Zoë Wundenberg | Anthony Albanese government cuts Mid-Career Checkpoint Program funding

We live in a society that only seems to value skills that are paid for, and referenceable, and last I checked, there weren't many four year olds doing phone reference checks on their parents' ability to multitask.

Parents and carers are among the most vulnerable groups of return-to-work jobseekers because so many of them doubt their abilities and this is a direct reflection of how industry perceives them. It is therefore critical they have access to career support.

This is one of the many reasons why the Mid-Career Checkpoint Program (MCCP) has been so powerful.

The MCCP has been an Australian government initiative to assist people who have spent time out of the workforce undertaking caring responsibilities, with pilot programs run in NSW, Victoria and Queensland.

In addition to up to three career coaching sessions, eligible participants also had access to $3000 in funding for nationally recognised VET courses to help them achieve their goals.

I have been privileged to be a part of the delivery of this program in Victoria, and we have made a difference to so many people.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says all the right things about "equality for women".

He has acknowledged how we have "plummeted down the global gender gap rankings since 2013" and that we now sit at 50^th in the world on this scale.

He's taken action on critical issues such as cheaper childcare, closing the gender pay gap, and improving support available for those experiencing family, domestic and sexual violence.

Federal policies have focused on pushing women into STEM careers through the National Innovation and Science Agenda, setting 50 per cent targets of government positions overall being held by women, and making childcare more affordable so they can work full time while ensuring their children are still looked after.

However, until we value the work done in historically female-dominated industries (through pay and benefits), and by carers in the home (whether female or male) on a society level, all the summits and commissions in the world will never be more than lip service to equality.

The MCCP has been an impressive program for a number of reasons, but its non-gender-specific take on carer career support stands out; it made no assumptions about who was staying home to care for a loved one.

This is important because it provided dads with equal access to career support as they plan to return to the workforce, but it also subtly encouraged society to not make assumptions about who filled that role.

The MCCP's quiet acknowledgement of this reflected a subtle shift in how women are perceived: the MCCP did not style women as the default stay-at-home parent.

Neither did the MCCP limit its eligibility criteria to parents of young children - if a participant had stepped away from work to care for an elderly/infirm parent or loved one, they were eligible too.

I've worked with an extremely diverse cohort of participants in this program, including those who had little to no working history or qualifications, and those who had a PhD and were looking to rethink their careers.

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But they nearly all had something in common: confidence barriers. All too common were the phrases "I'm just a stay at home parent" or "I don't have any recent skills, I've just looked after Mum."

We must stop undervaluing the contributions of Australian carers - both paid and unpaid, female and male.

Until we stop seeing mothers as just stay-at-home mums and fathers who stay home as somehow weird, until we start valuing the industries where women have historically dominated (such as education and community services) for the contribution they make to society and not consider them to be somehow "less than" historically male-dominated industries, we won't change either social or personal perceptions of gender in the workplace, and STEM career-paths will continue to be mistakenly cast as the catchall "solution" to gender disparity at work.

The MCCP has quietly helped address this perception gap, and empowered participants to recognise their skills and build their confidence to tackle the daunting task of returning to work.

And yet, the Albanese government hasn't seen this value, and has axed the MCCP in the October budget.

At least the wealthy still have their tax breaks. Phew.