Page 1309 - Week 05 - Thursday, 25 June 1992
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Discrimination Act 1984 - an Act relating to discrimination on the grounds of sex, marital status or pregnancy, or matters involving sexual harassment. That was a laudable achievement. But, going further into the objectives, there is an alarming trend emerging - for example, terms such as "to give effect to" certain provisions of the convention to eliminate all forms of sexual discrimination against women; to eliminate "as far as possible" discrimination on the grounds mentioned above; to eliminate "as far as possible" sexual harassment in the workplace.
This last objective aims to promote the recognition and acceptability in the community of the principle of equality of men and women. It has been eight years since this Act was passed. How far have we come in that time? The Chief Minister quotes labour force participation as a measure of how well we are doing. In 1991 that figure was 65 per cent, but the unemployment rate was higher for females; of those in the work force, 65 per cent worked full time, 30 per cent worked part time and five per cent were unemployed. These figures are now 12 months old at least and, if the reduction in participation is a rough guide - down from almost 65 per cent in last year's report to 62.2 per cent on figures this year - there will have been a similar shift in the unemployment and part-time versus full-time figures. The old report also shows large losses in the predominantly female part-time sector. With the worsening of the economic scene, we have seen evidence that this situation has only become worse.
In wages, the differential still exists between males and females, despite the fact that the equal pay case goes back to 1969. The differences have been quantified in the past few years and given a rationale. Firstly, women tend to work fewer hours than men in jobs outside the home. There are still in the wider Australian community differences in educational attainment and differences in experience because at the present time the female work force is, on average, three years younger than the male work force. There is discrimination by employers, which, although illegal, still goes on, and discrimination on the basis of marital status, where it is recognised that both married men and married women earn more than their single counterparts. However, women have more time out of the work force in their role as child-bearers. This impacts on more than just earnings. It has serious ramifications for women's participation in national strategies, such as the consideration of the superannuation levy. It has been pointed out during this debate that the trend is still for women to leave work when their children are very young, with a staged re-entry that takes place over a number of years and at varying levels of participation, as mentioned by Mrs Carnell.
These are issues that need to be addressed to take into account what has been expressed by women and reflected in these trends. Women want support to take on these roles at their discretion, and flexibility and support for their decisions on what proportion of their lives they want to spend in their differing roles. We have legislation that recognises that women want and need time off, with some security that they will have a job when they come back from maternity leave. We have also granted men time to experience the role of the nurturing parent. This goes some way towards the type of program I am speaking of and acknowledges that sometimes there needs to be a recognition of family commitments and access by partners to this flexibility to allow women to make choices in their and their family's best interests, without having to make a decision between the work force and the home.
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