CART (2)Keynote Address
State School Teachers’ Union of Western Australia Conference
Perth, Western Australia
10/06/2011
Friends
It is a great honour to be able to address you this morning; I very much appreciate your generosity in flying me over from Sydney for your conference.
It is particularly gratifying to be addressing teachers. I don’t need to tell you that teachers are the most important people in our early lives. Sometimes our teachers are more important in setting us on the right paths than our parents. I can certainly say this of my own experience. I doubt I would be standing in front of you today if it had not been for a teacher who intervened in my life when I was about 12 and was on the brink of making all the wrong decisions with my life.
I cannot emphasize too strongly the debt I owe her. And it must be a wonderful feeling for each of you to know that – even though it might not seem like it on a day to day basis – that your words and even your presence could be having a transformative effect on a child who sits before you.
The theme of this conference is: Making Our Voices Heard: Now and Into the Future.
As teachers you do that on a daily basis and, as I have just suggested, you can be responsible for changing the lives of the children you teach. But I am sure that also want to hear some ideas on how your voices can be heard, and how you can effect change, in the broader society beyond the classroom.
What I thought I would do today is to share with you some remarks I made a few weeks ago to the National Labor Women’s Conference in Brisbane. The organizers of that conference were especially anxious to have someone from outside the ALP articulate some of the issues that need – still need! – to be addressed, and that the government should be acting on.
I was happy to take up the challenge.
First, I looked at Labor’s exemplary role in promoting women’s leadership in key institutions in this country.
I gave the following examples:
Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam appointed Elizabeth Evatt as the first female Deputy President of the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission in 1973
Labor Prime Minister Bob Hawke appointed Mary Gaudron as the first woman on the High Court in 1986 and Deirdre O’Connor as the first woman Federal Court judge in 1990.
Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating appointed Janet Holmes a Court as the first woman board member of the Reserve Bank in 1992.
Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd appointed Quentin Bryce as Australia’s first female Governor General in 2008.
Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard this year appointed Frances Adamson Australia’s Ambassador to China, the first woman to occupy this post or indeed any ambassadorial-level position in the embassy to a key ally or trading partner.
These appointments were in addition to Labor leaders introducing legislation and other reforms designed to promote equality for women.
Let’s just remember: the removal of the sales tax on contraceptives and putting the Pill on the PBS (1972), the Supporting Mothers’ benefit (1973), the ratification of the UN Convention of the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW)(1983), the Sex Discrimination Act (1984) and its extension to include sexual harassment and to apply to industrial awards (1992), the Affirmative Action (Equal Employment Opportunity for Women) Act (1986), the childcare rebate (1993), the gender pay equity provision in the Fair Work Act (2009), and Paid Parental Leave (2011).
And to this list I told the Labor women I was happy to add: the phasing out of the Dependent Spouse Tax Offset. I actually stood up and cheered in my living room when that was announced by Federal Treasurer Wayne Swan as he delivered the budget. This tax concession for men with stay-at-home wives who are not caring for children has long been a feminist bogey because it utterly undermined the notion of equality by embedding – in legislation – the notion that men work and women keep house.
I can’t tell you how many goes I had at getting rid of the “dreaded DSR” – as we used to call the Dependant Spouse Rebate, as it was then known – when I headed the Office of the Status of Women (OSW) from 1983 to 1986 and again, in 1992-93, when I was on the staff of Prime Minister Paul Keating.
Each time we were rebuffed, finding ourselves battling an impenetrable barrier of negative advice from the bureaucracy. I found this baffling. Why would these bureaucrats who, in all other circumstances, argued fiercely against so-called “middle-class welfare”, always draw the line at abolishing the dependant spouse rebate.
Eventually, we figured it out.
We did a bit of investigating and discovered that, to a man, these bureaucrats were all personal beneficiaries of the “dreaded DSR”. They all had stay-at-home wives in their empty nests. They all were, needless to say, enjoying very high incomes so this rebate helped reduce their taxes. At the expense of alternative outlays such as childcare and other measures that would have directly benefitted women who were trying to combine motherhood and work.
So I am glad that it has finally been consigned to the dustbin of inequality.
And I was very pleased that Finance Minister Senator Penny Wong was among the audience at the Labor Women’s Conference that morning and she came up to me afterwards and told me about how they were able – finally – to achieve this.
I am still disappointed that the Dependant Spouse Tax offset abolition applies only to stay-at-home wives who are aged under 40 but at least it is a start. I am a firm believer that 50 per cent of something is better than 100 per cent of nothing.
Back in 1983 when the Sex Discrimination legislation was being negotiated, it became clear that the bill would not pass unless a number of exemptions were agreed to. These caused a lot of debate and a lot of angst but eventually the legislation passed with a dozen or more exemptions, some of them quite significant.
Clubs were exempt, as were religious schools, sporting bodies, and the insurance and superannuation industries, and the government reserved its right to not provide paid maternity leave – as it was required to do under CEDAW.
The Australian Defence Force got to exempt all jobs that could be defined as ‘combat’ or ‘combat-related’. A resultant line-by-line review of every position did succeed in opening up some 16,000 jobs that had previously been closed to women; this amounted to just under 25 per cent of all defence positions and did not add significantly to the numbers of women able to serve.
In the end, the women’s movement by and large agreed (there were exceptions of course who wanted to hold out for the purist line) that it was better to have the legislation passed in some form that could be improved upon over the years, rather than to have nothing.
And over the years the legislation HAS been strengthened and almost all of the exemptions have now gone. The Sex Discrimination Act is a living, breathing piece of legislation, able to adapt – where governments are willing – to changed circumstances. And it has.
The maternity leave exemption was removed and the government legislated for paid parental leave. Over time, the Defence Force exemptions have been removed. Today, women can serve in combat-related roles, they can serve in combat roles; the last remaining argument was whether they can serve in front-line combat roles. And the government has just ruled that they can – and the Prime Minister has argued that they should.
By comparison, the United States has ended up with 100 per cent of nothing.
The Equal Rights Amendment, a constitutional amendment that would have enshrined equality of the sexes in the US constitution, similarly stalled on objections from the insurance industry. But rather than negotiate, the women’s movement opted for purity, and the amendment failed to be ratified by the required number of states, getting approval in 35 states, but needing 38 states to agree for the amendment to pass.
I was gratified to hear, during a recent visit to New York, from a mutual friend that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, who is on the Supreme Court, holds the same view I do: that it would have been better to compromise and get a basic amendment through
To return to the theme of leadership, Labor also has a proud record too when it comes to political leadership.
Australia’s first woman prime minister is a Labor prime minister!
Julia Gillard’s ascension to the top political job in Australia was long overdue given that we were virtually the only country in our region not to have had a woman leader.
Think of India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the Philippines and of course across the ditch, New Zealand which has had not one but TWO women prime ministers. One of each political persuasion.
Here in Australia Labor monopolises women in political leadership. Starting with Rosemary Follett who in 1989 when she became Chief Misnister of the ACT was the first woman to head an Australia government, the roll call of Labor women leaders and heads of government is one to be extremely proud of: Carmen Lawrence (Premier of Western Australia), Joan Kirner (Premier of Victoria), Clare Martin (Chief Minister of the Northern Territory), Anna Bligh (Premier of Queensland), Kristina Keneally (Premier of New South Wales), and Lara Giddings (Premier of Tasmania).
And Katy Gallagher became Chief Minister of the ACT just a couple of weeks ago, the third woman to hold this position. Katy is also be the first woman with a three-year-old to head an Australian government. (I hope she has good help!)
I should also add that the union movement has a good record in appointing women to senior positions – at peak body level, where there have now been three women presidents of the ACTU and with some key unions where women predominate as members. I am not sure the record is as good if we move into other sectors!
Looking at the other side of politics the track record is not nearly as impressive. The Liberals have produced just one woman head of government: Kate Carnell who was chief minister of the ACT from 1995 to 2000.
There has never been a woman leader from the Liberal Party at federal level and only one at state level: Kerry Chikarovski in New South Wales from 1998 to 2002. But no woman has been in power in any of those jurisdictions. The closest they get is Julie Bishop who is deputy leader of the federal Opposition. In 2011 that is not much of a record.
But, as I told the Labor women, while Labor’s record on leadership for women in power and women’s equality is vastly superior to that of the Liberals, I was not there simply to sing Labor’s praises.
While there is much to celebrate, there is also plenty of unfinished business.
We need to identify what that is – and start planning how to fill the gaps, to institute the policies that are missing, and inject some much needed energy into the task of striving for women’s equality.
To set the scene for what is needed, I want to give you a brief statistical portrait of where women are in Australia today.
I prepared this little snapshot of where we are in 2011 when it comes to political leadership and economic status for an address I gave this year on International Women’s Day. I called my snapshot: Stats r Us. Like all numbers they change constantly and even in the two months since I prepared them there have been some changes:
Women’s Leadership:
1 Prime Minister
1 Governor-General
3 Premiers (since the NSW election, down to 2, but with the addition of a Chief Minister)
2 State Governors
3 High Court judges
10.9 per cent of ASX 200 company directors (now up to 11.7 per cent)
24.7 per cent of the House of Representatives (4 fewer since the 2010 election)
35.5 per cent of the Australian Senate
Six numbers tell the story of Australian women’s economic status
1
8
38
44
59
83
1. is Australia’s ranking in the Davos World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Index ranking of educational achievement. We are equal number one when it comes to literacy, and completion of school and university[i]. Something we can be very proud of.
8. $8000 or less is the amount that around half of women aged 45 – 59 have in superannuation[ii
38. Just 38 per cent of tertiary educated Gen X women (aged 30-45) are in the full-time workforce, compared with 90 per cent of Gen X men[iii]
44. World Economic Forum ranking for the labour force participation of Australia women – out of 134 countries[iv]
59. Women’s participation rate in the Australian labour market is 59 per cent, compared with almost 73 per cent for Australian men, and against 67 per cent for women in a “like” country such as Canada.
83. The gender pay gap in Australia is 83 per cent. That means that women still earn, on average, 17 per cent less than men.[v] And it is widening.
In 1991 women’s full-time average weekly earnings were 85 per cent of men’s.[vi]
Equal Pay Day, the day on which women’s earnings catch up with men’s was September 1 in 2009. In 2010 it was September 4.[vii]
And in the mining state of Western Australia, the pay gap between women and men in non-metropolitan areas is 33 per cent. Even in Perth, it is 28.1 per cent.[viii]
All these facts and figures are linked. Women’s relatively low workforce participation + the lack of Equal Pay = Low lifetime earnings, including low super and the likelihood of an old age of poverty.
Overall we rank 10 in the OECD for women’s workforce participation but we are 11th from the bottom for women aged 25-44 (= 19/30 OECD countries)[ix] That is, women in the prime child-bearing and rearing years are far less likely to be in employment than women in comparable economies.
There are personal, and national, consequences stemming from this.
The personal consequences are very stark.
If current earning patterns continue, the average 25-year-old male starting work today will earn $2.4 million over the next 40 years while the average 25-year-old female will earn $1.5 million.[x]
Over a life-time of working, a woman will earn almost one million dollars less than a man.
In other words, there is a $1 million penalty for being a woman in Australia today
And it’s not good for the economy either.
A landmark Goldman Sachs study, Australia’s Hidden Resource has found that if Australian women participated at roughly the same rate as men there would be an 11 per cent increase in GDP.[xi] Eleven per cent! To put that in perspective, this week’s federal budget forecast a growth rate for the next year of 2.25 per cent this year, and 4 per cent in 2011/12.
These statistics tell us what we should be doing. They provide, in a sense, a blueprint for our future.
The most urgent task is to find ways to lift women’s workforce participation. This is acknowledged as a priority in the Women’s Budget Statement 2011-12, released the week after the Budget by Kate Ellis, the Minister for the Status of Women. This is very welcome because unless women’s participation is lifted, and their incomes equalized with men’s, women’s superannuation will be insufficient for their retirement.
However, my view is that the remedies proposed by the government are inadequate both in scope and in timing.
It is close to four years since Labor replaced the blatantly anti-working women Howard government but we have yet to see the kind of root and branch reform that is needed to remedy the damage that was done during the Howard years.
I have two areas of concern: the EOWA reforms and childcare.
I am sure we all welcomed the review of the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency and were pleased to hear of the government’s largely positive response to the reforms proposed by that review. But I for one am disappointed that the legislation to implement those reforms has yet to be introduced and, if rumour is correct, the legislation will not see the light of day until the end of the year.
We will have had a long four-year wait since December 2007 when Labor replaced the Howard government. It took until September 2009 before the Rudd government announced a review of the EOWA legislation and Agency. The results of that review were released in January 2010. We then had a silence of more than a year until a couple of months ago when it was announced that the Agency would be retained and expanded and given additional resources, and that the legislation would be strengthened but that there would be further consultation on the reforms. Those consultations have just concluded.
We have been waiting way too long for women’s equality in the workplace.
We know that equal opportunity and, especially, equal pay are strong incentives for women to return to work. It is encouraging that the government plans to make Pay Equity one of key indicators against which organizations covered by the Act will have to report. We know that lack of pay equity discourages women from returning to work. So it is urgent that this legislation is enacted so that the long hard process of reversing the years of neglect from 1996 to 2007 can begin.
But I can honestly say that we have been too patient and that if the legislation is not introduced and passed before the end of this year, we need to stop being so damned polite.
My second area of concern is childcare policy. While there have been welcome reforms under the Rudd and Gillard governments, such as the increase in the childcare rebate, these have been undermined by policy reversals – the 120 planned centres in primary school grounds, for instance – and the freezing of indexation.
But policy has avoided addressing the critical fact of childcare: it is just too expensive for many people, and the cost is a major disincentive to women returning to work, especially after the second child. The rebate, while it is relatively generous, does not apply to the non-formal kinds of care that many parents are forced to resort to because of their hours of work.
It is not just highly paid executive women who use nannies or au pairs. Many women with irregular hours, including shift work, are unable to use formal childcare because of the rigid hours, as well as the cost.
The Commonwealth Bank released – appropriately enough on International Women’s Day this year – the results of national research it has conducted on childcare. The headline result was that one in four women are working for nothing.[xii]
The findings were based on a market research survey of 2000 Australians conducted in November 2010. The key relevant finding was this: “31 per cent of families that have returned to work [ie the mother has returned to work after childbirth] use paid childcare. Among these parents, 11 per cent say childcare fees outweigh their earnings. For a further 13 per cent, the cost of care means they will only break even.”[xiii]
I think this is unacceptable in a rich developed country like Australia. In comparable European countries childcare is integrated into employment and education policies and is either free or very affordable. Only in Australia do we treat childcare for working women as an optional extra available only to the rich. We expect far too many women to subsidise their futures by ploughing all of their earnings into childcare.
LEADERSHIP is not just about occupying positions. Its what we do in those jobs. How we lead, the policies we pursue, the moral values we exhibit. It is not even always about holding down top jobs. Some of us try to lead in other ways: through promoting ideas, championing debate, and generally doing what we can in our own ways to fight for the issues we deem to be important.
All of us are leaders in our own way. Which is why I am disappointed when discussions of women’s leadership get reduced to the issue of women on boards. I of course agree that there should be greater representation of women at all levels of all organizations that influence or determine the running of our country, and that includes the boards of both private and public sector organizations.
But I am somewhat perplexed by the frenzy that currently surrounds this issue. It has become the most fashionable gender issue of our time.
There are seminars and conferences and editorials, all around this one – let’s face it – small and easily addressed topic. The subject gets its sizzle from the Do You or Don’t You Agree on whether quotas are needed or are, indeed, inevitable.
There is extensive scrutiny of board appointments these days, and tallies are being kept as the numbers creep up. And they are indeed creeping up.
So far in 2011 women constitute 30 per cent of all ASX 200 director appointments. This compares with just 5 per cent in 2009.[xiv][xv] Shows how easy it is if you put your mind to it! But, let’s face it, we are talking about 21 women here. And last year, the year of the big breakthrough when 25 per cent of all appointments were women, how many women were involved? Just 59.[xvi]
So we need to get some perspective. It is important that women are part of the governance of our companies, our government organizations and our non-government and not-for-profits – just as it is vital that women are part of governing the country at federal, state and local level.
It is true that the same exclusionary attitudes that have kept women from the directors’ club keep women from succeeding in other areas of employment. And are part of the mindset that dismisses or denigrates the entire debate on women’s equality.
But putting more women on boards does not of itself indicate that these attitudes are breaking down.
You could even argue that such appointments in fact reinforce these attitudes. I have seen examples of senior corporate men thinking that by ticking that box – appointing one or two women to their board – they have done all that needs to be done. There needs to be a lot more pressure on them.
Some of this has got to come from the women who get onto corporate boards. They are going to have to champion women’s equality. They are going to have to insist that more women be appointed to senior and executive management in the companies they direct.
Let’s just say that, so far, such female champions are few and far between.
So I would say that the discussion of women’s leadership needs to be broader and deeper and far bolder than this preoccupation with women on boards.
There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of women in Australia who need our support for their lives to be improved.
Whether they are escaping violence (or wanting to), trying to complete an education while caring for their kids, struggling with a couple of part-time jobs, being harassed by a sleazy boss in a small business, getting fired while on maternity leave, finding their job has been “restructured” when they return from maternity leave, trying to find (and trying to find the money for) childcare, wanting to stay on in work even though they are older…
Whatever their situation, these women need to know that society cares about their needs too.
Our leadership agenda must be broader than just ensuring women occupy top perches.
It must include providing the ideas and policies and solutions that address the needs of disadvantaged women everywhere. And it certainly must also include the exhortation to those women who are – or seek to be – on the top perches to be mindful of the needs of these disadvantaged women and to use their positions to seek change.
Let me conclude by making some observations on how this country has dealt with having its first female prime minister.
We are all aware of the extraordinary attacks on Julia Gillard. She has been criticized for her hair, her voice, her clothes, for the way she walks and for her general demeanour. Sadly, this is not the first time this has happened.
Joan Kirner used to be crucified by the press for her clothes when she was premier of Victoria. Some of you will remember the infamous “Spot on Joan” campaign in response to the crude media attacks on her outfits. We might have hoped that almost twenty years and numerous women leaders later, we might be able to judge women leaders on their politics and the way they conduct themselves in office rather than on their appearance.
If anything, the attacks today are even more vitriolic.
This conduct is not unique to Australia. I am sure we all remember the obscene attacks on Hillary Clinton when she was running for the Democratic nomination for US President.
And the attacks on First Lady Michelle Obama when her husband first became President. Remember the “right to bare arms” controversy. It has since been decided that Michelle is a fashion icon, she can do no wrong. Even wear shorts on Air Force One. She is now a style-setter, someone to be emulated rather than criticized. Nor, of course, is she a politician.
Our female political leaders not only have to do a politically flawless job running the country or the state or the city – but they have to look damn good while they do it.
No male politician is held to this standard. We don’t care if a male leader’s suit is ill-fitting or his tie is garish. I don’t recall anyone asking Malcolm Fraser who designed the morning suit he wore to the Charles and Di wedding.
I bet no one can remember what John Brumby and Kevin Rudd were wearing when they held a joint press conference after the tragic Victorian bushfires. Nor did we compare their outfits, or rate their comparative empathy.
We all know the reaction when Anna Bligh and Julia Gillard stood side by side after the Queensland floods earlier this year.
To fully understand what is going on here would take more time than I have left this morning, but I will advance the following hypothesis: I do not think that Australians are yet fully accepting of the notion that women should participate equally in our society.
That might sound like a big call but I find the evidence pretty compelling. We might pay lip service to the notion of women working outside the home but at some fundamental level there is still great resistance. We see it especially in the way mothers are treated in the workforce. They are tolerated but that’s all.
Elizabeth Broderick, the Sex Discrimination Commissioner, speaks very eloquently on this point.
She argues that the Australian workplace is fundamentally resistant to the notion of mothers being in employment. I think she is right.
Our resistance to entrenching flexible work practices and our refusal to come to grips with what is required for childcare are, in my view, both evidence of this.
We still operate on the assumption, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that each full-time worker has a (usually female) support-system at home to maintain him. At the same time, we still hold the view that to be fulfilled as a woman, a woman must have children. So we are damned if we do, despised if we don’t.
How do we address this?
As teachers you are uniquely placed to have conversations about this with the next generation of citizens. It must be fascinating for you to hear their views and I would love to know if you are optimistic about the future based on what your students say to you.
For the rest of us, there is only one way to tackle this double-standard that is applied to women in Australia: we must continue to forge our way into the world, tackling obstacles as we encounter them, tearing down barriers, setting examples, blazing trails, encouraging others and – most of all – standing shoulder to shoulder in support of those women who are on the frontline, be that in business, in the military, in the academy, in the union movement or in politics.
Perhaps especially in politics because as I tried to argue to the Labor women in Brisbane a few weeks ago, for we women politics is partly the problem but it is also the only solution.
We have to make it work.
And we have to support the women who have taken on the hard and often lonely task of leading the way. We expect them to lead us into a better future. In return, we owe them. Let’s never forget that.
Thank you.
[i] www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GenderGap_Report_2010.pdf
For Australia’s overall ranking (no 23) see: www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GenderGap_IndexRankingAndComparison_2006-2010.pdf
[ii] Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Age and Sex Discrimination Unit Gender Equality Stats 2009
[iii] www.news.com.au/business/breaking-news/gen-x-women-drop-out-of-workforce-on-poor-health-job-security/story-e6frfkur-1225887848726
[iv] www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GenderGap_Report_2010.pdf
[v]www.fahcsia.gov.au/sa/women/pubs/general/gender_wage_gap/Pages/p2.aspx
[vi] Equal Pay. A Background Paper, Department of Industrial Relations, Canberra n.d. (c. 1991) p. 7
[vii] www.eowa.gov.au/Pay_Equity/Equal_Pay_Day.asp
[viii] Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Viewpoint. Economic Vitality Report Issue Three: March 2011 p. 22
[ix] www.pc.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/60479/workforceparticipation.pdf
[x] Cassells, R. Miranti, R. Nepal, B and Tanton, R (2009) She works hard for the money: Australian women and the gender divide AMP/NATSEM Income and Wealth Report, Issue 22
[xi]www.asxgroup.com.au/media/PDFs/gsjbw_economic_case_for_increasing_female_participation.pdf
[xii] CBA, Viewpoint p. 12
[xiii] Ibid. p. 12
[xiv] http://www.companydirectors.com.au/Director-Resource-Centre/Governance-and-Director-Issues/Board-Diversity/Statistics
[xv] http://www.companydirectors.com.au/Director-Resource-Centre/Governance-and-Director-Issues/Board-Diversity/Statistics
[xvi] Ibid.