There was little surprise in the announcement on October 29 that the Affirmative Action Agency's already limited ability to tackle discrimination in employment and education was to be weakened even further.
The agency, which implements the 1986 Affirmative Action Act, already had no power to prosecute companies that disregarded affirmative action guidelines. The legislation required employers to consult with trade unions and workers, review their hiring and promotions policies, set new goals for women, monitor the program and hand in a report every year.
Over the last decade, even while most employers with more than 100 workers, and higher education institutions set in place affirmative action programs, the barriers for women have been dismantled far slower. The agency's 1995 report noted that women made up 8% of executives, 15% of senior managers, 24% of middle managers and 35% of junior managers — while women are 46% and 48.3% of the private and public sector work force respectively (ABS, March 1996).
One of the findings of a federal parliamentary inquiry completed in 1994 was that the most significant barriers women face were not addressed in either the 1984 Sex Discrimination Act or the Affirmative Action Act. These barriers rest on the double duties women face as paid workers and those responsible for the unpaid labour of caring for the young, sick and elderly, and keeping a household. A 1990 ABS report found that women still did two-thirds of all household work.
A direct result of this continuing perception — and pillar of modern capitalist economics — that women's primary place is in the home has meant that women's experience in paid work is, in general, worse than most men's. Women are paid less — at the most, full-time women workers receive 84% of full-time male workers' wages — partly because they are concentrated at the bottom of industries and in lower paid "female" industries. Women are also over-represented in the non-unionised part-time and casual work sectors, and are particularly vulnerable to exploitation. The plethora of Coalition industrial relations "reforms" will only change this for the worst.
On October 29, the agency's policy changed so that employers who fail to submit an annual affirmative action report are no longer "named". Around the same time, Peter Reith announced that companies that had succeeded in developing an affirmative action program would no longer be required to report annually.
Perhaps unintentionally, but with great effect, the October 30 Financial Review reported on the changes on the same page as an article noting a massive increase in complaints of sexual harassment being made to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. For the last three years, sexual harassment complaints — predominantly from women — made up 50% of all complaints received about sex discrimination.
The Financial Review's Sheryle Bagwell noted on November 6 that the Coalition had intended to abolish the agency altogether because they "were always opposed to affirmative action, even the quota-less kind that exists here". Now, her says, they are merely "weakening it to the point where it can be seen as a joke".
Warnings that the small gains achieved through affirmative action could easily be swept away in the current climate were likely to be ignored, said Bagwell. She cited the probability of the government removing the only sanction against employers failing to comply — a prohibition from tending for federal government contracts.
Bagwell goes on to relay the story of one Victorian employer, James Thomas of Thomas Jewellers, who wrote to the agency to say that, rather than file an affirmative action report, he would be conducting his own affirmative action seminars for female staff on "how to clean house in 10 easy lessons ... how to stop asking mindless questions ... how to beg for sex".
The only reasonable conclusion to draw is not that things are so much better for women in the work force, but that the introduction of industry "self-regulation" of affirmative action is an escalation of the conservative attack on women's rights.
By Jennifer Thompson