Women's Right To Work Still Conditional

by Sharon Howe
Women's International League of Peace and Freedom, SA

Women's right to paid work still conditional and paid work in 2002. A lot 
of women do it. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) puts the global 
figure at 80 percent of women working outside the home in the countries of 
Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). In Australia 
women's involvement in many facets of paid work can be viewed in a number 
of ways. Today's generation of young women have educational and employment 
opportunities that their mothers and grandmothers never dreamed of. Women 
are visible in the media: they read the news and they are spokespersons for 
large corperations, holding important executive positions.

Women have even moved into the higher echelons of the trade union movement 
and they are working in traditionally male dominated professions of law and 
medicine in greater numbers than ever.

Women may be scant in the Lower Houses of Parliament (where the power is) 
but surely it is only a matter of time? The rapid achievement of individual 
women in such fields has positive symbolic value for all women. Many more 
working women however, while obtaining a level of economic independence and 
public recognition, are located in work environments characterised by 
insecurity or where scope for promotion is limited.

In 1972, women won the right to comparable wages with men when the ruling 
by the Arbitration Commission of "equal pay for work of equal value". 
However, the implication of this ruling continues to create debate in a 
workforce that remains heavily segregated by sex.

Women are over represented in lower grade service work, which tends to be 
an extension of their traditionally designated unpaid roles in the domestic 
sphere. The casual conditions under which many women work is likely to 
preclude them from rights to annual or sick leave and the ability to make 
contributions to superannuation and private health funds.

Whether women's work is in structured career fields or in the powerlessness 
of survival on the lower skilled casualisation treadmill, there is one 
commonality that is more likely to impact their lives than that of their 
male counterparts — families.

If they have children, women across the board know about their conditions 
for participation in paid work. Women may be newsreaders or casual 
cleaners, lawyers or work in aged care, they may work in office admin or as 
executives but if they have children, it is likely that women will have the 
primary responsibility for their care.

Those women in Australia who started their working lives or began 
childbearing in the mid-1970s (or both), as did the author of this article, 
will remember the often-vocal public refrain from society that, women could 
work "as long as the family didn't suffer".

This was an environment of rapid change; after all it was less than a 
decade before that women were compelled to leave their jobs upon marriage 
(the Commonwealth Public Service lifted their marriage ban in 1966).

With childcare non-existent, working another unpaid shift at home was the 
condition for women's financial independence. Over the past 20 years many 
men have increased their involvement in childcare and housework but 
societal attitudes still tend to designate the primary care to women.

Contemporary discussion is centered on the question of paid maternity leave 
— a vital provision for working women at the crucial time of birth. 
Whether working women in Australia will have access to it is a bit like 
taking a gamble.

As it stands, paid maternity leave is available for only two in every 10 
working women in Australia. The lack of a universal government scheme for 
paid maternity leave sees a few women being able to access a provision that 
the majority cannot.

The South Australian Equal Opportunities Commissioner Linda Matthews says 
that under present conditions the Commission receives regular complaints 
around pregnancy and sex discrimination. A societal perception that women 
remain primary carers is complicated by long working hours.

Australian Council of Trade Union (ACTU) Secretary, Greg Combet has 
indicated that women are less likely to have children because of long 
working hours. In the computing industry, for example, women are four times 
less likely to have children than elsewhere because of excessive hours of 
work.

Could it also be that younger women, with professional opportunities and 
financial independence at stake, are less likely than their foremothers to 
agree to parenthood if their partners are not 100 percent in agreement?

Whether a woman is in a shared parenting or a single parent situation, 
longer working hours (for both women and men) can only exacerbate her task. 
The choice for working women of childbearing age becomes a zero sum game. 
It is no longer one of when to have children but whether they can afford to 
have them at all.

In the long term, parents know that childcare is now widely available, but 
some women are spending a good deal of their earnings on it to ensure their 
careers are not interrupted. Further, without access to paid maternity 
leave, the professional and economic disincentives may be too big a cost to 
bear.

With these stark choices, at the dawn of the 21st century we find that 
women have opted for a "fertility strike"" (the words of the Federal Sex 
Discrimination Commissioner, Pru Goward).

Unlike some of their mothers, today's young women are not choosing to be 
"superwomen".

Australia's birth rate is well under that required for population 
replacement at 1.75 births per woman. Replacement rate is 2.1 births per 
woman.

The average age for birthing is up from the late 20s to the early 30s. This 
is an area in which Australia lags behind other OECD countries. Progressive 
social policies in European countries have begun to reverse such trends.

We recognise the right of a woman to work and the overall benefits for 
society this brings. A fairer dispersal of private responsibilities allows 
all citizens to share in often rewarding public occupation and pursuits. If 
a woman chooses to have children, it is in society's interest to support 
her.

In Australia 70 per cent of women of childbearing age are in the workforce. 
Yet, unlike most other countries in the industrialised world, Australia has 
not made provision for generalised paid maternity leave.

It is in this context that the recent report of the Human Rights and Equal 
Opportunity Commission (HREOC) has aptly examined our will as a society to 
value parenthood.

The HREOC's interim report entitled Valuing Parenthood considers the 
options for paid maternity leave (see below). As the report states, by July 
2002, when New Zealand introduces its system, 19 of Australia's trading 
partners will have paid maternity leave systems in place. The United States 
and Australia will be the only member countries of the OECD without one.

The ACTU also sees the need for more "family friendly workplaces" with 
flexible hours for working parents. At a global level, the ILO has 
recognised this need since 1919 when the Maternity Protection Convention 
(MPC) was drawn up.

The MPC which was reviewed in 1952 and again in 2000 calls for 14 weeks 
paid maternity leave, flexible hours to accommodate breast-feeding and 
other parental issues that might arise. As a non-enforceable document, it 
is up to the ILO's 186 member states to legislate for the MPC's provisions.

At a legislative level, Australian working women have the Sexual 
Discrimination Act (1984) and the Affirmative Action Act (1986) shoring up 
their rights to equal opportunity and full participation in paid work.

Women still lag in the pay stakes with earnings of 84c in the dollar of the 
male wage.

However, a fundamental barrier to equal participation continues to reside 
in an inadequate adjustment of social structures and attitudes. To this 
end, our approach to childcare and paid maternity leave, illustrates that 
the realisation of full participation still requires a good deal of fine-
tuning. The inadequate provision of entitlements for working women 
surrounding child bearing and child rearing has fundamental consequences 
for Australia.

If our society is to reproduce itself in the stable manner and to the 
numbers we desire, shouldn't we build in the structures and legislate the 
appropriate policies to allow this to happen?

The reproduction and care of children, in fact, the Value of Parenthood 
should be a whole society responsibility and not one where the 
disproportionate cost is borne by women.

We have everything to gain.

* * *

The Interim Paper: Valuing Parenthood — Options for Paid 
Maternity Leave, 2002 is available from the Human Rights and Equal 
Opportunity Commission or can be downloaded from the internet at

http://www.hreoc.gov.au

In response to the HREOC interim paper, a series of public forums on paid 
maternity leave will be held around the country, the dates to be advertised 
on the Women's Electoral Lobby website at http://www.wel.org.au/issues