World War II veterans
During the second world war, hundreds of thousands of Australian women joined the armed forces to work as technicians, armourers, radar trackers and intelligence officers, and as labourers on farms and in factories when the men went overseas. They swore the oath of allegiance to Australia alongside the men, worked full time and often overtime without pay and were on stand-by for service in Papua New Guinea.
Unlike servicemen, however, they are not entitled to low interest Defence Service Housing Loans. The loans were available to all World War II servicemen whether they served overseas or in Australia, but not to women who served only at home.
June Stone, spokeswoman for the Australian Servicewomen Association, joined the Royal Australian Air Force in 1941 as an operations clerk for a fighter control unit and was later transferred to Townsville to plot enemy submarines off the coast. She has been fighting for home loans for women since 1950 and has been unable to take action under the Sex Discrimination Act because of an exemption granted to the Veterans Entitlement Act.
"We worked alongside the men and did exactly the same work as them", she says, "The fact is they won't give us the loans because it would cost money, but some of the ladies could do with a bit of help moving into retirement homes."
The youngest of them has just turned 65, and 60,000 ex-servicewomen would be eligible to apply for home loans if the restriction were lifted.
The parliamentary report strongly recommends the exemption to Veterans Affairs be repealed.
Firefighters
If you are trapped in a burning building in NSW, you may be whisked to safety after being thrown over the shoulder of a burly firefighter called Victoria.
It isn't likely, however. The NSW Fire Brigade has 600 permanent firefighters, but only four are women.
It used to be impossible for women to become firefighters in NSW. Few women could meet the combined minimum height requirement of 168 centimetres and chest size of 91 centimetres.
This changed in 1988, when the height and chest test was replaced by a physical aptitude test. Now high levels of
agility, strength, flexibility and cardio-respiratory endurance, which both men and women can meet, are required by applicants.
The Brigade's EEO officer, Khing Sin McCotter, has spent the past few years organising talks to women's groups and school girls and saturating the media with publicity to promote firefighting as a suitable career for women. She runs an active policy of inviting female applications and follows up with mail-
outs of photos of females in the brigade to encourage women to sit the exam.
In 1991, 86 women sat the entrance exam — over four times the number who sat in previous years. Yet despite McCotter's efforts, few women make it through the exam, interview and physical aptitude test to become firefighters.
Part of this can be accounted for by the rigorous strength requirements which men are more likely to meet, yet structural prejudice in the brigade and in the community, which sees firefighting as a male bastion, continues.
Women academics
Like it or not, men still own and control knowledge. In the top spots in Australian universities, you have to look hard to find a woman. 96% of professorships, 94% of associate professorships, 88% of senior lecturer and 76% of lecturing positions are occupied by men.
Research shows that even "super women", who somehow surmount the difficulties of child-bearing and running a home and manage to compete on the same terms as men in the academic forum, are much less likely to be given senior appointment or be considered the equal of a similarly qualified male.
Female academics will tell you that outright prejudice by male colleagues means they cannot participate in what is known euphemistically as life in the club. Those gossipy, out-of-hours talks at the university clubhouse where vital contacts are made and information is pooled, are reserved for the boys.
Women academics are just not part of the "in-crowd" — where promotions or appointments are talked over informally and often decided.