Click here to return to the Articles and Opinion Pieces Index
Women’s business is everybody’s business.
By Elizabeth Broderick
Opinion piece
Publication: Sydney Morning Herald, (Monday 8 October 2007)
As the new federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner, one of the questions I am repeatedly asked is what my agenda will be. “I’m here to listen” has been my immediate response, because while I have an idea of what the important issues are for Australian women – economic security, balancing work and family, freedom from discrimination, harassment and violence – I’m not interested in imposing a pre-set agenda.
I’m interested in building an integrated approach to gender equality from the ground up. This means listening to the concerns raised by the rich diversity of Australian women and men around the country and taking my cues from that.
Four weeks into the job and I’m already getting a general sense of what those concerns are. It is clear both from my own experience in campaigning for family-friendly workplaces in the private sector and from the previous work of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission that there is much more to be done in the area of reconciling work with family life. This became even clearer to me when I had my own children. Women currently bear greater responsibility for family life than men, individually cobbling together precarious work/care support systems and hoping they hold up during times of peak demand. Who hasn’t experienced mortal panic when the best laid plans are thrown into disarray because of a sick child or a missing school note?
Women across all sectors of the workforce talk about time pressures and inflexible work practices. However, the picture for women in low paid industries is even worse. Women in these industries suffer from both time and financial poverty in the absence of a national system of paid maternity leave and the ever elusive goal of equal pay for equal work.
And what is the return for a lifetime spent by women undertaking the essential unpaid work of care combined with lower wages? According to the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia - a retirement payment that currently represents a startling one third of men’s.
Far from only being the concern of women with young children, these issues will become more pressing as the population ages and more Australians find themselves juggling caring for ageing parents and children with working lives that spread well into their 60s and 70s. While we have been encouraged in recent years to lead an extended working life, Australia will need to radically improve our approach to older workers, who often look for similar workplace flexibilities as those with caring responsibilities (for example, part-time work).
Taking into account the expressed concerns of women is only one part of what should be an inclusive approach to the advocacy, educational and policy development aspects of my role. A truly inclusive, participatory approach means making sure that ‘women’s business’ becomes everybody’s business. Real changes in women’s lives will not be achieved in isolation from institutional and attitudinal change. This means we must find solutions that involve employers as well as the support that can be provided by government. It also means engaging with men. After all, men also want to spend time with their families, and children crave time with both of their parents. Time is the currency of relationships, and regardless of care responsibilities, the simple fact is that everyone needs time to re-energise. As pointed out recently by the Family Relationship Forum, no one wins when the health of the economy is elevated over the health of our communities.
Of course the smart employers already recognise this. Large businesses in particular are leading the way by instituting policies that harness technology in supporting work-life balance over the whole of a person’s life. While not everyone wants to be continually linked to their workplace by the increasingly ubiquitous Blackberry (“crackberries” to those unable or unwilling to find the off switch), technology offers many ways of supporting a more holistic work experience which doesn’t depend solely on family-hostile face time at the office. Making technology work for us rather than against us can be a challenge in some industries but it is one way that our institutions can quickly catch up to the realities of modern working life. As Australia moves further towards a knowledge-based economy the disease of presenteeism looks more like a sign of a dysfunctional, unsustainable workplace than a sign of hard work and dedication to the job. A truly sustainable workplace – that is, a productive workplace – is one where employees can sustain a life outside of work, and where the caring work that takes place in that realm is valued.
I am confident as I prepare to embark on my listening tour around the country, that I will hear many more solutions, some born of necessity (which is not called the “mother” of invention for nothing) and some born of imagining a fairer and more sustainable society. Whatever shape my resulting agenda takes, making that vision a reality is chief among my priorities for the future.
Elizabeth Broderick was appointed as the federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner and Commissioner responsible for Age Discrimination for a five year term commencing on 10 September this year. Her ‘listening tour’ begins in November. She is married with two children – both of whom will be accompanying her on parts of the listening tour at her own cost.
