Site navigation

Change font size: SmallerLargerReload

About the Australian Human Rights Commission navigation

Lifelines: Sex Discrimination over the lifecycle

Speech by Elizabeth Broderick

Sex Discrimination Commissioner and Commissioner responsible for Age Discrimination

Australian Human Rights Commission

National Museum of Australia
Canberra
Friday 2 October 2009

Thank you very much Margaret for the invitation to speak here today.

Acknowledgement

I have been the Sex Discrimination Commissioner for two years now and during this time I have met countless inspirational women and men from all walks of life. Many of these have been Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander.

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

I also pay my respects to all the women in this room who have spoken up for gender equality in our country and especially those who have played a role in developing and supporting the legislation that we are here to celebrate – the Sex Discrimination Act.

Why I am here

Today, I want to do two things. One is to talk a little about the Act. The other is to examine the benefits of taking a lifecycle approach to addressing sex discrimination for women in this country.

Let’s look back in time. I’ll use my own grandmother as an example. She was born in the early 1900s and was educated to high school level. But like so many women of her time she had to leave the workforce when she got married because of the Commonwealth Marriage Ban.

And then I think about my own life. I went to university, and when my children were born I was able to work as a partner in a large law firm three days a week. Now I am a federal Commissioner and a mum with two young children. I never let myself forget that this would not have been possible but for a strong women’s movement and a strong gender equality law.

Yes, the Act was necessarily a political compromise, but just like paid parental leave, the hardest part was getting started. So thank you to all those pioneers who struggled to get the Act over the line. Particular thanks to Susan Ryan, who was responsible for guiding its passage through the parliament.

The act continues to evolve and I am hopeful that the most recent proposed reforms will move ahead in this 25th year. So there is much to celebrate about the Act in 2009!

Despite our celebrations though, we must not forget that gender equality is still a work in progress in Australia. To illustrate this, I want to share some reflections on the way that sex discrimination continues to play out across an individual woman’s lifecycle.

Sex discrimination: a lifecycle scenario

I’d like to begin with a hypothetical scenario about a woman named Maya. I have to warn you in advance that because I am focusing on the cumulative effects of sex discrimination, it’s a rather bleak example. But as we all know, women’s lives are not merely the sum of the discrimination they experience.

Like the Sex Discrimination Act, Maya has just turned 25. She has chosen to work in the aged care sector and has completed her training and is working at a city based nursing home. She has started studying part-time for a nursing degree but defers after she is harassed by one of her supervisors. She is earning the same salary as her partner, who is starting out as a mechanic, and they both work overtime while they save for a house, and share the domestic work.

Now let’s fast-forward a few years in Maya’s life and see what happens.

A few years down the track she and her partner decide to start a family. Because her partner is now paid more, they decide that it makes sense for her to stay at home in the first few years and then return to work once her daughter is at pre-school. But when Maya returns to work, she is told that her old position no longer exists, and she is placed in a role with fewer opportunities for training and promotion.

Her daughter is born with physical disabilities. Because of her daughter’s school hours and medical appointments, Maya can’t maintain the hours her employer requires. After using up all her leave allowances, she takes on low paid casual work as a nursing assistant to get the flexibility she needs.

Now let’s fast forward to her retirement. Maya has separated from her husband, has a mortgage to manage on her own, is sporadically employed and has little to no retirement savings. She will be solely reliant on the Age Pension. She faces a future of struggling to make ends meet, dipping in and out of poverty.

If we look at Maya’s experiences, there is not a single point where you could say that she made a bad or a wrong decision in community terms. In fact, at each point she has made the decision that we would consider the right decision.

She is working in an industry that desperately needs well-trained, committed workers. She is caring for a child who will be a future worker and tax payer. She is taking responsibility for the additional care needs of a person with disability.

Nobody could dispute that Maya is playing a crucial role in her family and community. Nor that the wellbeing of the Australian economy is reliant on people just like Maya, making exactly the decisions Maya has made.

Yet, if we look at each point in her lifecycle, as I have described it, she has paid a penalty in terms of her future opportunities, her paid work options and her ultimate financial status. Each event I have described impacts on her next stage of life.

Main point

The point I wish to make today is that policy frameworks have commonly focussed on gender inequality as individual incidents of discrimination, each separate from the other. But in doing so, we have failed to recognise the cumulative impact of each of these individual events.

Today I want to look at the issue of sex discrimination through the prism of a woman’s lifecycle because, when we do this, it becomes clear that the effects of sex discrimination multiply and reverberate through a woman’s lifecycle. One instance of sex discrimination will often position a woman to be more vulnerable to another instance. For example, if a woman is subjected to sex discrimination during pregnancy, it is often the factor that can force her out of a stable work environment and into one that is both less secure and has fewer rights.

So my main point today is that, if we start looking at sex discrimination over a woman’s lifecycle, we will be able to think more productively about the kinds of legislative and policy reforms we might need in order to achieve greater gender equality.

Three points of the lifecycle

Perhaps the best way to illustrate the cumulative effect of gender equality over the lifecycle is to examine three points where, for many women, sex discrimination and inequality begin to ‘cluster’ and amplify.

It’s also important to understand that, while there are shared experiences among women, there are also notable differences in experiences of paid work and care based on other factors. These are brought about by ethnicity, disability, age, sexuality and socio-economic status, issues which are outside the scope of today’s discussion.

Education and entering the workforce

So first, I’d like to explore sex discrimination and inequality in the context of women’s education and training and their early career decisions.

Women in Australia have made significant advances in education. When compared with other countries, Australia is ranked first in the world for women’s educational attainment.[1] Women account for over half of all students enrolled in higher education and over half of all students who complete a higher education qualification.[2]

These significant advances obscure the fact that educational choices remain highly segregated on the basis of gender. Women continue to be over-represented in areas of study linked to lower earning industries, while men continue to be over-represented in higher earning industries. For example women outnumber men by 3:1 in health and education courses and men outnumber women by 5:1 in engineering courses.[3] Unsurprisingly, there is a considerable disparity between the weekly earnings of a teacher and an engineer.[4] Women are not only more likely to be engaged in low paid occupations and industries. In Australia, they also constitute a higher proportion of casual workers and are more likely to be working under minimum employment conditions.

I am not at all suggesting that women who choose to work in these areas are making bad decisions. The problem is not the decision to work in these areas – it is the undervaluation of these kinds of work and the long term financial penalty and reduced opportunities that follow. Women, such as Maya, working in female dominated industries will be much more likely to experience both lower pay and the reduced opportunities that come with a lower paid, lower status job.

The disparity between ordinary full time earnings for women and men is currently close to 17%.[5] It’s even greater when part-time and casual earnings are considered, with women earning around two thirds of the amount earned by men.[6] If current earning patterns continue, the average 25 year old male will earn $2.4 million over the next 40 years. The average 25 year old female will earn $1 million less - $1.5 million.[7]

If we look at Maya’s experience again, we see she also lost the opportunity to gain a more valuable qualification because she was sexually harassed. While sexual harassment can be experienced by men and women at any age, sadly very young women are often the main targets. How can this not impact on a young woman’s perception of herself as an employee? Yet we rarely think about the ongoing impact of sexual harassment on women’s educational attainment or career.

Lower pay also positions women differently within the family, encouraging them to take more responsibility for unpaid work.

Pregnancy and caring responsibilities

So the second point in a woman’s lifecycle that is a trigger point for sex discrimination is when she has a baby or takes on caring responsibilities.

According to the Commission’s complaints statistics and other research, pregnancy and return to work following maternity leave are times when women are commonly vulnerable to discrimination. This comes in the form of demotions, missing out on promotions, redundancies, denial of family friendly conditions and even, in some cases, bullying.[8]

Perhaps the most fundamental barrier to full participation in paid work, is the struggle women have to balance paid work and caring responsibilities.

In Australia, the workforce participation of mothers continues to be low by international standards. [9] It is projected that women who have children will earn around half that of men who have children.[10] There is also a stark difference in the projected lifetime earnings between women with children and women without.[11] These gaps in lifetime earnings demonstrate the financial penalty women are subject to because of their gender and their caring responsibilities.

Women also have reduced opportunities in public life because they continue to shoulder the large majority of unpaid work in households. This includes domestic work, such as cleaning, as well as caring.[12] The birth of children is a common point in the lifecycle where gender inequality in the division of unpaid work widens.[13]

Women like Maya often decide not to continue in paid work after having a baby. This is because, if you take the cost of child care, commuting and the loss of tax benefits into account, it is simply not financially ‘worth it’.

Women at retirement age

The consequences of these experiences become painfully clear when women reach retirement age, a third point in the lifecycle when gender inequality deepens.

I recently released an issues paper setting out the consequences of gender inequality across the lifecycle for the retirement incomes of women. I called it “accumulating poverty” because, instead of accumulating wealth under the current retirement system, many women are more likely to be accumulating poverty.

Right from their point of entry into the labour force, lower earnings begin to impact on their retirement savings of women. Without young women necessarily noticing, the gender pay gap means that the superannuation levels of women will lag behind those of men throughout their working life.

With the increase in unpaid work women experience after having children, it is no surprise to find that the largest widening of the gender gap in superannuation balances occurs in the 23 - 44 age bracket. It’s also the time when many women are working some of their longest hours caring for young children.[14] Therefore, it is at this point in the lifecycle, when women are working the hardest, that they are falling behind most sharply on their retirement savings. [15]

In 2005 it was estimated that informal carers provided approximately 1.2 billion hours of care in Australia at an estimated replacement value of $30.5 billion.[16]

This work is not recognised or rewarded as work in the retirement income system. So the community benefits immensely but those who do this important work are rewarded with a retirement in poverty. If our birthright is equality, why is poverty the end point for so many women?

Women like Maya who divorce are often in an even more precarious situation. The number of divorced or separated women entering retirement is expected to rise in the next two decades.[17] Compared to men, women are more likely to experience financial insecurity following divorce.[18] They commonly experience a much greater drop in income than men. In 2003, men who separated experienced an average drop in their household disposable income by $4,100 per year. Women who separated experienced a drop of $21,400.[19]

Other forms of inequality

Before I conclude, I’d like to add that, for some women, these experiences of inequality are compounded by experiences of domestic and family violence. One in three Australian women will experience violence from a current or former partner in their lifetime. [20] Studies have shown that domestic and family violence has a lifelong impact on financial security and participation in the paid workforce.[21] Violent partners may control a woman’s participation in paid work. Or a woman may leave paid work because of threats. Or a woman’s absences from the workplace due to violence may place her employment at risk. Domestic violence is another experience that feeds into and amplifies sex discrimination across the lifecycle.

The Sex Discrimination Act across the lifecycle

Let me now bring the Sex Discrimination Act, or SDA, into the picture. Over the last 25 years, many of the barriers to women’s involvement in public life have been removed because of the SDA. But as some barriers are removed, other more insidious barriers remain. The SDA is best viewed as a work in progress and we need to continually assess the legislation against women’s changing social conditions.

Just as I am advocating an approach to sex discrimination that places it in the context of a woman’s lifecycle, so the Sex Discrimination Act should be thought of in its broader context. Its effectiveness depends on the social and political structures in which it is embedded. So we need to think carefully about the context in which the Act operates, and ensure that it is adequately supported by other gender equality mechanisms.

On its 25th anniversary, the SDA is part of a system of gender equality that is undergoing enormous potential changes.

Last year, a Senate review of the SDA comprehensively examined the Act and identified many of the key sections which could be strengthened and improved.

We also have the recent creation of Fairwork Australia, a new institution in the regulation of industrial relations that has immense potential to improve women’s workplace rights.

In addition, the Australian government is currently reviewing the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Act, a “sister” piece of legislation to the SDA, which plays a crucial role in monitoring gender equality in the workplace. The government is also due to report very soon on its Inquiry into Pay Equity and its national human rights consultation -- a major consideration of the human rights framework, of which the SDA is part.

There is not enough time to talk here about the Commission’s views on these significant reform measures and the recommendations we have made, but I am very happy to discuss them further if we have time in open forum.

Summary

So, in conclusion, I have three points to make.

First, if we recall my discussion of caring responsibilities in the lives of women, a lifecycle approach shows us where sex discrimination is “clustered” and helps us to direct our reform agenda to those areas.

Second, if we recall how women’s low retirement incomes are the product of the undervaluation of women’s paid and unpaid work over their lives, a lifecycle approach helps to reveal the cumulative consequences of individual acts, rather than viewing them in isolation.

Finally, a lifecycle approach points to the connections between sex discrimination and gender inequality over time and illustrates the need for law reform that is directed at substantive and systemic gender equality.

Conclusion

The rather bleak story of Maya’s life which began my paper should not be one that discourages us from taking action – quite the opposite. As the SDA turns 25, there are all sorts of social and legislative changes that could give Maya’s story a much more positive ending. We are now at a point where, from several different angles at once - sex discrimination, human rights, equal opportunity and industrial relations - we are considering how best to construct and implement a system that promotes gender equality.

When the Sex Discrimination Act was debated in 1984 it was highly controversial. It was met with resistance across the political spectrum. Many individuals and politicians argued that it would dissolve the fabric of our society as we know it – it would destroy families and push women into work against their will.

25 years later, the sky has not fallen in. Women are now doing things their grandmothers only dreamed of. And as a country, we are all the better for it.

People on my Listening Tour told me loud and clear – gender equality matters. It matters to individuals, families, business, governments, the economy and our community as a whole.

Australia can again be a world leader in achieving gender equality, as we once were.


[1] Ricardo Hausmann, Laura Tyson and Saadia Zahidi, The Global Gender Gap Report 2008 (2008) p 43. At http://www.weforum.org/pdf/gendergap/report2008.pdf (viewed 31 August 2009).
[2] See Chapter 2, Australian Government, Women in Australia 2009 (2009) At http://www.fahcsia.gov.au/sa/women/pubs/general/womeninaustralia/2009/Documents/chap2.pdf (viewed 13 August 2009).
[3] Ibid.
[4] Australian Bureau of Statistics, Average Weekly Earnings, May 2009, Cat No 6302.0 (2009). At http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/6302.0 (viewed 31 August 2009).
[5] Australian Bureau of Statistics, Average Weekly Earnings, May 2009, Cat No 6302.0 (2009). At http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/6302.0 (viewed 31 August 2009).
[6] Ibid.
[7] Rebecca Cassells, Riyana Miranti, Binod Nepal and Robert Tanton, She works hard for the money: Australian women and the gender divide, AMP.NATSEM Income and Wealth Report issue 22 (2009) p 34. At http://phx.corporate-ir.net/External.File?item=UGFyZW50SUQ9MjA5fENoaWxkSUQ9LTF8VHlwZT0z&t=1 (viewed 2 July 2009).

[8] Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Pregnant and Productive: It's a right not a privilege to work while pregnant (1999). Available at http://www.humanrights.gov.au/sex_discrimination/publication/pregnancy/report.html (viewed 16 August 2009).
[9] Australian Bureau of Statistics, Australian Social Trends, 2007 Cat No 4102.0 (2007).
[10] Partnered men with children are expected to earn 2.6 million over their lifetime, compared to 1.3 million for partnered women with children. Rebecca Cassells, Riyana Miranti, Binod Nepal and Robert Tanton, She works hard for the money: Australian women and the gender divide, AMP.NATSEM Income and Wealth Report issue 22 (2009) p 33. At http://phx.corporate-ir.net/External.File?item=UGFyZW50SUQ9MjA5fENoaWxkSUQ9LTF8VHlwZT0z&t=1 (viewed 2 July 2009).
[11] 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.
[12] Rebecca Cassells, Riyana Miranti, Binod Nepal and Robert Tanton, She works hard for the money: Australian women and the gender divide, AMP.NATSEM Income and Wealth Report issue 22 (2009) p 11. At http://phx.corporate-ir.net/External.File?item=UGFyZW50SUQ9MjA5fENoaWxkSUQ9LTF8VHlwZT0z&t=1 (viewed 2 July 2009); Lyn Craig, 'Is there really a "second shift", and if so, who does it? A time-diary investigation' Feminist Review 86 (1) 149-170 (2007).
[13] Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Striking the Balance: Women men, work and family (2005) p 35. At http://www.humanrights.gov.au/sex_discrimination/publication/strikingbalance/index.html (viewed 31 August 2009).
[14] Ross Clare, Retirement Savings Update (2008) p 6. Available at http://www.superannuation.asn.au/Reports/default.aspx (viewed 11 February 2009).
[15] Lyn Craig, 'Is there really a "second shift", and if so, who does it? A time-diary investigation' Feminist Review 86 (1) 149-170 (2007).
[16] Access Economics, The Economic Value of Informal Care (2005) p i. At http://www.accesseconomics.com.au/publicationsreports/getreport.php?report=6&id=6 (viewed 2 September 2009).
[17] Matthew Gray David de Vaus, Lixia Qu and David Stanton, The consequences of divorce for financial living standard in later life (2007) p 13. Available at http://www.aifs.gov.au/institute/pubs/rp38/rp38.html (viewed 9 February 2009).
[18] Matthew Gray David de Vaus, Lixia Qu and David Stanton, The consequences of divorce for financial living standard in later life (2007) p 13. Available at http://www.aifs.gov.au/institute/pubs/rp38/rp38.html (viewed 9 February 2009).
[19] AMP and NATSEM, Financial impact of divorce in Australia: Love can hurt, divorce will cost, Income and Wealth Report Issue 10. 2005, p 9-10. At http://www.melbourneinstitute.com/hilda/Biblio/ophd/AMP.NATSEM_love_can_hurt.pdf (viewed 6 February 2009).
[20] Jenny Mouzos and Toni Makkai, Women’s Experiences of Male Violence: Findings from the Australian Component of the International Violence Against Women Survey (IVAWS) (2004) p 3. Available at http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/rpp/56/RPP56.pdf (viewed 29 May 2009).
[21] Suzanne Franzway, Carole Zufferey and Donna Chung, ‘Domestic violence and women’s employment’, Paper presented at Our Work, Our Lives Conference, September, Adelaide (2007).