?

Male-centric norms are workplace practices assuming employees have minimal caregiving duties, prioritising rigid schedules and long hours over flexibility (Fletcher & Beauregard, 2022). These norms disproportionately burden women, who undertake 70% of unpaid domestic labour in Australia (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2023). Examples from our community include:

  • IWD Irony: On International Women’s Day, a speech pathologist juggled childcare, school drop-offs, and work while her then-husband left to present on gender equity, highlighting women’s unpaid domestic load.
  • NDIS Deadlines: An OT was reprimanded for missing an NDIS report deadline after caring for her sick toddler. Her male supervisor, child-free, demanded overnight submissions, ignoring her extension request.
  • SP Family Emergency: An SLP was denied leave for her child’s hospital visit, as her male director dismissed it as “disruptive,” forcing her to take unpaid leave.
  • OT Caregiving Leave: An OT’s request for part-time hours to care for her elderly mother was denied by her male NDIS manager for “team consistency,” despite her leading home modification plans.
  • Teacher Pay Dock: A teacher’s pay was docked for leaving early to pick up her sick child, with her male principal calling it “unprofessional,” despite lesson cover.
  • 24/7 Availability: A NDIS coordinator was pressured to attend after-hours meetings, set by child-free male colleagues, and questioned on “team spirit” when declining due to childcare.

The Promise of the NDIS

The NDIS has transformed lives by empowering people with disabilities through individualised funding, fostering choice and control (Dickinson & Yates, 2023). Since its inception, it has improved quality of life for ~20% of participants with developmental disabilities, enabling access to therapies like speech pathology and occupational therapy (National Disability Insurance Agency, 2024). For families, it offers hope and opportunity, particularly for children under nine, with early intervention supports unlocking potential (Carey et al., 2023). Its potential to create inclusive communities is immense, but systemic challenges threaten this vision, undermining the equitable care it aims to deliver.

NDIS Funding Constraints and Women’s Labour

NDIS funding restrictions have reduced service access for many participants, increasing administrative demands on providers (National Disability Services, 2024). Female allied health providers, who make up ~80% of the workforce, bear significant unpaid labour, spending ~14 hours per week on tasks like NDIS plan reviews and client advocacy, compared to ~8 hours for men (Carey et al., 2021).

Mothers and caregivers face even heavier burdens. Non-English speaking background (NESB) and Indigenous mothers, who are 90% of primary caregivers in these families, spend ~20 hours per week navigating NDIS plans, translating documents, or advocating, 25% more than non-NESB caregivers (Salins et al., 2023). These uncompensated tasks, driven by NDIS’s lack of support for language barriers affecting 25% of participants (National Disability Insurance Agency, 2024), limit time for paid work or family life (Carey et al., 2021).

The Vicious Circle of NDIS Funding

The NDIS’s spirit of empowerment is compromised by a vicious funding circle. For nearly five years, provider fees have remained stagnant, with no increases to match rising costs, while proposed funding cuts loom (Dickinson & Yates, 2023). Yet, the NDIS’s own review highlights underfunding, insufficient advocacy services, and strains on allied health providers, particularly small, community-led practices (Carey et al., 2023). This contradiction—cutting funds while acknowledging under-resourcing—deepens inequality. Women providers, who dominate allied health, face financial instability, while families, especially NESB and Indigenous caregivers, struggle without adequate support (Carey et al., 2023). Instead of fostering inclusion, these policies entrench disparities, betraying the NDIS’s intent to create a fairer system.

Undercutting and Service Co-optation

Large plan providers exploit smaller, community-led therapy practices by charging 10–20% finder’s fees for client referrals, deducted from the NDIS therapy rate, while providing no administrative support (Dickinson & Yates, 2023; Speech Pathology Australia, 2024). These fees persist for the entire duration of service, often spanning years for children with long-term needs, significantly reducing earnings for women-led practices (National Disability Insurance Agency, 2024). Worse, large providers double-dip, claiming coordination fees for the same referral role, already funded at ~10% in NDIS budget (Speech Pathology Australia, 2024; Yeoh et al., 2024). This model devalues women’s labour, who form 80% of allied health providers, who face not only diminished pay, but are also burdened with further unpaid administrative tasks (Carey et al., 2021). Generating profit without enhancing efficiency, job creation, community capacity, or value, violates the NDIS’s ethos of inclusion and equity, demanding urgent investigation. Such practices disrupt collaborative care, forcing women-led services to compete or lower rates, compromising quality and equity (Cohn et al., 2021).

Why Undercutting Breaks the Virtuous Circle

Undercutting benefits large organisations by securing market share, but it shatters the virtuous circle of empowering care. When providers offer rates below NDIS standards without concomitant administration support, they devalue critical work, disproportionately affecting women, who are 80% of allied health providers (Carey et al., 2021). This creates a vicious cycle:

  • Low Pay, High Turnover: In 2023, 68% of speech pathologists considered leaving the profession due to inadequate pay and NDIS administrative burdens, contributing to high allied health turnover of 15–20% annually (Speech Pathology Australia, 2024), deterring new entrants and reducing workforce diversity.
  • Compromised Quality: Reduced pay lowers job satisfaction, impacting care quality (McLeod & Verdon, 2015).
  • Disingenuous to NDIS: Undercutting misrepresents true service costs, ignoring NDIS provisions for coordination (~10% of budgets, National Disability Insurance Agency, 2024). This exploits women providers, who face financial instability (Dickinson & Yates, 2023).
  • Stifled Contribution: Fair pay motivates providers, with many reporting higher engagement when valued (McLeod & Verdon, 2015). Undercutting discourages innovation, as providers avoid unpaid collaboration.

Instead, providers should share resources, aligning with feminist principles to sustain community-led services and ensure NDIS funds reflect true value (Cohn et al., 2021).

Feminism as Fairness

Feminism isn’t just about women gaining more—it’s about a fairer world where everyone participates equitably, with differences in needs and capacity acknowledged. Men’s unacknowledged privilege, often amplified by reliance on women’s unpaid labour, creates an uneven head start that feminism seeks to balance (Ahmed, 2017; Carey et al., 2021). By dismantling male-centric norms and funding inequities, we can build systems where all caregivers and providers—women and men—thrive, ensuring children and families receive the care they deserve.

Empowering Care Models

To support allied health and caregiving, we need empowering care models that prioritise:

  • Flexible Work: Flexible hours boost job satisfaction for providers, allowing balance with caregiving (Carey et al., 2023).
  • Paid Administrative Time: NDIS funding must cover unpaid tasks, especially for NESB families, to reduce the 20-hour weekly burden on mothers (Carey et al., 2023).
  • Collaboration Over Competition: Rejecting undercutting preserves community-led services, ensuring equitable care (Dickinson & Yates, 2023).
  • Leadership Opportunities: Increasing women in executive roles—where they hold only 43–70% despite workforce dominance—amplifies diverse perspectives (Fletcher & Beauregard, 2022).

Feminist principles inspire us to affirm diverse identities for equitable care (Ahmed, 2017). At Whiz Kids Therapy, we’re amplifying our virtuous circle, supporting all providers and caregivers to deliver compassionate, evidence-based therapy.

Call to Action: At Whiz Kids Therapy, we reject profiteering models that exploit and burden care giving in return for nothing. We refer clients without finder’s fees unless providing administrative support, charging only the NDIS for coordination roles. We’re launching RISE and FUSE, initiatives to meet community needs—group therapy, teacher training, assessments—through collaboration. We invite speech pathologists, OTs, psychologists, and allied health providers to join us. Together, we can deliver equitable care, including collaborative diagnoses for dyslexia, ADD, and ADHD, partnering to address waitlists. If you can provide services or want work opportunities, contact us at Whiz Kids Therapy to join our network.

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