National Press Club Speech -Women on the Verge of Recession: Confronting Gender Issues in Turbulent Times (2009)

Women on the Verge of Recession:
Confronting Gender Issues in Turbulent Times

Speech by Elizabeth Broderick
Sex Discrimination Commissioner and Commissioner responsible for Age Discrimination
Australian Human Rights Commission

National Press Club
Canberra
12.30 Wednesday 29 April 2009

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It is a great pleasure to be speaking here at the National Press Club.

It heartens me today to be able to welcome the release of the National Council’s Plan to Reduce Violence Against Women and their Children. This is the first time we have had a national plan in such a comprehensive form. The challenge now is to ensure that this plan is properly resourced so that all women and their children can live a life free from violence.

Speaking in the nation’s capital reminds me of an experience I had several years ago now, when I was asked to speak at the Government Lawyers Annual Conference in Parliament House. I was delirious with excitement. I’d always wanted to speak at Parliament House.

So the day arrived and I caught an early morning flight to Canberra – grabbed a taxi and raced to Parliament House. I rushed to reception asking “Where is the Government Lawyers Conference being held?” The receptionist looked blankly at me and said “No, there’s no government lawyer’s conference here today”. “Yes there is,” I said in my smug lawyer’s voice waving my letter of invitation at her - “It says here Government Lawyers Conference, Parliament House”. She said, “Madam, if you read the next line - it says Sydney!”

So there I was stuck in Canberra trying to realise my life ambition when the conference was actually taking place in the NSW Parliament and my speaking slot was 1 hour away. In a maniacal state, I not only managed to sprint down the runway and get to Parliament House in Sydney with 10 mins to spare, but I managed to get an extra 500 frequent flyer – not bad!

I have been in my role now as Sex Discrimination Commissioner for just over 18 months. And during that time, I have met countless inspirational women and men from all walks of life. Many of these have been Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women.

So let me begin by firstly acknowledging that we are gathered here today on the traditional land of the Ngunnawal people and pay my respects to their elders past and present.

I would particularly like to pay tribute to the many Indigenous women of this area and also to non indigenous elders who, for many decades, have spoken out for the rights of women. Without their advocacy, it is unlikely that I would be on this stage today speaking, not only as a Commissioner, but also as a mother of two young children.

I did wonder whether, today, I would go out on a limb and forecast that paid parental leave will be in the federal budget in May? But I thought – er – probably not! Because if I get it wrong, I don’t want a stream of you approaching me, nursing babies called Elizabeth and demanding compensation!

But seriously, as you might expect, I will be talking about issues such as the need for a paid parental leave scheme, integrating paid work and caring responsibilities and of course, economic and personal security for women over their life cycle.

But today, in the shadow of the release of one of the most important and toughest Budgets our country has seen, I intend to make a very specific case – to illustrate why efforts to progress gender equality are not only desirable but critical at this time.

And I will put to you that, ironically, the current climate provides perhaps the best opportunity yet to create a fairer and more equal future for both women and men.

So let me set the scene.

I believe there are two factors coming together right now to provide us with an opportunity – demographic change and the economic downturn.

When I came into this role, our country was already grappling with a profound and almost silent shift – the rapid ageing of the population. Research shows that by 2050, we will have a quadrupling of the proportion of people over 85 and a doubling of the proportion over 65.^[1]

This demographic change will have two main impacts. Firstly, a shortage of workers – our future taxpayers; and secondly, because of ageing, a greater demand for caring.

More recently the global economic meltdown has well and truly hit home as anyone who watches the news or reads the newspapers, or indeed is part of our labour market would know.

As this recession deepens, the need to cut costs will accelerate and job losses will grow.

I believe that, as a nation – these two factors – the global economic downturn and demographic change - have come together to create a perfect storm – of declining revenues and increasing costs associated with an ageing population.

It is exactly because of this unique combination of challenges, now more than ever before, that we must seriously tackle the unfinished business of gender equality in our country.

If you take only one thing from what I say today, it should be that this perfect storm of demographic change and the economic downturn provides the perfect opportunity to reinvent paid work and care for the benefit of all families, men and women, for our businesses and for our economy.

So why, in these turbulent times, when we are not just on the verge of recession but very likely in recession, should we focus first on women, in our quest to reinvent work and care?

I believe there are three reasons for this.

1. Firstly, if we are to reap the full rewards that come from being an international leader in women’s education and training, we must enable women to achieve their aspirations in both paid work and their caring lives.

2. Secondly, if we do remove the structural barriers to women being more involved in paid work, we will all benefit - not only women, but also men, business and ultimately the economy.

3. And thirdly, if we enable women to have economic and personal security over their life time – whether or not they participate in paid work - this will lead to better social and financial outcomes for families and create a stronger economy.

As I explore these reasons in more detail, I want to be clear that gender equality is not a battle of the sexes - where women win and men lose. I’m not predicting that one gender will be more adversely affected in this recession than the other. Let’s face it both men and women are doing it tough at the moment!

Let me start by examining why women of child bearing age represent one of the most under-utilised talent pools in the country. We are doing well on women’s education and training but as a nation we just can’t seem to fully utilise women’s skills.

If I could use my own family as an example – my grandmother, who was born in the early 1900s, was educated to high school level but had to leave the workforce when she got married because of the Commonwealth Marriage Ban. She then focussed full-time on raising my mother and aunt.

My mother, who was born in the 30s, went to technical college level and established a small business with my father when my sisters and I were born, so that she could continue to care and work flexibly.

I was born in 1961. I managed to complete degrees in law and computer science. When my children were born, I was one of the lucky ones when my employer agreed that I could work 3 days per week. I continued this arrangement when my mother became critically ill and I needed to care for her.

What I hope you take from this story is that, even though the opportunities for many women have expanded enormously, caring has remained constant.

And so this remains the challenge for fully utilising female skills in this country.

The World Economic Forum has released its most recent Global Gender Gap report. The report covers a total of 128 countries, representing over 90 percent of the world’s population.

The report shows that Australia sits in the group of countries that are number 1 on women’s educational attainment but depressingly, we are number 40 on women’s workforce participation.^[2] Let’s just explore this for a minute.

If we look at how women are progressing in the workplace, last year we discovered that, in ASX200 Companies, women hold a tiny percentage of Board Directorships and only four Chief Executive Officer positions. The most disturbing figure, though, is that only 5.9% of senior line managers are female, and that is significant reduction from two years earlier.

My point is that despite our success in women’s education, things are getting worse – much worse. And while women have more than equal educational outcomes compared to men, the vast majority of Australians living on low incomes and social security are women. Women still earn significantly less than men.

Let’s be clear - there is a serious leakage of female talent in this country.

Without significant intervention - by government, by business - the number of women progressing in the workplace will shrink even more.

Some have argued that women prefer to stay at home. But it’s not about pitching the value of caring work against paid work – or choosing career over family. This is about enabling all of us - women and men - to engage in paid work and care – and in a way that works.

Others have argued that the absence of women at the decision making level will change over generations as more women enter the workforce.

Will it?

Research shows that once the task of juggling a career with caring kicks in, most women of the next generation will follow a similar track to their mothers.^[3]

This is because, as we all know, women often have to take on work below their skill level to accommodate their caring responsibilities.^[4] Over 70% of part-time workers are women. However, the reality is that the large majority of part-time jobs are lower paid, with limited training and promotional opportunities. There is a dearth of part-time jobs available at more senior levels. How often do we see a senior executive position advertised as a flexible work arrangement?

My next story might sound familiar.

It’s the story of Maria who trained as a librarian. She was looking to return to the workforce after having children and was offered a position she had coveted for many years as a university librarian. Her husband encouraged her to accept it, saying that he could help with the child care. But as she pointed out, her husband had a completely unrealistic idea of how that would work. She said to him: "You are on a work trip all of next week. Who would pick up the kids if I was at work?" He had no answer. Then, instead of taking the librarian position, Maria made the decision to take a teacher's aide position, working within school hours at a nearby school.

This is a good example of the deskilling that is happening everyday.

The mismatch between educational attainment and workforce participation has a cost – a very significant cost.

If you consider that $66 billion was spent on education in Australia in 2007-08 and over half of that is spent on females - the hard question we need to ask ourselves is: are we getting a return on our investment in women’s education and training? How can we claim to be tapping into the full productive power of women?

Attempting to force a female life cycle into a male career model does not work, has never worked and will not work in the future.

Let’s now look at how removing the structural barriers to women participating in paid work would benefit not only women but business and the economy. How can we use the convergence of the global economic downturn and demographic change to reinvent work and care?

As Lara Liswood, of Goldman Sachs said, “We thought that if we educated girls and women, and gave them access to healthcare the rest would follow. But it hasn’t worked out that way”.^[5]

She’s right, it hasn’t, because that was only part of the picture.

Let’s just for a minute imagine a world where we have removed the structural barriers, where:

• all working women, or men, irrespective of job role, have the ability to stay at home with their newborn babies for at least the first 6 months without jeopardising their career prospects,

• where both men and women can access high quality flexible work at their skill level,

• where there is affordable, accessible, quality child care and elder care,

• where the prevailing attitude has moved from focussing on “fixing women” to men and women working together successfully and equally.

In this world, our social and economic well-being would go hand in hand. So, what do we need to do to get there?

I consider a crucial first step to be a government funded national Paid Parental Leave scheme – a hot topic just at the minute.

A government funded scheme will mean that every child in this country will be able to be with their mum or dad for almost six months irrespective of the family’s financial circumstances.

However, the debate has now moved from whether we should have a scheme to whether we can afford one in these challenging economic times.

My response is - paid parental leave is the foundation on which we will build a sustainable and balanced workforce. It’s part of the solution to our current economic woes.

Let me explain why.

Currently, Australia lags behind our international counterparts on the workforce participation of mothers with young children. There is a strong empirical link between Paid Parental Leave and women’s - particularly mothers’ - workforce participation. Put simply, countries with paid parental leave programs have more mums able to participate in paid work- they are utilising the talents of all their people. Surely that makes good economic sense.

And there will be immediate benefits to the economy in terms of spending. Many of those who don’t have Paid Parental Leave in Australia at the moment are on low incomes and struggle financially. For these families, this is money that would be rapidly spent on the necessities of life, like providing their children with accommodation, food, clothing and healthcare.

Importantly, the Productivity Commission’s proposal of 18 weeks paid maternity leave and two weeks paid supporting parent leave is reasonable and affordable. And recent evidence demonstrates that the scheme will pay for itself over time.

It is commonly stated that Australia is one of two OECD countries (the other being the United States) without paid parental leave. When I was recently in the UN an American colleague pulled me aside and said “Liz, California and New York State both have state-based paid parental leave schemes.”

So in reality, this makes Australia the only OECD nation without any legislated paid parental leave scheme.

Let’s make no mistake we are out on our own.

I am not saying that paid parental leave will be the panacea to solve the economic crisis. What I am saying is that it is an essential plank that will form the foundation of the workplace transformation necessary to take us into the future.

The close companion of Paid Parental Leave is high quality flexible work and of course accessible, affordable, quality childcare and elder care.

Flexible work arrangements for both women and men are part of preventing the leakage of female talent. We know anecdotally that more and more companies are changing work practices to preserve jobs, cut costs and embrace flexibility.

I want to stress that when I talk about flexible work, I am not talking about increased casualisation or forcing people to reduce their hours. I am talking about redesigning jobs for both women and men – where this is in the interests of both the business and the employee.

There are a number of myths surrounding flexible work:

• That flexible workers are not as committed as full time workers;

• That flexibility costs the business; and

• That roles with supervisory responsibilities cannot be done flexibly.

My own experience tells a different story.

As I have learnt over years of advocating for work practice innovation, the fear of change is often worse than change itself.

I apologise to those that have heard me tell this story before, and I know some of you may even have heard it more than once, but I think this story provides one example of how flexibility can work for both employers and employees.

Prior to commencing in my current role, I was a partner at Blake Dawson.

I had a day, which started like any other day, where one of my lawyers told me she was pregnant. The same afternoon another senior manager came to see me with the same news. What they didn't know was that I also was pregnant. And when, three weeks later, a fourth lawyer joined the mother-to be queue, we knew we had a problem. That was half the entire team that would be out on maternity leave at one time.

We now had a solid business reason to reinvent the way we worked. We redesigned our jobs so that the ultimate responsibility for matters rested with the individual, whether or not they worked full or part-time. And, if a flexible worker needed to come in on a non-designated work day and could not arrange child care at short notice, they could bring in the kids. At the heart of each of these arrangements was reciprocity and trust. Solutions need to work for both the workplace and the worker. Flexibility built a loyalty among staff that money could not buy. It enabled us to obtain a return on the firm’s investment in education and training.

I wanted to share this example with you, which is just one of many possibilities, to show that supporting employees to balance paid work and caring can work for both the employer and the employee.

The challenge will be to hang on to those arrangements that do work when the economy turns around – this is the great opportunity!

However, removing some of the structural barriers is not enough. We need attitudinal change and law reform - particularly when it comes to flexible work.

I firmly believe that men hold the key to attitudinal change.

What will change the culture of an organisation more quickly than any number of women with young children, is men making visible their caring responsibilities. Why is it that we often hear about the caring responsibilities of female politicians, but not about those of their male colleagues?

If we could do one thing to progress this issue, it would be for our male leaders to make visible that which is currently invisible – namely, their caring responsibilities. By that I mean - our prime minister making more visible the time he spends as a dad, our CEOs scheduling meetings after taking their children to school, our union leaders visibly taking time out to care for their elderly parents.

We need male role models at the highest levels to send the message that you can be a serious career player and a caring father, son, partner and neighbour.

It was encouraging to see that the right to request a flexible work arrangement was included as part of the new National Employment Standards. The disappointment was that it only provides workers with the right if they have children under school age, or a child with a disability up to age 18. We need to extend the right to request to include those caring for family at the other end of life, indeed all forms of caring, so that workers don’t have to make these kinds of choices, particularly right now.

I know that for me, when my mother became extremely ill, I would have left my job if I hadn’t been able to get time off to care for her during her final months.

We also need changes to the federal Sex Discrimination Act. The government should amend the Act to ensure that both women and men have comprehensive protection from discrimination at work as a result of their family and caring responsibilities.

It’s not about women caring less, it’s about enabling men to care more.

While Paid Parental Leave and high quality flexible work are at the heart of gender equality, in 2009 we must start to explore new solutions.

For example to increase the number of women on boards, Norway has legislation requiring companies to have a minimum of 40% representation of each gender on their boards.^[6]

Alternatively, organisations could set their own targets and regularly measure progress against those targets.

Or what about shareholder engagement, where CEOs are quizzed on their gender equality measures?

Aren’t these ideas that we should seriously consider?

The current economic crisis must be seen as an opportunity for innovation. Experts agree that recovery and long term economic growth requires nations to draw on the widest pool of talent. The World Economic Forum has said, ‘Over time...a nation’s competitiveness depends significantly on whether and how it educates and utilises its female talent.’

It seems that we train and educate women well - but are we simply unable or just unwilling to utilise their talent?

There continues to be significant structural barriers to women’s involvement in paid work.

The third compelling reason as to why we must act now, is that if women can build economic security for themselves and their families, they will obtain a level of economic resilience which is so vital in these economic times.

What do we want for our own daughters and granddaughters? As a mum, I want my daughter to have the financial capacity to support herself and her family in unexpected times of hardship.

The need for economic security for women became patently clear to me almost 12 months ago when I met a woman called Lurline as part of my national Listening Tour.

Lurline was working in a young women’s refuge in Tasmania. Her life story is a long chain of incredible achievements - mostly unrecognised. Over the course of her life, she has not only spent many years caring for her own children, but she also helped to better the lives of many disadvantaged young women.

Now that her children have grown up and moved on, Lurline works with girls who are homeless for all sorts of reasons – like violence and abuse from parents, drugs, alcohol or poverty. Lurline gets up all through the night to help these young women – and on the morning I met with her: she had been up at 2.30am when one of the girl’s boyfriends dropped around and she had to send him on his way; up at 3.30am when he came back with his mates to burn down the refuge; and up at 6am when she had to ensure that all the girls were dressed and ready for school.

The sad part of this story is that Lurline should now have the option of retiring from paid work. She is 72. But because of a life spent caring for her own children, and now others, combined with the poor wages in the feminised community sector, she has little to no superannuation.

And her situation is not unusual.

Caring delivers value – both socially and economically. It’s time to recognise this and give unpaid carers a chance at a financially secure future.

The very sobering reality we now understand is that, like Lurline, many women face the prospect of poverty in their twilight years. Current superannuation payouts for women are approximately half of those of men. Of all household types in Australia, single elderly female households are at the greatest risk of persistent poverty.

We need to ask ourselves as a nation, “Is poverty to be the reward for a lifetime spent caring?”

In summary, if we are to reinvent the way we work and care:

• we need to stop under-utilising the skills and talents of women;

• we need to evaluate our current approaches to integrating paid work and care giving;

• we need to start creating mechanisms to provide a more secure economic future for those people who have spent a significant part of their life caring.

For, if people cannot work and care at the same time, then some will have no choice but to leave paid work to care full-time, and this will exacerbate the skills shortage and deepen the difficulty we will face as our community ages.

The alternative is that others will be unable to care, leaving some with no carers, and the burden of caring will shift to the state. Given our reduced taxpayer base - who will pay then?

I started today by acknowledging the traditional owners of this country and the inspiring indigenous and non indigenous women who for many years have advocated for gender equality.

I would like to finish by reflecting on what has been one of the most significant moments in my life.

Last month, I accompanied a group of aboriginal women from the Kimberleys, to the United Nations in New York to tell their story of courage and change – a story of rebuilding their community after years of alcohol abuse.

As they spoke for the first time in New York, they began in the Bunaba language saying, “This is the first time that the first nation of Manhattan has ever heard the language of my people”.

They told of their success in lobbying for alcohol restrictions, which has led to an almost 50% reduction in domestic violence reports and an increase in school attendance and engagement.

As I reflected on this, I realised that change can happen but it requires strength, courage and determination.

If these women, who have limited access to influence, power and money, as well as immense geographical barriers can bring about such significant positive change what responsibility do each of us have in our own life?

In this time of global reflection, we should ask ourselves: Will we revert to what we know and what has always been? Or will we grab this opportunity to form a stronger, more internationally competitive country?

Now is the time for government and employers to dig deep, to create real change with enlightened polices and unwavering commitment.

I am an optimist.

I believe it can happen.

Thank you.

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^[1] The proportion of people 65 and over is likely to double between 2004 (13%) and 2051(27%).
The proportion of people 85 and over is likely to quadruple between 2004 (1.5%) and 2051(7%). Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2006, Population Projections, Australia, 2004 to 2101
^[2]
[3] NATSEM and AMP. She Works hard for the Money.
^[4] Curtin Research p.29
^[5] (Groundbreakers: Using the strength of women to rebuild the economy).
^[6] Ministry of Children and Equality, Government of Norway, Balanced gender representation on company boards (2008). Available at http://www.regjeringen.no/en/dep/bld/Topics/Equality/kjonn_og_makt/ Balanced-gender-representation-on-compan.html?id=1250 (viewed 12 February 2009).