Former Australian footballer Craig Foster honoured the woman who “worked in the Lismore Workers Club kitchen so her 3 sons could chase their dreams”. The ACTU’s president, Michele O’Neil, and the writer Clementine Ford both had mothers obliged to leave school at 13 to supplement family household finances. And the mother of army veteran Ray Martin “abandoned as a kid, and had nothing … went without to absolutely give my sister and I everything”.

This was the #MyMum hashtag phenomenon on Twitter, a feed in response to the News Corp sledging of Bill Shorten’s tale of his mother’s frustrations and sacrifices. Long ago, Ann Shorten stalled a dreamed-of law degree and took a teaching scholarship instead, out of economic necessity.

#MyMum: Australians share tales of mothers' sacrifices after Shorten's tearful speech Read more

The hashtag forms a compelling, open-source collective narrative of Australia’s living recent history of gender, class, race and their other intersectionalities of disadvantage and restraint. There are thousands of stories of poor women, abused women, Indigenous women, working-class girls, lesbians, migrant women, middle-class girls and others – women who survived the most profound abandonment, neglect or illness; women who lived with disabilities of their own, or those they cared for.

Every one of them was denied the opportunity to pursue their talents and instincts, and their stories of survival and sacrifice for their children all share two truths.

These women deserved more opportunities than they got, and their disadvantages were external, structural and imposed.

“Reading Twitter today, I’m thinking there is a tremendous book to be written about my mother’s generation,” the commentator and author Mike Carlton wrote. “Born in the 1920s and 30s, so many talented women abandoned their hopes and dreams to raise a family.”

There is a “tremendous book” to be written about the socioeconomic struggle of Australian women, but it’s one whose story transcends the confines of those decades. The economic reality of women’s restriction isn’t a distant past. It’s not even about the legacy that yesterday has certainly left for today. It’s now. It’s here. It’s us. It’s about this election and the economic priorities of political parties and the structural power of women’s policy to determine the shape of our lives.

“Equal pay for work of equal value” was finally established in law by the Whitlam Labor government in 1974 and the Anti-Discrimination Act by Hawke’s Labor government 10 years later. But traditional gender roles and discriminations that denied my generation’s mothers are still – still – woven into the fabric of day-to-day experience.

It is modern resentment towards collective injustice that powers this conversation

Don’t believe me? Ask the fastest-growing cohort of the Australian homeless – a “tsunami” of women over 55 who after lifetimes of juggling caring responsibilities with poorly paid work just don’t have enough money to house themselves in retirement.

Or ask the younger working women, whose salaries are not enough to afford them independent living in the inflated rental markets of Sydney or Melbourne.

Ask the abused women who lack the economic resources to fund any escape from their vulnerable, violent circumstances, or the massive oversubscriptions of women in the low-paid retail and hospitality sectors who have already lost their penalty rates. Their wages are slated for even more slashing should the Liberal-National Coalition be re-elected.

Approach the women who make up 71% of the lesser-paid part-time workforce. Half the women in the workforce work part-time – only 16% of men do.

Ask any woman staring at a gender pay gap how far away the past might be: the unfair present affects her superannuation – Australian women enter retirement with half the retirement income of men, as well as an expectation to live longer – although 35% of women enter retirement with no superannuation at all. It’s not because of women taking time out to raise children; women enter the workforce at a 6% disadvantage against male starting salaries.

Emma Dawson’s recent article spoke of the gendered nature of Australian poverty: twice as many women to men “are the primary carers for friends or family members with disabilities or physical and mental illness, including end-of-life care”. At 72%, women dominate the workforce of Australia’s $2.2tr unpaid economy; childcare is Australia’s largest unpaid industry and women do 76% of it. They also do 67% of unpaid domestic work and 57% of “volunteering”. And, note: of Australia’s 959,000 single parents, 82% are women. Ask how far away the gendered, unfair past is for the women obliged into the ParentsNext program.

The posts on the #MyMum hashtag may acknowledge women’s disadvantage, and express gratitude at their sacrifice, but it is modern resentment towards collective injustice that powers this conversation, not an old, Imitation of Life-style romance of female suffering.

That makes this sudden and emotional social discussion politically dangerous for Scott Morrison’s Liberal-National Coalition, a week out from an election.

Most poor people in the world are women. Australia is no exception | Emma Dawson Read more

Gendered economic exploitations may remain, but cultural consent to them has shattered. Meanwhile, the Liberal-National brand is besmirched by recent years of gendered failure, and it is yet to announce a women’s policy.

Women dominate the electoral rolls in the marginal seats of Gilmore, Lindsay, Page, Reid, Robertson, Warringah, Casey, Chisholm, Corangamite, Deakin, Dunkley, Higgins, LaTrobe, Bonner, Brisbane, Capricornia, Dickson, Forde, Herbert, Leichhardt, Petrie, Canning, Hasluck, Pearce, Stirling, Boothby, Sturt, Braddon and Lingiari.

And Morrison has chosen Sunday – Mother’s Day – for the launch of the Liberal campaign.

I’ll certainly be thinking of #MyMum, women and my own economic circumstances, when Morrison, with pomp, restates his policy priorities then: a program of tax cuts – you can believe – that flow disproportionately to men.

• Van Badham is a Guardian Australia columnist