Women’s movement in Australia
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Womens movement in Australia
Today, women are faced with what seems to be a contradiction. The first womens liberation leaflet in Australia was distributed at a demonstration against the Vietnam war in 1969. In October that year Zelda DAprano and two other women chained themselves to the entrance to the Arbitration Court in Melbourne. For the first time that Court found in favour of equal pay for identical work. And in 1972 the Court ruled in favour of one pay rate for workers under an award to prevent employers continuing their evasion of equal pay by classifying jobs women did as different from mens.
Yet, thirty-two years later, Australian women working full time still earn on average 85% of male earnings. And when all women are compared with all men, the percentage is still only 66% because 70% of women work part time. And the gap is increasing again. In the year May 1999 to May 2000, male earnings for full time ordinary time increased 5.1%, but womens only by 4%.
We have a plethora of anti-discrimination laws and equal employment opportunity (EEO) is enshrined in legislation. Yet women remain concentrated in the low paid, often part time jobs with few career prospects. In the late nineties, in the Department of Education, Employment and Training, 50% of employees were women. In the two lowest levels, they made up 75%, but only 12% of management. A review of staff at Griffith University in Brisbane revealed the same inequalities. In 1999, women were 52% of all staff, 35% of academic staff and 62% of general staff. Yet women were over-represented in the lower classifications in both the academic and general areas. Women made up 86% of general staff level one, 73% in level three, but only 45% of level ten and 29% above level ten. They made up 55% of academic level A positions, 38% of level B, 33% of level C, 20% of level D, and only 14% of level E. When faculties were compared, the gender differences were striking. Women academics made up 94% of staff in the school of Nursing, but only 9% in Engineering, 23% in Science, 29% in International Business and Politics. And this is a university that claims its Affirmative Action program is working!
Thirty years after the sexual liberation movement burst onto the scene, media commentators such as Bettina Arndt regularly campaign against the right for single women to have children, single women are denied IVF in some states, older women who choose to use IVF are vilified. Lesbian women are still marginalised, portrayals of sex in popular culture remain male centred and ignorant of womens sexual pleasures. And the Catholic Church continues to discriminate against lesbians and gay men with impunity. Internationally, abortion rights remain tenuous with a new campaign to defend womens rights against the Bush administration in the US, and in other countries it remains illegal. Women are still openly treated as if theyre sex objects in advertising, in popular culture and in a massively expanding sex industry.
Womens right to work is widely accepted today for instance there has been no concerted campaign against married womens right to work during a decade and a half of mass unemployment. But it isnt that simple. The Howard government slashed funding to community childcare centres, virtually making work for many low-income women an impossible option as child care can eat up such a large percentage of their income it is not worth it.
So was the womens liberation movement worth the time and energy? In spite of it all the answer should be a resounding yes!. It was worth every minute spent protesting, marching, writing leaflets, attending meetings and raising hell. In the sixties, pregnant women were simply expected to leave work with no access to maternity leave or pay. Contraception was primitive and unreliable, and illegal, backyard abortions were a nightmare waiting to happen, making sex a source of anxiety and guilt. In 1961 women were only 25% of the workforce. Only 17% of married women between the ages of 25 and 34 and 21% of married women 35 to 44 were in the paid workforce. In 1966 the participation rate in the paid workforce by women was 36% compared with 84% of men. By 1994 women were 43% of the workforce and 53% of women aged 1654 were in paid work compared with 73% of men. However, the dramatic change was for married women with 63% of married women aged 2534 in paid work and 71% aged 35 to 44. As late as the early sixties women were not able to serve on juries, could not get a bank loan in their own right, and there was no supporting parents benefit for women (or men for that matter) if a partnership broke up until 1974. Divorce was a long drawn out, expensive affair and there were no refuges where women could escape a violent relationship until the 1980s.
So on the one hand, we have won significant gains, on the other women remain oppressed. Like all social movements, it took militant, bold and determined political actions to force reforms from the system. Without the movement, womens rights would be even fewer.
Even though we can win reforms, while capitalism continues to exist, there will continue to be womens oppression. Capitalism is a dynamic, changing society and is able to absorb all manner of protests. Many of the demands of the Womens Liberation Movement fitted with the needs of the developed world fairly easily, as employers and governments drew in millions of women to cope with labour shortages caused by the massive boom. However, the fundamentals of the system did not change. Social relations still rested on exploitation and oppression. The driving force of society remained competition for profits for the minority who make up the capitalist class, rather than human need. So while womens increased participation in the paid workforce was actually encouraged, it had to be on the terms of capitalism. Employers and governments are not interested in ensuring women work in an environment that fits with their need to breast feed their child, or of families struggling to find the time for long hours on the job and still carry the responsibilities in the home. On the other hand, womens oppression plays a vital role in maintaining the system and the power of those who rule. So this minority have a very real material interest in the perpetuation of sexism. That is why ultimately we will need a revolution to completely overthrow capitalism and build a new society in order to end womens oppression. In a society based on collective and democratic control of all wealth so that human need can be the basis for social decisions, it would be possible to organise work and the socialisation and care of children on the basis of peoples needs. There would not be any social group who could benefit from womens oppression. Then womens liberation will be possible.
These are the themes of this pamphlet.
Why are women oppressed?
Frederick Engels, friend and collaborator of Karl Marx, showed that women have been oppressed ever since the beginning of class society. Using copious notes Marx had made throughout his lifetime trying to understand why women were oppressed, in his path-breaking book The Family, Private Property and the State, published in the 1880s, Engels gave the first materialist explanation of womens oppression. He argued that with the rise of classes, the ruling class found it necessary to control, for the first time in human history, womens sexuality in order to determine their heirs for the inheritance of property. The need to control women of the upper classes led ultimately to ideas and laws which, to be effective, had to apply to all women, and so established the oppression of one half of humanity. So sexism and the kind of discrimination against women we see everywhere today is deeply embedded in social and cultural traditions which stretch back many centuries before capitalism. However for the sake of brevity, this pamphlet will only look at how womens oppression is perpetuated under capitalism.
One of the main institutions of capitalism is the nuclear family two heterosexual people living with their children. In some cultures the extended family continues, but it plays a words role as the nuclear family in perpetuating the gender stereotypes which are central to womens oppression. The stereotypes of man the protector, the provider, and woman the caring, loving wife and mother dependent on the man and devoted to her children underpin the treatment of women as sex objects, the idea that women are by nature more passive and nurturing than men, and provide a rationale for lower wages and fewer job opportunities. From these stereotypes follows the oppression of lesbians and gay men, but also the sexual oppression of heterosexual women. The emphasis on monogamy and womens role as child bearers lays the basis for the denial of womens sexual needs, and the idea that women are mere sex objects for mens pleasure.
The family promises a haven from the pressures of work, a refuge where love is the driving force rather than competition and exploitation. Unfortunately, the reality is nothing like the promise. Because the family is not separate from and insulated from society. Men tend to earn more, have more job opportunities, and their role in the paid workforce is valued more highly than work done in the home. Therefore, the relationship on which the family is based is from the very start unequal. For the vast majority of families, the gender roles are impossible to escape. Even if they would like the man to take time off from paid work to play more of a role doing child care and housework, most families cannot afford to sa