The Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre
Thursday 9 September 2004
Presentation by Ms Linda Matthews, South Australian Commissioner for
Equal Opportunity
I would like to begin by sharing some of my thoughts. When I first took
up this job I was very concerned with some of the complaints that we
got. However, they didn't seem to fit into the kinds of categories that
we've heard from Irene Kahn this morning, however we know they still
happen in domestic violence situations in Australia.
When I‘ve talked with women from overseas (and we've done some work with
women’s organizations in different countries), I've been heartened by
their eagerness to hear what we've done in the past and how we've
actually tackled discrimination and harassment and how much they've
wanted the stories, the materials. They've said things to me like, "If
we had legislation like this, it would be absolutely wonderful."
So I realise how useful that experience is for women from other
countries who have used it to lobby and have taken back some of the
experiences. Naturally, they will use it in their own cultural contexts;
it won't be exactly the same. But I've been surprised at how similar the
messages are that they want to promote and how little they have actually
changed some of the material that I have sent to them.
I want to talk about what women have achieved since the seventies in
Australia when we really first began the fight for women's equality.
Whilst I agree with what Pru has said, that the fight is not yet over,
not by a long shot, we have made some progress, and you would hope that
we had after nearly 30 years of the fight. I actually think there's less
overt discrimination now, including all forms of discrimination that
affect women in Australia: sexual harassment, pregnancy discrimination,
marital status and sex discrimination.
You don't hear as we did once, as Pru was saying, about jobs for men and
jobs for women. Having said that, I think much has gone underground. I
think discrimination is more covert now, which makes it much more
difficult to deal with through legislation - a topic for another time.
There is acceptance about choices about whether to marry, to have
children, to get divorced and remarry in ways that are clearly not
occurring in some other countries, as Irene talked about with us this
morning.
Women can be leaders, although not many of us are; we do have
contraceptive choice; there are childcare centres. There are problems
with all of these, but it is much, much better than it was. It is
unrecognisable since the time I left school in many of these areas. But
in exercising these choices, women have not found things as easy as they
hoped. I guess many of us were way more optimistic 20 and 30 years ago
than things have turned out.
We know when we hear women talk about this now, and I know it from the
complaints that I deal with, the difficulties of combining work and
family and the guilt that often accompanies that, particularly from
women. Women are still doing the brunt of child rearing and housework.
There aren't many men out there who take their share of household
chores, and there's only a few house husbands, and it is seen as a
derogatory term still in many male quarters.
Overwhelmingly, women are the victims of sexual assault and domestic
violence, and other speakers have talked about that, so I won't talk
about that, although I ran the state's domestic violence unit for a
number of years, and in many ways I'm less heartened by the progress
that we've made around that, although it is still better for many women.
Services are better than they were.
Some women have been concerned now because they've left the decision to
have children too late, and there are lots of complaints from media
commentators and others that women are whingeing way too much about all
of the things that I have just talked about. And some of them like to
blame feminists and other women for things going wrong. Young women tell
me that they don't like the feminist label because of the association
with radical feminism: you know, the man-hating bra-burning notion. One
of them told me that the equality message needs to be sold or marketed
differently - that challenge needs to be given to younger women.
I'm quoting from a new book that was reviewed in the Weekend Australian
last week by Julia Baird called Media Tarts; I haven't read all of it
yet, but it makes some interesting points. Here is a passage from a
journalist quoted in the book:
While encouraging women in the seventies and eighties to reach for the
sky, none of our purple-clad feminist mothers thought to tell us the
truth about the biological clock, our biological clock, the one that
would eventually reach exploding point inside us.
And none of our mothers thought to warn us that we would need to stop,
take time out and learn to nurture our partnerships and relationships,
or, if they did, we were running too fast to hear it. The end result:
here we are, supposedly having it all as we edge 40, excellent
education, good qualifications, great jobs, fast-moving careers, and the
truth is -
she continues -
for me at least the career is no longer a challenge, the lifestyle
trappings are joyless and the point of it seems, well, pointless. I am
childless and I'm angry, angry that I was so foolish to take the word of
my feminist mother's as gospel, angry that I was daft enough to believe
feminine female fulfilment came with a leather briefcase.
I have to tell you that seventies feminists never thought that. Then we
have people like Janet Albrechtsen and Angela Shanahan writing in The
Australian blaming feminists for things that haven't turned out
universally well for women.
MS ..........: If only we were that good.
MS MATTHEWS: Yes, that's right, if only we had that much power. Then, of
course, the men's groups. I won't start on that. When I go on radio, I
still hear the same things that I was hearing 20 and 30 years ago. In
America I recently read an article by Susan Shapiro Brash, Professor of
Gender Studies at Marymount College in New York, who wrote a book
called, " The New Wife: the evolving role of the American wife," and she
talks about a new generation of women who have given up their jobs to
look after their children and their husbands because it is all too hard.
She says that this generation are turning into their grandmothers, not
their mothers.
Young women say they don't need special help, and there's a case that we
use in training at the Equal Opportunity Commission that highlights
issues when ‘self-help’ doesn’t work. A young 25-year-old woman - it was
a Melbourne case - who was sexually harassed at work and she wanted to
deal with it herself. I haven't got time to go into this case, but we
dissected it in detail because it is a very illuminating one, but it all
ended in tears, unfortunately. As Pru said when she was talking about
this, many young women can deal with issues without recourse to
legislation, but sometimes they can't, and this illustrates why the
legislation is still needed.
There's a lot of people now who are saying men shouldn't be blamed, and
I think that is right about individual men. But I was having a
discussion with a group of women recently and we were talking about what
we call structural inequality or systemic discrimination issues, and a
number of the women, even in that discussion, said they thought it
sounded like male bashing. It was certainly not that and not intended to
be that, but I think it shows what a heightened sensitivity this area
generates.
On a more positive note around that, I came across an article by a man
called Julian Baggini, who wrote this article that appeared in The
Guardian this year. He says:
Clever women have been claiming stupid white men ruled the world for
years, but the first person for being widely lauded for saying so is
Michael Moore, another stupid white man. A woman can make a point
incessantly, but not until a man says it is it taken seriously. Like
interstate wins, men's opinions count double. Take the problem of
knowing the difference between racy banter and offensive sexism. Even
feminists can agree that $12 million might be an obscene amount to pay
for sexual harassment, but men who think their own confusion or the
disproportionate size of the settlement is a greater problem than the
harassment itself are surely deluded. It is easy to say lighten up when
you've never experienced depression yourself.
He continues:
One of the distinctive phenotypic effects of the Y chromosome is
attention seeking and self-important behaviour. We have become so used
to thinking we are the most important creatures to walk the planet that
we assume our temporary difficulties must be the gravest problems facing
society today. We are like householders fretting over a cracked window
pane that is the result of a cyclone that's wrecked the homes of those
around us. Men should realise that the ill winds of discrimination,
double standards and unrealistic ideals that threaten us now have been
disrupting the lives of others for centuries.
Current issues for younger women. They certainly have more choices than
we did. Whenever people have choices and they exercise them, some of
them are unwise. More young women taking up smoking is a worry. Body
image and eating disorders: there's no worse crime than to be called
fat.
And drugs, plastic surgery. I don't know whether any of you saw an item
on the news during the week, that one of the latest presents that
parents are giving their 18-year-old girls in America is a breast
implant. Women don't marry so young; a series of relationships is
acceptable; they are not so constrained about career or relationships.
Seventies feminists had to fight a lot harder and there was a high toll
on many relationships. I can remember trying to rigidly enforce rules
around housework, I have to say to no avail.
I think many younger women are less likely to buy into unhealthy male
culture, long hours and ruthless behaviour at the top in Government, in
politics and business. And they are less convinced by stereotypes -
again, I'm being very general about this - but I think that is good. But
we were in a dilemma in the seventies. On the one hand, we protested
loudly, and we had to, about the injustices faced by women, and we were
trying to develop a better future.
We said we could manage everything, because we had to say that at that
time: family, work, community activities. Of course we couldn't do it
all - we never thought we could - but we did make those kinds of public
statements a lot to galvanise other women. Younger women are talking
about the complexities of their lives, their difficult choices, things
they will and won't do, and the boundlessness and limits of their
aspirations. I think that is terrific.
But I know - and agree with Pru - that they will still be facing some of
our dilemmas - sexism, harassment, disproportionate burdens of care -
for which they will find their own answers. Hopefully the work/life
balance will be better for them.
Thank you.
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