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What Does a World of Gender Equality Look Like? (2010)

Sex Discrimination

What Does a World of Gender Equality Look
Like?

Speech by Elizabeth
Broderick

Sex Discrimination Commissioner and
Commissioner responsible for Age
Discrimination

Australian Human Rights Commission

Keynote address to Insights – A Fresh Look at Girls’ Education
Conference

Grand Hyatt Hotel, Melbourne

Thursday 17 June 2010


Let me begin by acknowledging that we are gathered here today on the
traditional land of the Wurundjeri People of the Kulin Nation. I well know the
enormous contribution they make to the education of their communities and to the
Australian community more broadly.

Thank you to April and Trish for organising this wonderful conference and for
inviting me here today. As Federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner, I can think
of few better ways to start my day.

As I was preparing for this conference, I was reminded of a story I heard Sir
Ken Robinson tell during a presentation on creativity in education at one of the
TED conferences.

It concerned a little girl, aged six, spotted furiously scribbling up the
back of her class. As the little girl didn’t always pay attention, the
teacher went over to see what she was doing.

She asked the child ‘what are you drawing?’ The little girl
explained ‘I am drawing a picture of God’.

‘But nobody knows what God looks like’ said the teacher rolling
her eyes. ‘Well, they will in a minute!’ the little girl
replied.

Now, I do not use this story to suggest that it is only through divine
intervention that we will at last attain genuine equality for women, although
I’m happy to take submissions on this point.

What I do suggest, however, is that, whilst we may have reached a
stage where young girls are able to view the world in terms of endless
possibility – as a picture of their own making – the realities they
confront as they move through life mean that the picture starts to contract, all
because we’ve yet to discover what such a world might actually look
like.

We used to think, of course, that access to education was the door through
which women would enter the world on an equal footing to men.

Experience shows us that access alone is not enough – that we also need
to dismantle the stereotypes and relationships which limit the social and
professional realities of girls and boys (and ultimately men and women)
if we’re to achieve genuine and lasting change.

My main point today is that leadership from educators such as yourselves is
critical if we are to reach our potential – and design a better future -
as a nation.

The possibilities for women in the 21st century Australia are
certainly expansive, particularly when compared with those of my mother’s
or grandmother’s generation.

Women and girls have made extraordinary and hard won advances in recent
decades – often due to the efforts of their teachers. Most formal
barriers to women’s participation in the spheres of education and paid
employment, in particular, have been removed.

As a result, girls are some of our highest achievers at school and women are
more visible on tertiary education campuses and in a range of Australian
workplaces than ever before.

The longer I am in this position, however, the more it seems to me that
– as a nation, and as a global community – too often we are prepared
to forgo the possibilities that these advances offer – to balk at the next
and perhaps harder hurdle.

Yes, the formal obstacles are largely gone; yes, the visibility of women is
on the rise. The opportunities, we say with confidence, are there.

But we remain a long way from achieving equality of outcomes
at home, in education, in the public sphere, or at work. There is an enormous
gap between girls’ and women’s capabilities and expectations on the
one hand; and their social, professional and political realities on the
other.

It is this gap, then, that we must bridge and, while the significant miles
we’ve traversed have been fuelled by the energy and intellect of countless
women – and men – to whom we owe so much; the picture so far has
been, understandably, painted in terms of a problem or inequity to be addressed.

As crucial, and as legitimate, as this picture has been, it seems to have
taken us only so far. The miles ahead require us to expand this picture’s
horizons towards an opportunity we can no longer delay seizing; a picture of how
a community can flourish when all its members are able to participate, to
contribute and reap the rewards of that engagement.

In short, we need to imagine what equity might look like in every sphere of
life – the opportunities that such a world offers us as individuals, as
communities, as workforces, governments, and economies; imagining it in the
classroom and lecture theatre, yes, but also on the sports field, in the media,
in the Board room, and on the legislative floor.

But to reach this Utopia, we must understand the less favourable
circumstances in which we find ourselves today.

Let’s look first at the picture in terms of educational achievement.
Every year, the World Economic Forum releases the Global Gender Gap Report, a
Report which measures the size of the gender inequality gap in four critical
areas - economic participation and opportunity; educational attainment;
political empowerment; and health and survival.

In the most recent Global Gender Gap report, Australia is ranked number
one
for women’s educational
attainment.[1] This is something of
which this audience should be very proud, and should position our girls
perfectly to participate fully in the economic and political life of the
nation.

But has this access to quality education translated into a quantifiable
improvement in gender equality and the status of women?

As Laura Liswood, Senior Advisor at Goldman Sachs and co-founder and
Secretary General of the Council of Women World Leaders, has 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.”[2]

We need only look at other key indicators of gender equality in Australia
– labour force participation, pay equity, the number of women at decision
making level, unpaid work and violence against women - to see at best, stasis,
and at worst, regression. To illustrate this, I want to give you an overview of
the areas in which the picture needs to change.

When we move to examining women’s labour force participation, the
Global Gender Gap Report is not glowing. In terms of women’s labour force
participation, in 2009 we were ranked a profoundly disappointing
50th.[3] Given that, in
2008 we were ranked 40th, that’s a spectacular drop of 10
places in 12 months![4] Meanwhile, the
workforce participation of Australian mothers, in particular, continues to be
low by international standards.[5] This means there is a chasm between the picture we might hope for or expect; and
the accurate picture of women’s professional reality.

While we are leading on women’s education, when we dig deeper we
understand that educational choices remain highly segregated on the basis of
gender - during primary, secondary school and tertiary education.

Women continue to be over-represented in areas of study linked to lower
earning industries. For example, women outnumber men by 3 to 1 in health and
education courses, with men outnumbering women by 4 to 1 in engineering
courses.[6] This audience may be able
to confirm my suspicion that there is a considerable disparity between the
weekly earnings of a teacher and a mining
engineer![7] And when we look at the
overall value delivered to our economy and our society by highly feminised
industries such as education, why there should be a disparity is unclear.

Indeed, 100 years after women first marched in the streets demanding equal
pay and four decades after the first Federal equal pay case, the gender pay gap
lingers malodorously in Australian workplaces. Women in Australia currently earn
approximately 82 cents in the male dollar. [8] The gap is even greater when we factor
in women’s part-time and casual earnings, with women earning just two
thirds the amount men earn.[9]

Even more alarming is that, over the last four years, the gender gap in pay
has actually widened[10] and,
if current earning patterns continue, the average 25 year old male will earn
$2.4 million over the next 40 years with the average 25 year old female earning
only $1.5 million that’s almost 1 million
less.[11]

Meanwhile, young women entering the workforce need only glance up the ladder
to see another manifestation of women’s professional reality.

Women are underrepresented in leadership in virtually all sectors of the
workforce and central decision making positions across the country. In federal
politics, women represent just under one third of elected positions in the
Parliament[12] while, in the public
sector, women outnumber men at all junior classifications but remain
under-represented at all higher classifications, comprising only 37% of those in
Senior Executive roles.[13]

In academia, women comprise over half Australia’s total lecturing
staff, but numbers decrease significantly as their seniority rises. In my own
field, 65% of law graduates are
female,[14] but they account for
only 16% of equity partners and roughly 15% of total
barristers;[15] while, in the
Federal Court, women only make up 16% of the
bench.[16]

In sports leadership – one of our most culturally influential sectors -
only 21% of board directors are women, while one in five of our National Sport
Organisations have no women on at
all.[17]

Without doubt, however, one of the worst performing is the corporate sector.
At last count, women hold only 2% of CEO positions, only 5.9% of executive line
manager positions (down from 7.5% in 2006) and just over 10% of Executive
Manager positions in the top 200 publicly listed companies in
Australia.[18] Women chair only 2%
of ASX200 companies (that is four boards) and hold only 8.3% of board
directorships.[19]

More urgently and more pervasively, perhaps, the advances in women’s
education have failed to elicit a significant decrease in rates of violence
against women and sexual harassment. Australian women continue to experience
violence in epidemic proportions, with one in three experiencing physical
violence since the age of 15,[20] and nearly one in five experiencing sexual assault since the age of
15.[21] Reporting and conviction
rates for these crimes, however, remain consistently low.

Young women also remain one of the primary targets of sexual harassment in
Australia.[22] In fact, last year,
sexual harassment accounted for more than one in three complaints that the
Commission received under the Sex Discrimination
Act.[23]

Although rates of violence show little signs of abating, we are at least
seeing a growing awareness of its cost – and of family violence, in
particular – and, while the emotional costs to individual women and to
communities have been understood in many circles for years, the economic costs
are just as real.

Violence has serious implications not only for individual women’s short
and long term financial security[24] but also for the nation’s economic security and the National Council on
Violence Against Women recently estimated that, in 2009, violence against women
and their children cost the Australian economy $13.6 billion. Without
significant intervention, they estimate that, by 2021/22, the cost will increase
to $15.6 billion.[25]

While the levels of violence have not necessarily decreased as women’s
level of education has increased, I do know that education does offer the
possibility of breaking generational cycles of violence. I was speaking to a
woman who provides counselling and support to women who have experienced
domestic violence. She had recently seen a woman who was 72 years old and, for
the first time in her life, sought support from a domestic violence service. She
had been living in a violent relationship for over 40 years. When the counsellor
asked her what prompted her to seek help, she said her daughter and her
grand-daughter had recently come to visit. During their stay her husband had
come home from the pub, as he usually did, and assaulted her, as he usually did.
While this was happening, her daughter, now middle-aged, hid in the bedroom,
also as she had always done. It was her grand-daughter who at 12 or 13, had just
been through respectful relationships education at school that said to her
grandmother afterwards – ‘that’s not right, that’s not
acceptable and I know a number we can ring to get help.’

It is my fervent hope that as this sort of education and change spreads
across Australia fewer and fewer Australian women will understand this
particular reality first hand.

One reality that I suspect all adult women will continue to experience for
some time, is inequality in the amount of unpaid work done by men and women.
Every day I hear stories of women struggling to balance paid work and caring
responsibilities, as women continue to shoulder the large majority of unpaid
work in all households.[26]

The birth of children, then, is a common point in the lifecycle at which
gender inequality in the division of unpaid work
widens.[27] Sadly, an international
comparison of five countries undertaken by Lyn Craig at the Social Policy
Research Centre found that Australian women with children are doing more unpaid
domestic work and childcare than women in the United States, France, Denmark and
Italy.[28] Much more.

As if this weren’t enough, women continue to be subject to financial
penalties because of their gender and their caring responsibilities, by virtue
of their absence from the workforce. It is projected that women who have
children will earn around half that of men who have
children.[29] There is also a stark
difference in the projected lifetime earnings between women with children and
women without.[30]

Everyone in this room would know women who have decided not to continue in
paid work after having a baby. This is because, once they take into account the
cost of child care, commuting and the loss of tax benefits, the end result is
simply not financially ‘worth it’.

Additionally, for many people, but mostly for women, caring doesn’t end
when their kids turn 18. Women continue to care across the lifecycle – for
their parents, for family members, for grandchildren or for adult children with
disability.[31] Balancing this
ongoing care can make it very difficult for women to re enter the workforce,
while older women find this difficulty compounded by discrimination on the basis
of age.

Getting women into education, then, is not enough. The attitudes which
constrain the picture girls and boys design for themselves, remains
extraordinarily resistant to change.

This is perhaps the opportunity to be seized upon by educators –
helping young men but also young women – embrace gender equality in their
picture of how the world should look. After all, the education system’s
responses to gender are inseparable from broader public debates, meaning that we
are all limited – but also empowered - by similar forces.

For example, the changes that moved through Australia’s education
system in the 1970s reflected the rise of the broader women’s movement.
While Australian women (and some men) became increasingly aware during the late
1960s and early 1970s of the way that women were continuously disadvantaged by
institutionalised power imbalances, then, educators were also becoming keenly
aware of the role that schooling played in laying the foundations of this
inequality.

As well as the UN declaring 1975 International Women’s Year, this
watershed year also saw the publication of the Australian Schools Commission
report, Girl’s, School and Society which exposed the way that
education helped to produce and cement gender
stereotypes.[32] As the report
suggested, “An observer not raised with our cultural assumptions would
be struck by the fact that one half of the population was assigned by birth to
activities which, whatever their private gratifications and social importance,
carried no economic reward, little public status and very limited access to
public power
.” [33]

Against a similar backdrop on the Federal political and legislative stage,
the 1980s and 90s then saw educators focus on the formalisation and
institutionalisation of national frameworks, 1987 bringing with it the landmark
National Policy for the Education of Girls, the first national gender policy in
education in the Western world.

From these foundations emerged the Framework for Action on Gender Equity in
Schooling. Maree Herrett, head of a progressive Senior Girls’ School in
suburban Sydney and a PhD student in her spare time, has suggested that the
Framework marked a shift from a specific focus on girls to a more inclusive one
of gender equality.[34]

Indeed, the Framework seems to build on a concern about the participation and
performance of boys and girls; recognising that schools play an active role in
the construction of gender, a construction which limits the social and
professional lives of girls and boys. Herrett also suggests that the
Framework was influenced by the emerging perception that boys were disadvantaged
in education during the late 1990s. [35]

As with all gender policy in recent years, then, gender education policy has
been affected by a backlash against feminist gains, as well as the rise of a
companion perception that men are victims of reverse sexism.

This idea – that the success of girls and women comes at the expense of
boys and men – is one that I confront every day, particularly when I talk
about the gender inequality manifest in corporate boardrooms all across
Australia.

As gender equality advocates, then, we are presented with competing
victims’ syndrome, with national political leaders having told us that we
are in a ‘crisis of masculinity’. In this way, the idea of
‘gender’ starts to be mobilised to generate and exacerbate conflict,
rather than to resolve it.

Clearly, we have much to do if women – and men – are to design a
better picture of how their lives might look. We need renewed determination to
achieve an equality that matters not only for individuals now, but for their
future participation in our civic and economic life.

While the human cost of forgoing women’s talent and potential is
probably unquantifiable, we are, however, collecting evidence about the economic
cost – evidence which has the potential to reinvigorate the debate. An
awareness of the value of equality, then, is growing – among human rights
advocates and those striving for fair and sustainable communities, yes; but also
among economists and decision makers.

A few years ago, The Economist reported that “the increase in
female employment in the rich world has been the main driving force of growth in
the past couple of decades...[contributing] more to global GDP growth than
...either new technology or the new giants, China and
India.”[36]

Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs argue that closing the gap between male and female
employment rates would have huge implications for the global economy, and that
narrowing the gap in Australia would boost our GDP by
11%[37]. They suggest, amongst
other things, encouraging young women to choose more highly rewarded work
roles.

To my mind, a broader area of potential is to renew our discussion about the
roles of girls and boys, and the extent to which narrow
stereotypes about gender continue to constrain our next major leap forward.

Children, after all, provide us with our greatest incentive, as well as our
greatest inspiration – leading, as they do, by example; imagining what is
possible, unconstrained by limitations they have yet to confront.

I finish, then, as I started – with the story of a child, poised over
an illustration. As the child – a five year old girl – sighed
ruefully, her mother inquired what was troubling her.

‘I can’t decide what to draw, because I can’t decide what I
want to be when I grow up’, said the little girl.

‘You can be whatever you want to be, darling’, said her mother.
‘What are you trying to choose between?’

‘Well’, said the girl earnestly. ‘I can’t decide
whether to be a helicopter pilot, a ballerina, the Prime Minister...or a
cockatoo’.

I fear that scientific advances, no matter how dramatic, will never quite
realise the last of this little girl’s ambitions.

But as educators, as equality advocates, and as concerned Australians, we
have an obligation – and an opportunity - to ensure that the other three
remain as real, and as possible, as the day they were imagined.



[1] World Economic Forum, The
Global Gender Gap Report 2009
(2009), p 63. At www.weforum.org/en/Communities/Women%20Leaders%20and%20Gender%20Parity/GenderGapNetwork/index.htm (viewed 5 March 2010).

[2] Ernst
and Young, Groundbreakers: Using the strength of women to rebuild the
economy
, p 13. At www.ey.com/GL/en/Issues/Driving-growth/Groundbreakers---Executive-Summary (viewed 5 June 2010)

[3] World
Economic Forum, The Global Gender Gap Report 2009 (2009), p 63.

[4] World Economic Forum, The Global Gender Gap Report 2008 (2008), p
43

[5] Organisation for Economic
Co=operation and Development (OECD), Social Policy Division, Directorate of
Employment, Labour and Social Affairs, ‘LMF1.2: Maternal employment
rates,OECD Family database. At www.oecd.org/els/social/family/database (viewed 15 July
2010)

[6] Australian Government,
Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, Women in Australia 2009: Chapter 2 www.fahcsia.gov.au/sa/women/pubs/general/womeninaustralia/2009/Pages/chapter2.aspx (viewed 5 June 2010); Gradsonline, Gender Profile: Bachelor (Under
25)/Engineering,
www.gradsonline.com.au/GraDSOnline/gender/gender.asp?YR=2007&DL=1&FS=11&SS=
(viewed 5 June 2010)

[7] ABS, Average Weekly
Earnings, Australia, February 2010
Catalogue No 6302.0 (2010).

[8] ABS, Average Weekly
Earnings, Australia, February 2010
Catalogue No 6302.0 (2010).

[9] ABS, Average Weekly
Earnings, Australia, February 2010
Catalogue No 6302.0 (2010).

[10] ABS, Average Weekly
Earnings, Australia, February 2010
Catalogue No 6302.0 (2010).; R Cassells,
Y Vidyattama, R Miranti & J McNamara, note
5

[11] R Cassells, R Miranti, B
Nepal & R Tanton, She works hard for the money: Australian women and the
gender divide
, AMP NATSEM Income and Wealth Report, Issue 22 (2009) p 34.

[12] Politics and Public
Administration Group Parliamentary Library, Composition of Australian
Parliaments by Party and Gender
, as at 3 May 2009. At www.aph.gov.au/library/intguide/pol/currentwomen.pdf (viewed 31 May 2010).

[13] Australian Public Service Commission, State of the Service Report
2008/09
, p 8. At www.apsc.gov.au/stateoftheservice/index.html (viewed 31 May 2010).

[14] Graduate Careers
Australia, Gradsonline Survey, (2010) www.gradsonline.com.au/GraDSOnline/gender/gender.asp?YR=2007&DL=1&FS=13&SS=
(viewed 31 May 2010).

[15] ABS, Legal Practises, 8667.0, 2001–02, www.ausstats.abs.gov.au/ausstats/subscriber.nsf/0/7B7EB88A620FA3FBCA256D500006E18C/$File/86670_2001-02.pdf (viewed 31 May 2010).

[16] Federal Court of
Australia, List of appointment date of current judges, www.fedcourt.gov.au/aboutct/jj_seniority.html  (2
March 2010)

[17] J Adriaanse, Gender
distribution on boards of National Sport Organisations in Australia
,
Doctoral Study Data Stage 1 (2010), University of Technology
Sydney

[18] Equal Opportunity for Women in
the Workplace Agency, 2008 EOWA Australian Census of Women in Leadership (2008), p 3.

[19] Equal
Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency, 2008 EOWA Australian Census of
Women in Leadership (2008)
, p
5.

[20] ABS, Personal Safety,
Australia, 2005 (Reissue),
Catalogue No. 4906.0
(2006)

[21] ABS, Personal
Safety, Australia, 2005 (Reissue),
Catalogue No. 4906.0
(2006)

[22] P McDonald & K
Dear, 'Discrimination and harassment affecting working women: Evidence from
Australia' (2008) 22(1/2) Women’s Studies Journal p
42

[23] Australian Human Rights
Commission, Annual Report 2008 –
2009
, p 73

[24] S Franzway, C
Zufferey and D Chung, ‘Domestic violence and women’s
employment’, Paper presented at Our Work, Our Lives Conference, September,
Adelaide (2007).

[25] Access Economics, The Cost of Domestic Violence to the Australian Economy: Part I (2004);
National Council to Reduce Violence Against Women and Their Children, The
costs of violence against women and their children
(2009),

[26] R Cassells, R
Miranti, B Nepal & R Tanton, She works hard for the money: Australian
women and the gender divide
, AMP NATSEM Income and Wealth Report, Issue 22
(2009) p 11.; L Craig, 'Is there really a "second shift", and if so, who does
it? A time-diary investigation,' Feminist Review 86 (1) 149-170
(2007).

[27] Human Rights and
Equal Opportunity Commission, Striking the Balance: Women men, work and
family
(2005) p 35.

[28] Craig, L. & Mullan, K. (forthcoming) ‘Parenthood, gender and
work-family time in USA, Australia, Italy, France and Denmark’  Journal of Marriage and Family (accepted
1/6/10).

[29] Partnered men with
children are expected to earn 2.6 million over their lifetime, compared to 1.3
million for partnered women with children. R Cassells, R Miranti, B Nepal and R
Tanton, She works hard for the money: Australian women and the gender
divide
, AMP NATSEM Income and Wealth Report, Issue 22 (2009) p 33.

[30] Partnered women with
children are expected to earn 1.3 million over the lifetime, compared to 1.9
million for women without children. See Cassells et al,
above.

[31] In 2003, of the 2.5 million
carers, 19% were primary carers and over two-thirds (71%) of primary carers were
female. For further information see ABS, A Profile of Carers in Australia,
2008
, Cat no. 4448.0 (2008) p
8.

[32] M Herrett, Government
policy on gender and education in Australia
, Paper to the Alliance of
Girls’ Schools Australasia Conference 2010, Sydney, 28-30 May
2010

[33] Quoted in M Herrett, Government policy on gender and education in Australia, Paper to the
Alliance of Girls’ Schools Australasia Conference 2010, Sydney, 28-30 May
2010

[34] M Herrett, Government policy on gender and education in Australia, Paper to the
Alliance of Girls’ Schools Australasia Conference 2010, Sydney, 28-30 May
2010

[35] M Herrett, Government policy on gender and education in Australia, Paper to the
Alliance of Girls’ Schools Australasia Conference 2010, Sydney, 28-30 May
2010

[36] “The importance
of sex: The Economic Power of Women,” The Economist, April 12,
2006

[37] Goldman Sachs JBWere
Investment Research, Australia's Hidden Resource: The Economic Case For
Increasing


Female Participation, (2009)