Anne Summers' new book, The End of Equality, paints a stark picture of women's status in Australia in the 21st century.
Despite winning equal pay for equal work more than 30 years ago, the gap between men's and women's wages is larger now than a decade ago. In May 2002, men averaged $839 per week while women were paid just $555 (66% of men's wages). Figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics indicate this gap is still growing: between May 2000 and May 2002, men's wages increased by $58 while women's rose by only $33.
While women's participation in the paid work force has been steadily increasing over the past few decades, the concentration of women in part-time and casual employment is on the rise. The number of women in paid jobs rose between August 1982 and August 2002 from 2,335,000 to 4,383,900, but during the same period the number of women in full-time jobs decreased from 63.8% to 54.4%. In August 2002, women held 70.5% of all casual and part-time positions. Forty-five per cent of employed women are in part-time jobs, while for employed men the figure is 15%.
Combined with cuts to child-care funding, and lack of paid maternity leave, this situation makes the falling fertility rate unsurprising. Summers describes the cost of child care — often as much as $60 a day — as totally prohibitive for many women, often nearing the take-home income of working mothers. Many women instead use "informal care" (family, neighbours or friends). A study cited by Summers from 2002 found that 32% of the 500,000 women not in paid employment, but wanting to work, said their main obstacle was lack of child care. Between 1996 and 2000, the government slashed $850 million from child-care funding.
Only 38% of women in paid employment have access to paid maternity leave. Information from the minister for family and community services in 2002 indicated that when a double-income family on average weekly earnings moves to a single income, it suffers a 38% fall in combined income. The loss of a woman's lifetime earnings as a result of having a child is estimated at $160,000 after tax for the first child and $12,000-$15,000 for each subsequent child.
Despite legislation protecting pregnant women from workplace discrimination, it is still widespread. In 2001, the number of complaints of pregnancy discrimination under the Sex Discrimination Act increased by 150% on the previous year. Women also face major challenges in skill retention and updating when returning to work after giving birth. At the same time, the Coalition government has increased pressure to force single mothers into low-paid jobs by extending "mutual obligation" for welfare provision to sole parents in 2002.
Faced with all this, and for working women the double burden of sustaining a job and carrying the bulk of responsibility for domestic tasks, it's no wonder that more women are choosing not to have children.
The other effect of this massive pressure on families to make ends meet is the extent of domestic violence against women, cited in Summers' book as having increased over the past three decades. The last national government survey investigating violence against women in Australia conducted in 1996 found that 1.1 million women had experienced violence in a domestic relationship at some time, accounting for 23% of all women who have ever been married or in a de facto relationship. In the nine years up until June 1998, 701 Australian women were killed by their partner or another family member. That's more than one every week.
A Family Planning Association study conducted in 1997 provides chilling proof of how such institutionalised violence breeds further violence: it found that a third of the men interviewed between the ages 15 and 25 thought there were certain situations in which it was "OK for a male to force a female to have sex".
The neoliberal onslaught of recent decades — attacks on wages and conditions, privatisation, cuts to social spending — has had a disproportionately worse effect on women. But this offensive can and must be resisted in many ways: by getting behind the NSW teachers' plans for a 48-hour strike in February demanding a pay increase (the undervaluing of teaching reflected in wages is largely because it's a female-dominated profession); by seeking to extend to other areas the victory of Sydney University staff, who in December secured 36 weeks of paid parental leave in their enterprise bargaining agreement; and by getting involved in plans for rallies and marches around International Women's Day on March 8, in defence of women's rights globally.
Kerryn Williams
From Green Left Weekly, January 21, 2004.
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