Agenda 2014

NTEU WOMEN’S MAGAZINE

Www.NTEU.org.au/women

crossing the line!

the budget vs women women of the university why we cross the line in 2014 scholarship winners AN UNSETTLED WOMAN

ISSN 1839-6186

Volume 22 September 2014

Women’s Action Committee (WAC) The purpose of the NTEU Women’s Action Committee is to develop the Union’s work for and about women’s professional and employment rights.

WAC meets twice a year: • Acting as a representative of women members at the national level.

• Identifying, developing and responding to matters affecting women.

• Advising on recruitment strategies and allocation of resources.

• Advising on strategies to actively involve women at all levels of the Union.

WAC Delegates 2013-2014 Aca Academic staff representative G/P General/Professional staff representative

National President

• Making recommendations to the National Executive, National Council, Division Executives and councils on industrial, social and political issues affecting women.

• Monitoring and reviewing the effectiveness of NTEU structures and policies in advancing women’s interests.

The focus of the WAC over the past year has been upon: 1. Monitoring gender equity legislation and progress in the sector and the Union.

2. Participating in trade union women’s activities.

Jeannie Rea, jrea@nteu.org.au

3. Contributing feminist critique to Indigenous, industrial and higher education policy and research analysis, materials and campaigns, and

National vice-President (general staff)

4. Overseeing Bluestocking Week and the production of Agenda

Lynda Davies, l.davies@griffith.edu.au

Indigenous Representative

WAC is chaired by the National President and is composed of one academic and one general/professional staff representative from each Division plus one nominee of the Indigenous Policy Committee.

Sharon Dennis, sharon.dennis@utas.edu.au

act Aca Sara Beavis, sara.beavis@anu.edu.au G/P Katie Wilson, katie.wilson@canberra.edu.au

NEW SOUTH WALES Aca Cathy Rytmeister, cathy.rytmeister@mq.edu.au G/P vacant

www.nteu.org.au/women

NORTHERN TERRITORY Aca Penny Wurm, penny.wurm@cdu.edu.au G/P Janet Sincock, janet.sincock@cdu.edu.au

SOUTH AUSTRALIA Aca Jennifer Fane, jennifer.fane@flinders.edu.au G/P Shelley Pezy, shelley.pezy@adelaide.edu.au

QUEENSLAND Aca Donna Weeks, dweeks@usc.edu.au G/P Carolyn Cope, c.cope@qut.edu.au

TASMANIA Aca vacant G/P Nell Rundle, nell.rundle@utas.edu.au

VICTORIA Aca Virginia Mansel Lees, v.mansellees@latrobe.edu.au G/P vacant

WESTERN AUSTRALIA Aca Katie Attwell, k.attwell@murdoch.edu.au G/P Kate Makowiecka, k.makowiecka@murdoch.edu.au

DOWNLOAD OR READ THIS MAGAZINE ONLINE @ www.nteu.org.au/agenda Agenda (formerly Frontline) Editor: Jeannie Rea

ISSN 1839-6186 (print), ISSN 1839-6194 (online)

Production: Paul Clifton

Original design: Maryann Long

All text and images © NTEU 2014 unless otherwise noted.

Published annually by the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU).

PO Box 1323, South Melbourne VIC 3205 Australia Phone: 03 9254 1910

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Email: national@nteu.org.au

Fax: 03 9254 1915

In accordance with NTEU policy to reduce our impact on the natural environment, Agenda has been printed using vegetable based inks with alcohol free printing initiatives on FSC certified paper by Printgraphics under ISO 14001 Environmental Certification.

Environment ISO 14001

NTEU WOMEN’S MAGAZINE

Cover: SA WAC rep Jennifer Fane handstands across the line watched by Jeannie Rea and Sylvia Klomaris (NT). Photo by Terri MacDonald

WWW.NTEU.ORG.AU/WOMEN

Volume 22, September 2014 editorial

WHY I AM ON WAC

ARE WE GOING BACKWARDS?

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Jennifer Fane and Kate Makowiecka share why they joined the Women’s Action Committee.

general staff

NTEU National President Jeannie Rea.

NEWS

federal budget

GOVERNMENT ATTEMPTS TO WATER DOWN WGEA

‘EMPLOYERS OF CHOICE’ FAILING GENERAL STAFF

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SHOULD LABOUR LAW COVER DOMESTIC LABOUR AS WELL?

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CAMPAIGN FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE LEAVE 4

BUDGET CONFIRMS DISREGARD FOR WOMEN

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WILL WE EVER CLOSE THE GENDER PAY GAP?

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Should all the measures in the Federal Budget be passed, women will be the worst impacted – be it in higher education, the workplace, as carers or as seniors, from any walk of life.

NTEU’S AGREEMENTS – LOOKING THROUGH A GENDER LENS

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NFAW ANALYSIS REVEALS WOMEN AS BIGGEST BUDGET LOSERS

scholarships

19 CAROLYN ALLPORT SCHOLARSHIP

HALF OF ALL PREGNANT EMPLOYEES EXPERIENCE WORKPLACE DISCRIMINATION

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ACTU WOMEN’S CONFERENCE

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WIKIBOMB RAISES ONLINE PROFILES OF WOMEN IN SCIENCE 7

BLUESTOCKING WEEK – CROSSING THE LINE www.nteu.org.au/bluestockingweek

JOAN HARDY SCHOLARSHIP

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‘Crossing the Line’ just had to be the theme for this year’s Bluestocking Week, as this is no time for quietly holding on.

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indigenous THE PERILS OF BEING AN UNSETTLED WOMAN

MY CAREER

LESSONS IN GENDER AND COLOUR 10

BARBARA POCOCK – WORK+LIFE

SA DINNER OUT FROM ‘UNDER THE THUMB’

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Professor Barbara Pocock AM spoke at UNSW on ‘Women working and living higher education: what I wish I’d known when I set out’.

DON’T GENDER MY AGENDA

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WHY WE CROSS THE LINE IN 2014 12

ANDREA BROWN – MAKING A DIFFERENCE 24

We need to actively defend women in higher education as Government policies will see women lose numbers and opportunities.

A passion for social justice is what drew Andrea Brown to her role as EEO Officer at VU and, for almost 20 years, she did a job that she loved.

WOMEN OF THE UNIVERSITY ‘TAPESTRY’ 14

MARGARET LEE – A SWAN SONG

A focus for this year’s Bluestocking Week was the ‘Women of the University’ project where women told their university stories in all their diversity.

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The 2014 Joan Hardy Scholarship winner is Katrina Recoche.

There has been little shift for some time in the gender disparity in higher education careers and studies. In some areas gender equity has deteriorated.

bluestocking week

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The successful recipient of the inaugural Carolyn Allport postgraduate scholarship in feminist studies is Julija Knezevic.

equity LITTLE SHIFT IN GENDER DISPARITY IN HIGHER ED

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There are disturbing findings on the access to professional development and career advancement for women general staff.

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In October, Margaret Lee retires from the NTEU, and the workforce, after 8 years as Queensland Division Secretary.

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If there was one political gaffe that grabbed my attention recently, it was the unfortunate announcement by Tony Abbott that Australia was ‘unsettled’ prior to 1788.

feminism MEN’S RIGHTS ACTIVISTS ON CAMPUS A CAUSE FOR CONCERN

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#IDONTNEEDFEMINISM VS #IDONEEDFEMINISM 32

editorial

Are we going backwards?

jeannie rea jrea@nteu.org.au

In the lead up to Bluestocking Week 2014 we had confirmation that our theme ‘Crossing the Line’ was spot on. In an interview defending the Abbott Coalition Government’s policy of cutting government funding of universities and passing the burden onto students with high fees and interest rates on HELP loans, the Minister for Education Christopher Pyne explained that women can stick with studying nursing and teaching where the fees won’t be so high.

We had said that the line had been crossed already, not by us but by the Coalition, and their advocates and supporters, who are seeking to wind back the clock as they actively attack pro-women and feminist policies and perspectives. We cannot stand on the sideline, we said, but have to cross the line ourselves.

In our media release announcing Bluestocking Week, organised by the NTEU with the National Union of Students (NUS) and the Council of Postgraduate Associations (CAPA), I had responded to Pyne’s comment by asking ‘Are we going backwards?’

A couple of days later it was confirmed that we were, as the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported that the gender pay gap (GPG), which we had bemoaned for hovering around 17.5% for a decade, had blown out to 18.2%. The GPG is still less in universities, but upon graduation women across most professions start out earning a median salary $3,400 less than men.

This widens over a lifetime, especially after having children (see report, p. 20).

Federal Budget attacks on women This was one of the many realities that confirm that the Abbott Government’s higher education changes, as outlined in the Federal Budget, will adversely impact upon more women (see report, p. 17).

Over the past two decades, the number of women in university has increased to more than half of students and staff, but the Budget changes (if they are passed) will mean these numbers will start, and continue, to decline.

The 20 per cent funding cut puts courses, particularly those at smaller and regional campuses, in jeopardy, which will dispro-

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VOLUME 22 SEPTEMBER 2014

portionately impact upon women staff and students concentrated in these areas. More university jobs will be lost or casualised.

It is hard not to conclude that the Government would prefer fewer women at university and, amongst the women at university, fewer Indigenous, working class and rural students. This is a very serious and ideologically driven attack on women’s rights to gender equality and equity.

The Government also tries to paint university students as an elite sponging on taxpayers. This is simply not true as university places have increased and the labour market demand for graduates has rapidly expanded. Most people now expect that their children can go to university, as long as they get the marks.

This Government is also cutting out relocation and student support scholarships, which again stops students from the country and financially poorer backgrounds.

Celebrating women in higher ed It has become more important than ever to show who the women are who study and work in universities, in all our diversity. We need to celebrate our diversity and also drive home the point that universities are places of mass education and we expect them to be inclusive of all. In Bluestocking Week we focused upon the university women of the past and present by calling upon women to post their stories on our website and Facebook. We also collected the stories of the earlier graduates – the Bluestocking generations (see p. 14).

Interestingly, despite some assumptions that the early women university graduates were mostly the sisters of ruling class men,

they were actually a more diverse lot. They included women from relatively poor backgrounds relying upon the financial support of friends and community. There is also a consistent story of these women graduates going on to work in the public sphere and try and improve the lot of women, children and the poor. These included women in medicine, teaching, public policy and science.

NUS was particularly concerned that we focus more upon intersectionality of gender with other identities. Flinders University graduate Khadija Gbla, who came to Australia as a refugee from Sierra Leone spoke about how her black skin and African heritage was more of an issue at university, while her gender was often the issue within her community (see p. 10). This reminded me again of the findings of NTEU’s survey of Indigenous members which reported the shocking statistic that the majority of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff experienced racist encounters every day at work.

Even the constant restructures in our workplaces discriminate more against women; often older, less formally educated women in lower level general staff positions, as well on those who are precariously employed on short term contracts and casually as academics. There is unfortunately always a gender dimension and it is our responsibility to see these change, and indeed the implementation of our collective agreements, through the ‘gender lens’. The Women’s Action Committee representatives in each Division are very keen to pursue these issues and establish women’s networks in each state and territory. Contact your local Branch or Division for more details.

Jeannie Rea is NTEU National President and editor of Agenda.

NEWS

Government attempts to water down WGEA The Federal Government has made it clear that it believes the Workplace Gender Equality Act (WGEA) reporting to be needless ‘red tape’ and has set both the Act and the Agency in its sights.

Despite being involved in the process to establish the Act and reporting provisions, business lobbyists are now pressuring the Government to water down, or even overturn, the WGEA.

The employer does not need to provide evidence or proof that it has met the standard (e.g. the actual policy), just state that it meets the requirement.

The Government has responded by delaying the introduction of the additional gender reporting provisions from 1 April to 1 October 2015, with the Minister for Employment, Senator Eric Abetz, announcing there will be a new period of consultation on the additional reporting matters (already set out in the Act).

Other proposed amendments to WGEA reporting regulations include:

Introduced by Labor in 2012 following the review of the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace legislation, the WGEA contained reporting requirements for businesses with more than 100 employees, required that a new minimum standard be prescribed by the Minister in 2014, and that additional reporting commence from 1 April 2014.

• Delaying the introduction of industry minimum standards to 2015/16.

• Reducing the reporting requirements.

• Giving employers two years to improve before they are deemed non-compliant.

Abetz also announced that the new minimum standard will only apply to business with more than 500 employees. While it was originally rumoured he wanted the standards to apply to businesses with 1000 or more employees, it is thought that pressure from women’s groups saw this reduced. That said, the new standard is quite minimal, requiring employers to put in place only one of the following strategies in order to comply:

Clearly, the Abbott Government is intent on watering down the reporting of gender inequity in the workplace, and in doing so ignores the continued gender pay equity gap, which the latest ABS data shows has widened to 18.2 per cent, meaning that a man is paid $283.20 more per week than a woman doing comparable work.

It is disturbing that this is the biggest gap in twenty years, but – worse still – it is likely to widen further should the Government succeed in reducingthe WGEA requirements.

Terri MacDonald, National Policy & Research Officer

• Support and improve gender equality in the workplace.

• Advance equal remuneration between male and female employees.

• Implement flexible work arrangements for employees with caring responsibilities.

• Prevent sex-based harassment and discrimination.

Should Labour Law cover domestic labour as well?

prof. judy fudge

On 22 July 2014, Professor Judy Fudge of Kent Law School UK spoke at the University of Melbourne on ‘Feminist Reflections on the Scope of Labour Law: Domestic Work, Social Reproduction, and Jurisdiction’. She focussed on why we narrow the scope of labour law to cover only work performed in the private sphere (i.e. the employer-employee relationship) and not work performed in the ‘private’ sphere (domestic or reproductive labour).

Professor Fudge proposed that while feminists have argued for the extension of labour law to reproductive labour since the 1970s (with campaigns for wages for domestic labour), legal construction and convention has continued to both enact and support a private sphere free from such regulation. Fudge’s argument is that norms around the sexual division of domestic labour are not ‘natural’ – instead they have been actively constructed and reified through various laws such as the post-WWII disentitlement of women to employment upon marriage.

Professor Fudge’s assessment of academic work in this area is that there is great resistance to the characterisation of women’s unpaid work as labour covered by labour law – or, it shouldn’t extend to ‘what Mum did.’

In terms of practical measures, Fudge proposed educational programs, calling men out on their inability or reluctance to perform ‘women’s work’ and generally getting men to do more domestic labour, possibly through legislative means.

However, the breaking down of cultural norms on gender is no mean feat. As Fudge pointed out, these norms are like air. We don’t notice them, we are reliant on them, and we will only take notice when they are taken away.

Sarah Roberts, National Industrial Coordinator

VOLUME 22 SEPTEMBER 2014

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NEWS

unions campaign for implementation of Domestic violence leave Aside from those already won at UNSW, this is the first round of bargaining where the NTEU has achieved significant improvements in domestic violence provisions, including specified paid leave.

Will we ever close the gender pay gap?

This year’s gender pay gap figures released by the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) show a further growth in the gap between average male and female earnings.

The gender pay gap is now 18.2%, up 1.1% since March 2014 – meaning that across the economy, women earned an average of 18.2% less than men. In March this year, the average weekly ordinary time earnings of women working full-time were $1270 per week, compared to men who earned an average weekly wage of $1532.80 (Workplace Gender Equality Agency, Gender Pay Gap Statistics, March 2014).

Upwards of 1.6 million Australian workers are now covered by domestic violence provisions. Australia is leading the world on implementing domestic violence provisions at the workplace, with interest now spreading to Canada, the UK and Turkey. Thanks to advocacy led by Australian unions, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) now has a labour standard around domestic violence.

Of course, this is due to a number of factors such as the feminisation of low-paid industries, women’s breaks in service due to parenting and caring responsibilities and of course systemic discrimination against women or the ‘glass ceiling.’

Over the last 20 years, the gender pay gap was lowest in 2004, at 14.9%. While WGEA has found a number of factors contribute to changes in the gender pay gap, no casual links have been found to adequately explain the 2004 dip in the gender pay gap, or its subsequent steep rise.

The recent ACTU Women’s Conference provided the opportunity to take stock of the revolutionary take-up of domestic violence as a workplace issue over just four years, hearing from Ludo McFerran of the Domestic and Family Violence Clearing House (DFVCH), and Belinda Tkalcevic, ACTU Women’s Officer, on the change in attitudes. But it also revealed some pitfalls.

Interestingly, the gender pay gap is higher in the private sector (20.2%) than the public (13.1%), and increases with age. Those on collective agreements (16.9%) fared better than those on individual contracts Kath Larkin of the Rail, Tram and Bus Union (RTBU) chaired the session, with her (20.6%). The education and training sector union having set high standards in their industry. Speakers stressed that the vast majorimportantly rated comparatively well, ity of people who have experienced domestic violence are in employment and this has with women in our sector paid only legitimised acceptance of this matter as a workplace issue.

11.5% less than men.

However, Ludo McFerran stressed that there is still some resistance from individual employers, and unions can encounter this when seeking to have members benefit from the clauses. She emphasised that the key three benefits – improved work attendance, improved work performance and improved safety – must be driven home to employers.

Further report and graphs on p.20

Using the 7-star characteristics of a good clause developed by the DFVCH (see report, p.5), Ludo worked through the ways to achieve these benefits. Paid leave still provides the most immediate assistance, with no loss of income and legitimate time for a person who has experienced domestic violence to put some fundamental protections in place, such as moving house or gaining a court order. Evidence from some of the RTBU and Australian Services Union (ASU) clauses which have been around for a couple of years suggests that workers are taking short amounts of paid leave in order to get their affairs in order and, in many instances, they feel safer at work than in other environments.

One of the other sources of scepticism around this issue was that, suddenly, union delegates or HR would need to be ‘experts’ on domestic violence. The workshop stressed that the role of delegates and HR should be what it has always been – to provide support and seek out expert advice if required. Delegates and HR should provide referral to appropriate services and expertise and be vigilant around the quality and qualifications of workplace trainers or other services. The Domestic and Family Violence Clearing House is still the best starting point for information and referral.

Members are urged to contact their NTEU Branch regarding any issues accessing domestic violence leave or advice.

Susan Kenna, National Industrial Officer Domestic and Family Violence Clearing House: www.adfvc.unsw.edu.au

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VOLUME 22 SEPTEMBER 2014

NEWS

NTEU’s Agreements – looking through a gender lens In the current round of bargaining in universities, NTEU has achieved economy-leading salary outcomes and a range of important improvements in conditions of employment. Those include improved rights and leave for staff experiencing domestic violence, as well as changes which will reduce barriers to women’s career progression and help to close the gender pay gap.

Domestic Violence Provisions In this round of bargaining, all NTEU Branches claimed for specific Agreement provisions addressing domestic violence, including joint university-union development of policies, provision that no staff member be disadvantaged in their employment due to dealing with domestic violence, and special leave for staff seeking safe housing, attending court hearings etc. While there was no mandatory settlement point associated with the claim, the Union’s National Executive recommended that Branches aim for four stars out of a possible 7 (including paid leave) using the 7-star rating system developed by the Domestic and Family Violence Clearing House (DFVCH) at UNSW.

NTEU is pressing at every institution. In bargaining outcomes so far, we have achieved enforceable classifications at every single institution. Each Agreement includes a clear entitlement that general staff be classified at whichever classification corresponds to the work performed, ensuring that staff who perform work at a higher level will be classified at the higher level.

We have also achieved other improvements, including regular access to independent review of classifications, and timely assessment and decision-making on classifications independent of budgetary considerations. Taken as a whole, these measures should ensure the reclassification of many staff, particularly women, who may not otherwise have applied for reclassification.

1. Dedicated additional paid leave for employees experiencing family or domestic violence.

Staff Development and General Staff Secondment opportunities

2. Confidentiality of employee details must be assured and respected.

In bargaining, all Branches made a suite of claims for general staff that focus on staff development opportunities, including:

3. Workplace safety planning strategies to ensure protection of employees should be developed and clearly understood by the parties concerned.

• The establishment of a Staff Development Fund equal to 1% of general staff salaries, earmarked for the provision of staff development and training opportunities, tuition costs, and backfill for study leave. Importantly, this claim was about paying for development opportunities that will improve general staff careers – not on-the-job training that the university should be providing anyway.

Those 7 principles are:

4. The agreement should provide for referral of employees to appropriate domestic violence support services.

5. Provision of appropriate training and paid time off work for agreed roles for nominated contact persons (including union delegates of health and safety representatives if necessary).

6. Employees entitled to family and domestic violence leave should also be able to access flexible work arrangements where appropriate.

7. Employees must be protected against adverse action or discrimination on the basis of their disclosure of, experience of, or perceived experience of, family and domestic violence.

Assessed against the 7-star rating system, it is pleasing to see that almost all our Agreements include some paid leave for purposes relating to the experience of domestic violence. The exact form of this leave varies: some institutions grant paid special leave, whilst others allow access to personal, carers or annual leave.

Notably, the University of Sydney allows specific leave for these purposes of up to 20 days. In relation to the other 6 ‘stars’, Branches have achieved a range of positive outcomes, notably at CQU, Sydney, Murdoch, La Trobe, UniSA and UWS (3 stars); University of Canberra and FUA (4 stars); and ANU, Melbourne and RMIT (5 stars).

Improvement in general staff classifications The Work & Careers in Australian Universities: Report on Employee Survey 2012 (Strachan et al.) found that while women comprised 69% of university general staff, they held only 45% of senior positions surveyed. One of the reasons is that women are consistently underclassified – whether due to an entrenched culture of patriarchy, women clustering in feminised (devalued) roles, or internalised reluctance to apply for reclassification.

A key starting point for improving women’s position in universities is a fair, transparent and enforceable classification system, which

• The establishment of a Staff Mobility Program to give general staff the opportunity to have short-term internal developmental secondments and job exchanges. This claim was aimed at broadening general staff skill sets and enhancing careers.

These claims are important for women general staff in particular because we know lack of career progression is one of the key reasons for the ever widening gender pay gap in Australian workplaces. At 40-44 years, women are paid 24.3% less than men. More staff development opportunities and improved career progression should improve women’s access to senior positions and ultimately help close the gender pay gap.

Although outcomes on this claim have been less consistent than enforceable classifications, most institutions have achieved at least one of a staff development fund, a staff mobility program or provision for internal advertising of vacancies at first instance.

enforcement and understanding The challenge for women activists in Branches is now to ensure these good Agreement provisions are enforced, and members and potential members understand their capacity to be reclassified, access staff development and generally improve their working life. By continuing to build and support women’s networks, we are well placed to achieve real workplace reform for women workers in universities in the future.

Sarah Roberts, National Industrial Coordinator For more information on the Union’s bargaining strategy and outcomes, contact Sarah, sroberts@nteu.org.au

VOLUME 22 SEPTEMBER 2014

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NEWS

Half of all pregnant employees experience workplace discrimination In July, the Australian Human Rights Commission released Supporting Working Parents: Pregnancy and Return to Work Report 2014. Based on extensive qualitative and quantitative research, the report shockingly finds that almost 50 per cent of women have experienced discrimination in the workplace at some point during pregnancy, parental leave or when they returned to work.

The forms of discrimination experienced related to: • Pay, conditions and duties (49%)

When I told my supervisor I was pregnant, the response was ‘well, you will need to leave – this is very inconvenient for the organisation – you should have told us that you were planning this – have you considered [an] abortion?’

• Health and safety (48%) • Performance assessments and career advancement opportunities (46%) • Dismissal, redundancy or job loss (36%) • Negative attitudes from employer or manager (28%) • Leave (20%)

My direct manager (female)… told me that I needed to ‘decide what I wanted – a family or a senior role in the company… it’s a myth you can have both’.

• Negative attitudes from colleagues (19%) • Being threatened with redundancy or dismissal (8%).

The report is troubling reading, and quite depressing in places. Kerry, a pregnant cashier, was refused a request for a stool to sit on while checking items out behind the register to assist with the pressure and swelling of her feet. Another pregnant employee, Alice, was refused requests to take toilet breaks outside the allocated schedule. She soiled herself in front of customers and suffered humiliation and discomfort.

The National Review was provided with a copy of a recruitment form which asked applicants questions about whether they had had any still births, pregnancies or abortions and if their partners had been sterilised or had hysterectomies.

We can only hope that the Recommendations contained in the Report are adopted by Australian governments and their agencies.

I miscarried at six weeks gestation and took a week off work to recover. My female employer called my husband and told him I shouldn’t need days off work and that after her miscarriage she went back to work the next day.

While I was on maternity leave… [my boss] told me that there had been a business decision that I was no longer suitable for the role I was in previously (they had offered it full-time to my maternity leave person). She said, don’t worry I have managed to secure you a position in another department, but it was a $20,000 pay difference.

When I applied for a permanent position at the Senior Executive level, while my baby was less than one year old, I was unsuccessful… I was told by the recruitment panel that ‘it was essential to be visible to get promoted to that level, and it would be difficult if I returned part-time.’

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VOLUME 22 SEPTEMBER 2014

NEWS

ACTU Women’s Conference The ACTU Women’s Conference in Melbourne in August was comfortably oversubscribed – demonstrating both the enthusiasm of union women staff, delegates and elected representatives, but also the need for regrouping and gaining strength together in these times of backlash.

Tanya Plibersek, Deputy Leader of the Opposition opened the conference by naming and celebrating trade union women who have made such a difference in women’s (and men’s) lives.

She reminded the conference of equal pay campaigner Muriel Heagney who had fought throughout her life to get unions to take up the cause for equal pay for women.

‘Muriel first called for a standard minimum wage for men and women in a submission to the Arbitration Court in 1923. It would be over 50 years, in 1974, that the National Wage Case decision granted women an adult minimum wage. Muriel lived to see that great result of her decades of activism – but survived just a week after the decision. She must have been hanging on for it.’

However, Plibersek observed that the gender pay gap today means that in a 38 hour working week, for women who start at 9am, by 3.38pm every day they are working for free.

The conference included the 30th anniversary dinner for the Anna Stewart Memorial Project (ASMP) which honours the memory of the persistent campaigner for women who died too young in 1983. A one off project of trade union training for women delegates including placements in other union offices has persisted for three decades across most states. In Victoria alone 800 women have participated. Many women union leaders have come through this project.

Thérèse Bryant, National Women’s Officer at the Shop, Distributive & Allied Employees Association and chair of the ACTU Women’s Committee, noted that women are now half of the workforce and union members, but do not have proportionate influence in politics. The ACTU intends to again survey unions on the inclusion of women and gender equity in structures and policies. Just undertaking this project will contribute to raising awareness and promote debate.

what we have learned over the past decades on campaigning for women and gender equity within our unions.

The focus has been upon changing structures and processes, but also changing attitudes and behaviour of men (and women) to consistently consider women’s rights and issues internally and externally. Ensuring that ‘gender’ is not the last consideration, but always embedded or explicit in all forums, policies and campaigns is a continuing struggle. Participants also observed that without continual vigilance women and women’s concerns can still drop away.

The Q&A panel ‘Women make up 50% of the workforce, 50% of union membership and yet...’ comprised Liz Broderick, Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Yolande Beattie, WGEA and Michele O’Neil, TCFUA. They had many stories to share, and made the point that women who are tentative about becoming more involved need to know what it is we do and how they can participate. Some of the stories highlighted the need to reach out even when it seemed that the tide may be against us, as it is often in times of struggle that much is achieved.

One resonating comment was that ‘gender is like asbestos – all around us, often fine powder that seeps in to our being and is toxic in so many different contexts’. Perhaps we need to think about how to ‘asbestos proof’ ourselves in order to re-position women where we need to be: at all levels of society and particularly in the union movement.

Jeannie Rea & Virginia Mansel Lees, Victorian Division President and WAC member.

wikibomb raises profiles of women in science

The NTEU was well represented by elected representatives and staff. National President, Jeannie Rea presenting a session on using structures and networks to build women’s participation and influence. With Cath Bowtell, former senior industrial officer with The Australian Academy of Science held a Women of Science the ACTU and earlier with the NTEU, Jeannie reflected upon Wikibomb on 14 August 2014. Participants across the country helped

create or improve almost 120 Wikipedia pages for Australian female scientists, past and present.

With nine out of 10 Wikipedia contributors being male, there is inevitably bias with who is being represented online. The aim of the Wikibomb was to publicly acknowledge the work of women in science who have a limited presence online, as well as inspiring the next generation of female scientists.

Held as part of Science Week, the Wikibomb was both an online event via the Twitter account @Science_Academy and the hashtag #ozwomensci, as well as a physical event at the Shine Dome in Canberra.

Full results at: www.science.org.au/wikibomb-live-updates

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bluestockings

BLUESTOCKING WEEK CROSSING THE LINE

Crossing the line just had to be the theme of this year’s Bluestocking Week. Last year, NUS had claimed ‘Our Bluestockings Are On The Line’ and NTEU responded with ‘Holding The Line’. With the election of the Abbott Government and regression to just one woman in Cabinet, women’s workplace gains are apparently at a standstill or going backwards. And with the Budget changes to higher education seemingly designed to reverse the steady increase of women, from all walks of life, at university, it is no time for quietly holding on.

Bluestocking Week was reinstated two years ago by NTEU with NUS to celebrate women in higher education and also to take stock of what we still needed to focus upon.

The purpose of Bluestocking Week is to make space and time to celebrate, reflect and organise. We are achieving this, at a time when we really need to. We are making sure that women are on the agenda in and outside higher education and we are not going away.

This year saw more Branches organise more events, with more clever ideas and many more participants. They focused upon highlighting the diversity of women at our universities as students, as staff, as graduates and from the community. Women around Australia hosted or attended events aimed at bringing us together and celebrating the contribution women make to higher education in Australia. The Council of Postgraduate Associations (CAPA) increased their participation by also organising new events (see report, p. 11).

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In the nation’s capital, ANU, ACU and UC all put on events to promote women at university including a wine and cheese night to reflect up challenges, opportunities and a ‘crossing the line’ morning tea and a market day stall.

In NSW, a range of events were held in Sydney and regional areas. Macquarie University hosted a morning tea while over at UNSW, Professor Barbara Pocock delivered a lecture on ‘Women working and living in higher education: what I wish I’d known when I set out’.

Hot chocolate was on offer at CSU Bathurst, and wine at CSU Wagga Wagga. Meanwhile at CSU Albury people were treated to a photographic exhibition and stories from female staff. The University of Newcastle Branch hosted Senators Kim Carr and Deb O’Neill as well as Sharon Claydon MP at their Budget stalls. UTS hosted MPs Tanya Plibersek and Amanda Rishworth at a public forum on the higher education changes in the Federal Budget.

The Victorian Division kicked off the week with a lively Q&A event discussing issues for women in higher education hosted by Division President, Virginia Mansel Lees. There were other events throughout the week at RMIT, Melbourne, Deakin, Monash and La Trobe universities including a film screening at Melbourne Uni of Miss Representation, a 2011 documentary that explores the underrepresentation of women in positions of power and influence in America, and challenges the media’s limited portrayal of what it means to be a powerful woman.

At the University of Queensland, women were invited to share ‘one thing about being a woman at UQ’. Stories were compiled for a morning tea with live music, guest speakers and bright blue cupcakes.

CQU Branch hosted a most successful Bluestocking Week morning tea with great Below: Macquarie Branch Bluestocking morning tea (left); Jennifer Fane addresses the SA Division Bluestocking Dinner (right).

BLUESTOCKINGs

support from staff that came to celebrate, socialise and listen to Jeannie Rea who urged them to enjoy the celebrations but to also focus on the very real threats to women’s ongoing participation and success in higher education. Events were also held at USQ, QUT, JCU and Griffith University.

South Australia put on two events for Bluestocking Week, including a fundraising dinner for the Working Women’s Centre (see report, p.10). The Flinders University Bluestocking community was active all week with a Student Union Bluestocking breakfast on the Monday morning and a seminar by NTEU member Professor Kay Whitehead on the Thursday entitled ‘Bluestockings and teacher unions: Troublesome women!’ which highlighted several of the first women to ‘cross the line’ in education in SA in the 19th and early 20th centuries. To cap off these events, the Branch held a lunch and

seminar on campus to celebrate the role of women in education and the role of education in women’s lives (see report, p. 10).

In Tassie, drinks and nibbles were enjoyed at a Bluestocking Week exhibition highlighting women’s education.

Meanwhile in WA, the Perth Craftivist Group put on a workshop showing how craft could be used as a political tool to promote positive change in the community.

Blue fairy-floss, yarn bombing, self-defence classes and sundowners were also part of the Western Australian celebrations.

In the Top End, the NT Division was joined by the Lord Mayor of Darwin for a morning tea to share stories of women working at Charles Darwin University.

Courtney Sloane, National Media Officer

Clockwise from top left: Bluestocking cake at UWA; Prof Trish Todd, W/Prof Carmen Lawrence, A/Prof Aileen Walsh and Rebecca Doyle at the UWA forum; Elizabeth Eddy and Barb Williams at USC; University of Tasmania Bluestockings celebrate; Virginia Mansel Lees and members at La Trobe.

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BLUESTOCKINGs SECTION

Lessons in gender and colour During Bluestocking Week 2014, the Flinders Branch held a lunch and seminar on campus to celebrate the role of women in education and the role of education in women’s lives.

Chaired by NTEU National President Jeannie Rea, who highlighted the work of the WAC and the role of Bluestocking week, the event featured Khadija Gbla, a passionate, talented, and celebrated speaker on women’s issues whose accolades include Young South Australian of the Year 2011 and one of The Advertiser SA 50 Most Influential Women 2014.

message that while advocating for women’s rights is essential, we cannot forget that certain groups of women encounter further discrimination and that their voices must be an integral part of women’s movements.

Jeannie and Khadija finished with an animated Q&A session with the audience where issues of discrimination in higher education were highlighted. Khadija left us with a twofold message; one, that education on the issue of discrimination is essential, and two, that we all will face hurdles in our lifetime, and that building resiliency in young people to overcome these hurdles must be a priority.

Khadija captivated the audience with her experience of coming to Australia as a refugee from Sierra Leone as a teenager, and the role that education has played in her life and the lives of her family members.

Khadija’s story of the impact education has made in her life was both heart wrenching and inspiring. Her ability to engage the audience through humour, passion and storytelling had the entire audience experiencing emotions from laughter to outrage as she shared her journeys as a black educated woman in Australia.

While she spoke passionately about women’s issues, Khadija’s message focused on how colour, rather than gender, continues to be the most prevalent discrimination that she and other people of colour face in Australia. She left with the sobering

The lunch and seminar were an energising way to finish off Bluestocking Week and a poignant reminder of the work left to do.

Jennifer Fane, WAC (SA).

Above: Jeannie Rea and Khadija Gbla

SA Dinner Out from ‘under the thumb’ Over 70 people attended the SA Division’s sold out Bluestocking Week dinner on 13 August, a fundraiser for the Working Women’s Centre.

Chaired by Janet Giles, former secretary of SA Unions, the dinner was both a place to celebrate women’s participation in higher education and an opportunity to highlight the need to support those experiencing domestic violence. It also highlighted the fact that domestic violence provisions were a key focus of the NTEU during our last bargaining round.

The importance for continued education and support for those experiencing domestic violence was beautifully expressed by our guest speaker Heather Margrison, a survivor of domestic violence, administrator/cocoordinator of Moving Forward, a domestic violence support group. Heather is also executive director of an upcoming documentary Under the Thumb, which will be used as a training tool for emergency services, legal/medical professions and the Catholic Church. It aims to educate people about domestic violence with the goal of reducing incidents of abuse in our communities.

With impassioned storytelling and the powerful imagery evoked through her words,

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Heather shared with us the many faces of domestic violence, and how education, especially for those who work with people experiencing domestic violence and young people, is the key to reducing the insidious, prevalent, and sometimes lethal form of control and abuse felt by far too large a proportion of Australians.

In keeping with the theme of educating and supporting those experiencing domestic violence, as well as other forms of discrimination, the dinner also acted as a fundraiser for the Working Women’s Centre, a not-forprofit organisation which provides information, support, advice and advocacy services to women on work-related issues in SA, NT and Queensland.

The Working Women’s Centre is currently supporting an Australian research project into domestic violence, amongst a myriad of other support services offered to women.

Sandra Dann, director of the South Australian Branch, gave a animated speech about the work the Centre does, as well as the role unions have to play in advocating for,

and creating real change in women’s lives.

Between the fabulous food, empowering speakers, and lively conversation it was an event enjoyed by all and was certainly one of SA’s most successful Bluestocking Week events to date.

Jennifer Fane, WAC (SA).

Above: Heather Margrison, Sandra Dann and Janet Giles at the Bluestocking Dinner.

BLUESTOCKINGs

WAC bluestockings CAPA: don’t gender my agenda, mr pyne This year’s Bluestocking Week theme ‘Crossing the Line’ could not be more relevant to women in higher education today.

Representing women of all different backgrounds in postgraduate education the Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations (CAPA) decided to get the message out to affiliates and students on the ground in as many ways as possible. Not only did CAPA send out sets of Bluestockings posters and balloons, but also two pairs of actual blue stockings to each affiliate organisation, after all what better way to get the message out to people than to wear it around!

‘We cannot express how highly we think of Bluestockings Week,’ said CAPA co-Vice President Sadie Heckenberg. ‘This event not only brings national attention to the disadvantages and challenges that still face so many female university students today but also applauds the amazing achievements of women in education throughout Australia’ ‘Indeed due to Christopher Pyne’s inane comments about female students, only really studying nursing and education, CAPA decided to launch a campaign showing Australia just how diverse and amazing women at universities are. The campaign called ‘Christopher Pyne: Don’t Gender My Agenda’ was launched around the country during Bluestocking week.

‘Christopher Pyne’s sexist comments couldn’t have been better timed - Bluestockings Week was an opportunity to draw attention to the diverse interests and talents of women students (and eat delicious cake!),’ asserted CAPA President Meghan Hopper.

During the week, CAPA held events at four different campuses across the country.

Kicking off the week’s events was NIPAAC Liaison Officer Sharlene Leroy-Dyer at University of Newcastle. Co-Vice President (Equity) Vino Rajandran was in attendance at University of Tasmania, while CAPA’s Western Regional Secretary, Rina Sawan, hosted the afternoon tea at Murdoch University, connecting with female students in a part of the country that sometimes feels left out.

WAC delegates display the 2014 Bluestocking Week poster, designed by Maryann Long. From top: Liz Mackinlay (Qld), Virginia Mansel Lees (Vic), Katie Wilson (ACT). Photos by Terri MacDonald.

diverse course enrolments of women, in response to Minister Pyne’s remarks on ABC 7.30 that women would not be unfairly disadvantaged with the proposed changes to the tertiary sector, as they study teaching and nursing rather than law and dentistry’ said Erin Lynn.

We asked students to be photographed with the whiteboard which stated their course of study. Whist there were plenty of nursing and teaching students, there was also an overwhelming representation of women in medicine and science related degree programs, followed by law and arts.

Bluestocking Week is such an important event on the higher education calendar and CAPA is so happy to be a part of this fantastic representation of women in all different areas of university and higher education.

Sadie Heckenberg, CAPA Co-Vice President (Equity) Sadie Heckenberg (above) and Meghan Hopper (below) respond to Christopher Pyne’s sexist remarks.

Rounding off the week, CAPA’s President Meghan Hopper, International Officer Walter Robles, and new Women’s Officer Erin Lynn, ran a very successful afternoon at Monash University. These events not only had fantastic Bluestocking cakes but also whiteboards allowing students to state their course of study and their thoughts on Pyne’s comments.

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Why we cross the line in 2014

jeannie rea jrea@nteu.org.au

In the lead up to Bluestocking Week this year, NTEU National President Jeannie Rea wrote about why women need to actively defend and advocate for women in higher education as latest government policies would actually see women lose their numbers and opportunities in universities.

When the NTEU and NUS decided to bring back Bluestocking Week a couple of years ago, we agreed that we needed to recognise the achievements of women in higher education from those feisty pioneers dubbed ‘bluestockings’ to today’s women taking on study and jobs in universities from so many diverse backgrounds.

We still have ‘bluestocking’ pioneers as Indigenous, migrant, working class and rural women continue to break the ground as the ‘first-in-family’ to go to university, and into male dominated disciplines and occupations. In many ways it is remarkable that 130 years since the first women graduated from Melbourne university, women are still being the ‘first’ to study, to research, to gain a PhD or a senior professional position.

We are just seeing our second woman vice chancellor of a sandstone university, as Margaret Gardner takes up the job at Monash, following Fay Gale back in 1990 at the University of Western Australia. The first Aboriginal woman to graduate was also from Melbourne University in 1959, and last year Rebecca Richards was the first Aboriginal person to be awarded Rhodes scholarship at Oxford University graduated with her Masters.

With Bluestocking Week we want to celebrate, but we also want to carve out space and bring attention to the ongoing issues of gender based discrimination in higher education, and more broadly across society.

Universities do remain sites of privilege in that staff and students have opportunities to examine and comment upon the big and small issues of our time. There is a societal expectation that universities will try and answer the big questions. These big questions include asking why there persists gender based prejudice, violence against women, cultural constructs that privilege men, heteronormative assumptions, child bearing and caring is being simultaneously

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reified and dismissed, if measured by the low wages paid to child care workers. Intellectual freedom gives us particular license and responsibility to investigate and speak on the hard issues and cross the line into controversy.

jobs than men and this will only increase as these are the only growth areas of university employment.

Women are now the majority of undergraduate students, because women know we need a degree to get the income and job security that many men can earn without a degree. Women still predominantly study in education, health and welfare. Science and engineering are still hard fields to break into and pursue a career. Having children and a career is still hard even though we have good parental leave in universities.

Child care is a constant juggling act and career breaks can break our careers. We still rapidly lose our numbers in higher degrees and the higher levels of academic and professional careers. Women particularly lose out in research careers where the big grants still go to men. Unfortunately the steady shift to gender equity in employment in universities has stalled, and while gender pay equity is closer than the persistent 17% gap in the general workforce it has also stopped closing in universities.

cesses of women in higher education. The shift from elite to mass higher education in Australia has been fundamental to more women going to university, and to working in universities. However, the Abbott Government’s 2013-14 Federal Budget cuts to higher education are a specific attack on women’s participation in higher education.

Minister of Education Christopher Pyne and his colleagues have said that they want fewer university students and most definitely fewer students accessing the best resourced universities.

Abbott Government Budget attacks women’s university Women have the numbers, but not aspirations the power We cannot diminish the stunning suc-

While women know we need a degree, we also earn less than our brothers upon graduation and that difference widens over our working lives until we retire poorer.

These facts in themselves are testimony to why we need Bluestocking Week. Seeing lots of women on campus is veiling the realities. Women students and staff still do battle with the male academic canon and continue to face physical (and now online) violence from men. Women staff are more likely to be in casual and fixed term contract

The Government’s deregulation and privatisation plans will price many women out of going to university. Even if there is some moderation of the market interest rate on HECS/HELP loans announced in the Budget it does not change the reality that the fees that universities will have to charge students will be too much for many women to manage. Both school leavers and more mature-aged women and their families will be deterred by the prospect of decades of debt as they try and repay their student loans. A woman graduate, who takes a career break to raise a family, may find herself still paying back her HECS/HELP loan as her children want to start at university.

The government’s 20% cut to undergraduate funded places (CSPs) will force universities to charge students to make up the funding cut just to maintain the current quality of provision. Already universities

bluestockings

have been cutting and casualising jobs, cutting courses and even campuses because of inadequate funding. Universities are now facing charging the students more or abandoning more courses, services and staff. This is particularly the case for regional and outer metropolitan universities and campuses. These universities also have more mature age students, students from poorer backgrounds and Indigenous students.

There are more and more women trying to qualify and re-qualify as job markets change, as well as women who are forced to enter the workforce due to cuts to supporting parent payments and other benefits.

Education Minister Pyne argues that his new Commonwealth scholarship system will assist poorer students. However these scholarships are to be entirely funded by each university from the increased tuition fees.

This will mean scholarships at the wealthier better resourced universities, but the universities where women from less advantaged backgrounds predominate will not be able to raise the funds for these scholarships.

Are we going backwards?

The Government is intent upon reversing the reasonable expectation of middle income families that if their children got the required marks they may chose to go to university. Are we going to go backwards with families having to decide which child to support through tertiary education – and if boys earn more, that may decide their

daughter’s fate? This reads like something from the 1960s, and was one of the reasons that women rose up in the women’s liberation movement.

It also seems we are going backwards as course and staff cuts are paring down the courses and curriculum. Gender Studies education and research is starting to be seen as a luxury. The pressure is on to mainstream as we are also finding with Indigenous centres and studies. There is real concern that mainstreaming means largely ‘disappearing’ as ideas and resources are appropriated into the mainstream. Why is the mainstream still constructed white and male?

Most dramatic higher education changes ever Some people claim that we are facing the biggest changes to higher education since the creation of the unified national system and introduction of HECS/HELP a quarter of a century ago. However, I would argue that this is biggest change to Australian universities ever. Australian universities have always been secular, coeducational and public. Women had to fight their way into discipline after discipline and job after job, but publicly funded higher education has meant a comprehensive quality system where a degree in teaching, law, accounting, psychology or paramedics must meet the professional registration requirements.

In Australia the degree you hold is what matters, not which university you attended.

The government’s proposal to cut student funding, but then subsidising funding to private providers threatens this, alongside the differential fees and consequent course quality across our universities. Non-university private providers can cherry pick profitable courses; offer cut rates because they have fewer overheads, pay staff poorly and not have the community obligations of public universities. Regulation of these private providers is of high concern particularly as the government has also cut funding to the regulatory body.

So in celebrating Bluestocking Week 2014 we have to also focus on the very real threats to women’s ongoing participation and success in higher education and research.

The Abbott Government’s Federal Budget is bad for women and this is highlighted in the higher education changes, which will make university unaffordable for many women and their families, increase precarious employment in universities, decrease education and research focussed upon gender and women’s concerns and undermine our internationally recognised quality public university system.

No wonder the Bluestocking Week theme this year is – Crossing the Line.

Pictured: WAC members displaying the 2014 Bluestocking Week poster. Photo Terri MacDonald

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Women of the University ‘tapestry’

A focus for this year’s Bluestocking Week was the ‘Women of the University’ project. We wanted women to tell their university stories in all the diversity amongst women students, staff, graduates and from university communities. We collected stories via the NTEU Women website and also a Facebook page.

On some campuses this idea was taken further: at the University of Queensland, a student project found the stories of past graduates – of our pioneers of the past and present. Meanwhile, the University of South Australia invited prominent women to write a letter telling their story. We shall continue this project beyond Bluestocking Week and keep weaving a tapestry of Women of the University. Add your story:

www.nteu.org.au/women/bluestockingweek/stories

Menaka

Kate

Jennifer

I came to Australia in 1973 with a small child and became a single parent soon after. I worked hard in an admin role and discovered that no promotions to higher roles existed in the patriarchal, male-dominated manufacturing organisation that I worked in. So I studied for 6 months at TAFE, then found a College of Advanced Education which would ‘allow’ me into the Graduate Diploma (provided I could keep up).

I’m the blue-stocking daughter of a bluestocking mother. I didn’t realise, growing up in the seventies, how unusual it was that my mother had been one of the first students at UNE in the early 50s. That has shaped my life in many ways. She went to university on a scholarship, and I was fortunate that I went to university in the early eighties window of no fees.

My love of learning is what has brought me to Australia. Working at Flinders, as well as being a PhD candidate and member of the NTEU Women’s Action Committee not only keeps me at the university for long hours, but also fuels my love of learning and appreciation for the knowledge, passion, research, and teaching I see and am involved with on a daily basis.

I worked full-time, had my daughter in childcare 3 nights a week, and studied graduating with a Grad. Dip. in Employment Relations with a distinction. I then found a job with a non-discriminatory company and worked steadily up the ladder in managerial, general manager and director roles till 5 years ago, when I scaled back on work. In the meantime, I have collected Masters degrees in Commerce and Applied Psychotherapy, I have taught at TAFE, Universities and Colleges of Applied Psychology, and used my skills and knowledge to encourage women to do their best to get degrees and climb the ladder in any field that they desire.

It is saddening that so many capable women are overlooked and many of them go off to start their own businesses. I am proud to support women who support others in their quest for more knowledge, skills and roles to get the glass ceiling crashing down. Hurrah for Blue Stockings! Knowledge and skills will have their day because we will keep battering at the gates of ignorance and patriarchy.

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I continue to work in a university, and cannot say thanks enough for the quality childcare that sustained my career when I had my two daughters.

I’m wearing blue stockings this week for my Mum and for my girls!

Alison I grew up in a blue collar coal and steel town in the 60s and 70s, in an era and a location where girls were not expected to finish school, and generally did not aspire to have a career. In fact the most common aspiration was to marry a coal miner because they earnt more than the steelworkers.

I Ieft high school when I turned 15 and joined the work force. My first job was as a junior filing clerk at a grocery wholesalers and I spent the next seven years working in a series of low level clerical jobs. I got into uni aged 22 on a special admissions program and spent the next 6 years working full time at gradually more senior roles while studying part-time towards my commerce degree.

The university to me means opportunity and a chance to actively participate widely in the community on campus and beyond.

I am proud and privileged to be a woman of the University.

I graduated with a bachelor degree aged 28 and continued working full time. I had children in my mid 30’s and by that time was working in a very senior IT management role. To balance out the needs of my family I looked for a career change to something where I had more control of my time, and ended up moving into academia.

So by there I was, late 30’s with 2 small children and a challenging new career to get underway. I held fulltime academic positions for the next 10 years while I raised my children and studied part time.

I completed my honours degree aged 38, my masters degree aged 40 and my PhD at the age of 48.

Education has transformed my life, and I want that for other women too. Not just for those who can afford it, but for everyone.

bluestockings Helen Unfortunately, my marriage ended in domestic violence. Fortunately, I had an undergraduate education. Previously I had completed a graduate diploma in primary schooling in Education at Murdoch. It was when I began my Masters after having a baby that my life unraveled.

I remember the woman at Rockingham saying that ‘it must be difficult so being so tight and attentive all the time, that I must be exhausted’. I was exhausted. I remember reading this little pamphlet on domestic violence that I found at the Rockingham

library and I felt that some-one was writing about me, the words were that close to my current experience.

Then the lawyer at SCALES told about change and, I thought, she comes from Murdoch she must be okay, so I took her advice and the VRO was issued. And there was another person who told me to go search for that person who used to teach at Murdoch before this ‘tragedy of deceit’ took place. And the professor who told me that men only take custody of their children when it benefits them. She was right, but I have sole custody now. Murdoch is a wonderful place, full of truth and equity.

Maree

Jean

I arrived at university in 1990 to start an arts degree. I was overwhelmed. The campus was enormous, I knew virtually no-one, and as the first person in my family to go to university, still wasn’t 100% sure what an arts degree was (my teachers had said that’s what I should study).

Hats off to the mothers, those gallant women of substance and foresight, the activists who campaigned for childcare at Macquarie Uni. Without Gumnut Cottage THE MOTHER OF ALL MOTHERS, it would not have been possible for women to advance their academic standing as a tool and key to open the labour market doors.

Thankfully, I quickly discovered the women’s room, and a strong, supportive circle of friends, who helped to make university seem survivable. These women also challenged me to ask why women were under-represented in leadership, even in female dominated industries, why women were not safe on campus, and why some people were so intent on controlling my fertility.

I’ve now completed two bachelor degrees, and a masters - in fact, I have only just graduated from the latter. In each course, a feminist perspective has helped me to critique the content, the teaching methods, and the style of class interaction. We still have some way to go.

At my recent graduation from a business faculty, the great majority of graduates were women. Our graduation gift from the faculty? A USB stick, in the shape of a man in a suit.

Linda When my mother went to teachers college in the 1970s as a mature age student, she was not allowed to wear trousers and had to get a male relative to sign her bond. By the time I got to University at the end of that decade, much had changed thanks to the efforts of feminists before me. But there was still a long way to go.

As an undergraduate I was involved in campaigns to establish on-campus child-

Childcare on campus gave mothers a peace of mind to apply themselves fully to their studies knowing their babies were being well cared for as they criss-crossed lecture rooms.

As a foreign student with a three-year-old child, no family in Australia, Gumnut Cottage made it possible for me to study in peace and successfully attain my degree.

I salute those earlier mothers for without childcare it would not be easy for those with children to get into university for further studies.

And to Gumnut Cottage and other childcare centres, I can’t find appropriate words to express my gratitude... thank you is not enough! Keep up the good work. Without childcare, I would not have been able to get to Australia, to further my education, leaving my little girl behind. This would have given me no peace of mind let alone concentration with school work. care, a women’s studies course and the University’s first equal opportunity program, as well as campaigning against sexist advertising. There were plenty of fights to be had, but it was an optimistic time. The abolition of fees had opened the doors of universities to many women who otherwise would never have had the chance. Women inspired by second wave feminism were knocking down obstacles to women’s full recognition within the academy.

Thirty-five years later, my daughters are

Celeste I have been an identifying feminist since I was 15-years-old. Partly this is because, as an Arrernte woman, I became incredibly aware of the dual layers of oppression the minute I hit the school yard. Partly, it was also due to my mother’s influence.

Needless to say, I became reasonably outspoken on gender politics at a relatively young age; telling my classmates to ditch their razors and grow their leg hairs long in year 11 was a personal highlight. It was always more than that for me though.

As people always felt that I was less capable due to my heritage, so they too represented that view due to my sex. I felt continually confined by the low expectations of others, and therefore rebelled quite a lot. University was where my world opened up. I met many amazing women (and men!) who inspired me in many ways. Amongst these were some amazing older Aboriginal women who essentially mentored me through the system.

After faffing around with various subjects, I eventually became an Arts graduate doing my honours in theatre and drama. My play Not One Nation, an Aboriginal feminist monodrama, was eventually picked up for a short season at La Mama! Following graduation, I worked as an Indigenous Liaison Officer at VCA and UniMelb for 8 years, supporting many Indigenous students through their courses and was lucky enough to see many of them graduate.

The strength and resilience of Indigenous people, particularly Indigenous women, was always on show in the incredibly white, western-cannon elitist institutions. I drew a lot of strength from seeing others challenge these structures as well as challenging them myself for the benefit of my students and those who followed. Nowadays I am NTEU National Indigenous Organiser and run the ‘Rantings of an Aboriginal Feminist’ blog. I eventually plan to do my PhD in the area of Indigenous Australian feminisms. accruing massive debts just to get an education, and our Federal Government – largely made up of people who, like me, benefited from free universities with vibrant student organisations – plans to put university education even further out of the reach of women, Indigenous Australians, migrant and refugee communities and the working class. Feminism taught me to fight oppression and discrimination. A University education gave me to tools to do so more effectively. I owe it to my past and my future to keep fighting.

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Why I am on WAC Jennifer Fane, SA Academic rep I am on WAC to remind myself and other young women why feminism isn’t a dirty word and that advocating for women’s issues is as important now as it was in times past.

With what appears to be equal representation of women across many sectors and areas of society, inequality may have become harder to see, but it is certainly still present and insidious throughout the lives of women.

I am on the WAC to support all women in higher education who, whether they feel discriminated against or not, will likely face issues that disproportionately affect women such as the feminization of casual staff, managing work and caring responsibilities, and the lack of representation of women in senior positions.

Being part of WAC gives me the opportunity to not only celebrate the role and achievements of women in higher education, it also allows me to support my colleagues, both men and women, who are facing issues in their workplaces by advocating and enacting change.

I am proud to be part of the WAC and trail blaze in the footsteps of women who have made real change in women’s lives. I think it is essential that the participation of young women in women’s advocacy is a continued and prominent feature.

Jennifer works in the School of Education at Flinders University.

Kate Makowiecka, wa General staff rep I’ve been a feminist of various hues for a long time – and a unionist as well; but the NTEU was the first time I’d seen the first actively acknowledged in the second (I know that matters have changed in other unions since my time in them – but I’m harking back many years).

However, I found my first meeting (as a proxy) of the Women’s Action Committee extremely discouraging! It felt as though we were still discussing the same issues we’d been talking about in the 70s, and well before that: Why don’t we have equal pay? Why aren’t there more women in science? Why aren’t there more women in Parliament? Why do mothers and other carers still meet with discrimination at work? and so on, and on.

Well, guess what? We are still discussing the same issues … because they remain of major concern for women in Australia, and for our sisters around the world.

So, whilst I think I was right to feel discouraged at being reminded of how far things haven’t progressed, working with other members of WAC, and the brilliant Union staff who support us, has offered me a new opportunity to deal not only with specific inequities for women working in tertiary education, but also with broader feminist concerns at home and abroad.

Kate works in the Library at Murdoch University.

vacanicies currently exist for wac reps from tasmania, nsw & victoria. contact your local branch office if you are interested in getting involved.

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budget

Budget confirms disregard for women

terri macdonald tmacdonald@nteu.org.au

Despite claims by the Prime Minister that he is ‘feminist’ (due to having a wife and daughters), this was the first time in over 30 years that a Federal Government did not produce a Women’s Budget Statement as one element of the official Budget Papers. While the Government has remained silent as to why it abandoned this practice, it may be to avoid highlighting the fact that, should all the measures proposed by the Government in this Budget be passed by the senate, women will be the worst impacted - be it in higher education, the workplace, as carers or as seniors, from any walk of life.

Higher Education fees Without any doubt, the Government’s plans to increase student debt and deregulate university fees will have a greater impact on women, be it in deciding to undertake a degree, studying for their degree, as graduates, or in paying off their debts later on in their working careers. In short, the Government’s proposals will have a negative impact on all aspects of study and career for women.

The proposition of undertaking studies that will result in significant, long term debt, is far more likely to influence the decisions of women than men. While the Government claims that the student loans scheme, the Higher Education Loans Program (HELP) ameliorates any debt adversity, this was under a capped fee structure – and uncapping these fees will test this argument.

Irrespective of the Government’s spin, however, is that research has shown that people from low SES backgrounds (of which there is a significantly higher proportion of women) and Indigenous women are adverse to debt, particularly if they have carer obligations.

While under a deregulated fee system, universities may chose to charge less for their courses, the fact is that by slashing $4.7 billion in higher education funding over the next four years, universities will need to increase their fees by an average of 33 per cent just maintain the existing levels of funding.

In addition, the fee increases will vary for different areas, with studies in currently heavily subsidised areas such as nursing and teaching, for example, likely to see some of the largest fee increases if they are to maintain current funding levels to those programs.

hecs debt The issues of debt do not stop there. While the Government’s changes would see the proportion of the cost of a university degree borne by the student rise from 41 per cent to 52 per cent, this debt burden will be compounded further by the Government’s plan to charge a real interest rate on all existing HECS loans.

Until now the rate has been tied to the consumer price index, meaning no real rate of interest. But, should the Government manage to get these changes through the Senate, from 2016 interest on student debts will be charged at the 10-year government bond rate, which is the cost to the Government of long-term borrowings. This rate, which varies, is currently 3.8 per cent (although Government will cap the HELP interest rate at 6.6 per cent).

In short, the Government is shifting the borrowing cost off its own shoulders and loading it onto the students’. Not surprisingly, should students not be able to pay off their student debt quickly after graduation, it will accumulate sizably over the years.

This debt will have a major impact on women graduates, who already earn less than their male counterparts (and noting that the gender pay equity gap has now reached 18.2%) and who are more likely to withdraw from the workforce for extended periods of time due to family or carer obligations. If they return, it may be to parttime work which doesn’t earn enough to trigger HELP repayments, or only pays off the interest component. In that case their HELP debt will simply remain, or even increase.

The Government’s answer to this is to require graduates to repay debt earlier by reducing the annual income threshold at which repayments begin by

continued over page...

VOLUME 22 SEPTEMBER 2014

17

budget SECTION

budget confirms disregard for women 10 per cent. Again, this impact of this will be felt more by those in feminised industries where the starting salaries are lower.

Newstart It is clear that while the Budget divides between young and old, rich and poor, it is those women who can least afford it who are likely to feel the most Budget pain.

While all young people have been targeted, with those under 30 having to wait six month before receiving Newstart and receiving it only for a period of six months before having to wait for it again, it is young women who are even more likely than men to be seasonally employed in insecure and

continued...

casual jobs. Young people looking for work will still need to meet the requirements set out by Government for those who are receiving benefits, even though they are not receiving any financial support. Failure to meet these requirements will result in another month of ineligibility for financial support.

Family tax benefits Both men and women earning more than $180,000 a year will be hit with an extra 2% ‘deficit levy’ (i.e. a tax). However, as we well know, the proportion of women earning such an income compared to men is significantly lower. What will have more

of an impact will be the major changes to the Family Tax Benefit B, where the family income cut-off for the benefit lowered from $150,000 to $100,000 and paid only to families with children under six.

Families with children over 18, including single parent families, will need to support adult children for longer as school leavers will have to wait six month before being eligible for Youth Allowance.

Public service cuts The public service has a higher proportion of women, who will face the very real threat of losing their jobs, with 16,500 Commonwealth public servant jobs to go and 70 federal agencies to be axed.

Pension age & super Raising the aged pension to 70 by the year 2035 will disproportionally hurt women, given women are already on average retiring with one third of the superannuation savings of men.

The proposal to cancel the Low Income Super Contribution, which saw the former Labor Government provide an additional $500 for workers earning less than $37,000 a year, also stings women more than men, as women make up 2.1 million of the 3 million workers on such incomes.

GP co-payment The introduction of the $7 co-payment of GP visits and a $5 increase for PBS co-payment will also have an impact on women, who earn less than their male counterparts and often have carer obligations.

Flawed not fair The Government has claimed that this is a ‘fair’ Budget which must be implemented to ensure the future prosperity of our country.

However, even the most fleeting analysis reveals the exact opposite – that this Budget is deeply flawed, unfair and targets those who can least afford it in our society.

Even the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has raised concerns over the impact of austerity measures in this Budget, linking it to a slow-down in economic growth internationally and contributing to increased social and economic inequity.

Authorised by Grahame McCulloch, General Secretary, NTEU, 120 Clarendon St, Sth Melbourne VIC 3205

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VOLUME 22 SEPTEMBER 2014

It fails to address the current bias in our tax system, delivering tax cuts and increased

budget

$100,000 DEGREES? I DIDN’T VOTE FOR THIS.

NFAW analysis reveals women as biggest budget losers Noting that there was no modelling in the Budget papers on the impact of the Budget on women, the non-politically aligned National Foundation for Australian Women (NFAW), in conjunction with experts from a range of organisations, took on the task of analysing the implications of the Budget 2014-15 through a gender lens.

Like NTEU’s analysis in higher education, the NFAW found the biggest losers from the Budget to be women, irrespective of age, income, employment status, or if single, married/ defacto, with or without carer obligations.

The NFAW’s own detailed analysis of the Budget revealed that: • An unemployed single mother with one eight-year-old child loses $54 per week or 12 per cent their disposable income.

www.nteu.org.au/1stdegree2ndmortgage

subsidies to the likes of the multinational mining corporations and the big end of town, whilst targeting the young, the old, those studying, those looking for work, those with carer obligations, those who are disabled, those on low incomes – and women, in all of these groups and beyond.

It is no wonder, therefore, that the Minister for Women – the Prime Minister, Tony Abbott – and his Government did not undertake any analysis of the impact of the Budget on women. It’s all too clear that women are the biggest losers, with both this Budget and this Government.

Join the campaign!

For the latest updates on the NTEU’s opposition to the Abbott/Hockey Budget, and to download resources and fact sheets, visit our campaign website, A Degree Shouldn’t Cost a Mortgage. nteu.org.au/degreemortgage

• Single mothers earning around two-thirds of the average wage lose between 5.6 per cent and 7 per cent of their disposable income.

• A single-income couple with two school-age children and average earnings loses $82 a week or 6 per cent of their disposable income.

• An unemployed 23-year-old female loses $47 a week or 18 per cent of her disposable income.

• For employed women using Family Day Care an immediate price rise in the order of $30+ per week per child is likely.

• The increase in child care fees for parents on JET (Jobs, Education & Training) Child Care Fee Assistance and reduction in hours of JET subsidised care available will discourage participation in work and training.

• Changes to university funding and housing security are likely to impact on women disproportionately www.nfaw.org

VOLUME 22 SEPTEMBER 2014

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gender GAP SECTION

little shift in gender disparity in higher ed There has been little shift for some time in the gender disparity in higher education careers and studies.

In some areas gender equity has deteriorated. The proportion of women vice chancellors has fallen to 20%, just eight out of 39. It had climbed to one third a few years ago. And just the second woman to head up a ‘Group of 8’ University, starts at Monash this September.

There has been little shift in the proportion of women academics still hovering around 44%, and women are still less than one third of the professorial class, but now at least more than one quarter. While women are two thirds of general and professional staff, and have made significant inroads into senior positions (45%), there does not seem to be any recent gains. Women still predominate in lower levels and more insecure jobs across all fields.

While we don’t have the latest Gender Pay Gap statistics for higher education, the Australia wide figures are revealing and confirm women’s careers are considerably impacted by having children and returning to work. Is there another explanation for why the GPG widens the most to over 24% for women aged between 40 and 44? (After hovering

around 17.5% for a more than a decade, according to the latest ABS data the GPG has now stretched out to 18.2%.)

The ongoing gender segregation of the workforce is borne out by which courses women take on with 72% of health and 76% of education students being female.

Only 19% of women are opting for IT and 16% for engineering. However there is parity in the sciences, agricultural and environmental studies, management and commerce and in hospitality and personal services.

Over 39% of 25-29 year old women hold bachelor degrees compared to under 32% of men. That is significantly explained by teaching and nursing requiring a degree while there are popular ‘male’ occupations

with decent career prospects that do not need a degree. This will probably shift soon as more jobs require bachelor degrees as the entry point. Equal numbers of men and women attained postgraduate degrees in 2013, also illustrating the trend towards higher qualifications in the labour market.

It is still more lucrative for men to gain degrees winning higher median starting salaries in 14 of 21 education fields. The greatest advantage was in architecture where men could be paid 13% more than women, but also in social sciences where they could expect 11% more than their female counterparts. Women who go into engineering, computer science, earth science and pharmacy have higher median starting salaries than men.

However the overall gender difference in median full time starting salaries dropped from $5,000 in 2012 to $3,400 last year.

Hopefully this is a positive trend.

Unfortunately, despite 130 years of Australian women university graduates, gender segregation in study and thus career choices plus having and raising children continue to leave women working harder and still being left behind. However, this will not daunt women who do continue to try and knock over male bastions.

Jeannie Rea, National President

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Sources: Department of Education – Higher Education statistics data cube; Selected Higher Education Statistics; ABS Gender Indicators (4125.0), Feb 2014; Universities Australia website; Workforce Gender Equity Agency; Graduate Careers Council; Strachan et al., 2012, Work and Careers in Australian Universities, Griffith University.

VOLUME 22 SEPTEMBER 2014

gender gAP

australian gender & higher education stats 2014 qualifications

enrolments by gender

50%

natural & physical sci.

25-29 year olds with a bachelor degree

19%

information Technology

16%

engineering

41%

41%

architecture & Building

52%

agriculTure, enviro studies

28% 72%

HealTh

76%

education

australians witH a postgraduate degree

49%

management & commerce

64%

society & culture

61%

creaTive arts

50%

50%

Food & HospitaliTy

56%

toTal

women in the university workforce academics

general staff

44%

academic casuals

vice-chancellors

Female

Male

29%

55%

66%

professors

gender pay gap the average gender pay gap is now

18.2%

median starting salary of female graduates as percentage of male graduates’ salary

110%

earth sciences

pay gap upon graduation computer science

105%

$3400

100%

pay gap throughouT working life

95%

30% 20%

90%

10% 20

30

40

50

60

70 yr

engineering pharmacy medicine, psycHology

law accounting, agricultural sci, education, paramedical, physical sci, Vet sci dentistry Biological sci, mathematics art & design economics & Business, social work average = 94%

Humanities social sciences optometry architecture & Building

85% VOLUME 22 SEPTEMBER 2014

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my career

Barbara Pocock work+life

Long time NTEU member, Professor Barbara Pocock AM has researched work and employment relations for more than 30 years. She has worked for Australian governments, community organisations, and universities including the University of Adelaide and the University of South Australia, where in 2006 she founded the Centre for Work + Life. Initially trained as an economist, Barbara completed her doctorate in gender studies, and taught and researched labour studies and social science from the mid-1980s to 2014. As Barbara retires from full time work, NTEU National President Jeannie Rea and UNSW Branch President Sarah Gregson reflect upon her working life.

a passionate eeo pioneer When Barbara Pocock interviewed women union activists, staff and officials for the collection published in 1997 as Strife: Sex and Politics in Labour, women still had to argue that we could be as committed and effective unionists as men. Despite women joining unions in increasing numbers and standing resolute on picket lines, mythologies still abounded that women would not be there for the long haul.

This was directly related to the remaining unease about women in the Australian workforce.

While women were increasingly in paid work for much of their adult life, mothers juggling the demands of work and family had to be hid from employers under threat of losing their jobs. The only decent paid parental leave was in parts of the public sector, health and education. Campaigns for work and community childcare and decent wages for child care workers were in full swing (and are still). Even women without children bore the brunt of employers and male co-workers prejudice about women’s commitment to their jobs and careers.

Barbara’s subsequent research revolved around investigating, explaining and then advocating change in attitudes and behaviours. The titles of two of her books summed up the dilemmas – The work/life

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collision: What work is doing to Australians and what to do about it (2003) and The labour market ate my babies: Work, children and a sustainable future (2006).

Barbara taught and researched in work and employment relations at the University of Adelaide and the University of South Australia and then founded and led the Centre for Work+Life at the UniSA between 2006 and 2014. With a team of researchers, she undertook research on work set within its social location, analysing the way in which work affects us as workers and beyond the workplace – in the household, community and wider society. She was the recipient of the Queen Elizabeth II Fellowship to study the intersections between work, family and community for 5 years, 2003–2007.

With Helen Masterman-Smith, she wrote Living Low Paid: The Dark Side of Prosperous Australia (2008) and with Natalie Skinner and Philippa Williams, Time Bomb: Work Rest and Play in Australia Today (2012).

Professor Pocock became a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in 2008 and in 2010 was made a member of the Order of Australia (AM) for services to industrial relations research and for advocacy of social justice. Her work is used widely in Australian universities and by unions, and she has presented her research in many countries.

Barbara has recently retired from leading the Centre for Work + Life, but I am sure will continue to contribute to advocating social change and justice.

Barbara started out working in shearing sheds and then studied economics. In her early professional career in the 70s and 80s, she worked in a number of seminal areas of women’s work advocacy including trying to get women into non-traditional occupations and the new field of EEO. Barbara has tended to take a low key approach but has been very influential. That her CV details her maternity and family leave emphasises the point that bearing, raising and caring for family is integral to the person you bring to the workplace along with the extra skills and knowledges of these experiences.

Jeannie Rea, National President

my career

working and living in higher education When it was time to plan for Bluestocking Week this year, the NTEU UNSW branch could think of no more perfect person to deliver a lecture on women in higher education than Professor Barbara Pocock who has spent her working life in the sector, advocating for pay equity and reduced friction between work and life.

Barbara suggested the title of her talk would be ‘Women working and living in higher education: what I wish I’d known when I set out’ and asked, a little nervously it seemed, whether we minded if there were some personal bits in the talk. Mind? We were even more intrigued! Assuring her that the personal was still political in our view, we looked forward to an engaging presentation…and we were not disappointed.

The talk began with acknowledgements – firstly, to the traditional owners of the land upon which UNSW sits and secondly, to the NTEU, its members and officials, for all they do for women, both in the university sector and beyond. Barbara also pointed out that, even when on the opposite side of the table in her role as manager of a research centre, she had learned an enormous amount from, and shared values with, NTEU representatives.

To outline the current situation for women in higher education, Professor Pocock began with our most immediate threat – the education minister, Christopher Pyne, and his plans to ‘reform’ the sector by deregulation of student fees.

Not only will women face increasing student fees, she said, they will also have less capacity to repay debt once in the workforce. Recent Australian Bureau of Statistics findings reveal that the average man working full-time earns 18.2% or $283.20 more than the average full-time working woman and, between November 2013 and May 2014, men’s salaries increased an average $24.90 per week while women’s increased only $7.09.

We were also treated to a fascinating comparison between men and women’s labour force participation between the 1960s and today. Essentially, as Barbara put it, ‘our baby dip is gone’.

Women have adapted to the ‘standard’ organization of work, have increased their education and skills, have used more market commodities to replace domestic work, covered their eyes to avoid seeing dusty surfaces and crinkled clothes on their children and, to the best of their availability, taken on whatever work they could get, often with contingent hours and few career prospects.

While public childcare, paid parental leave (finally!) and family leave provisions (often won by unions) have helped a bit, Professor Pocock said, ‘women contort themselves around labour market and institutional norms that have been built around men – a standard man, who works full-time, for most of [his] life course.’

Citing her research on these issues, she reported that a quarter of women suffer very poor work-life interaction and take more negative spillover to home than we take to work. Far more women than men report feeling rushed all the time, resulting in a range of physical and mental health issues.

These pressures are exacerbated technologies that blur the boundaries between work and life, work intensification and job insecurity, which are all characteristics of university employment.

Even before any Coalition vandalism takes place, Professor Pocock noted that these factors have worse ramifications for women – we make up 60% of casual academic staff and have only 45% of continuing appointments, are underrepresented in senior positions and take longer to pay off HECS debts because of caring responsibilities – sandwiched as are many of us between child and elder care.

While Barbara was at pains to point out that these structural problems cannot be overcome as individuals, she did have a range of personal recommendations for younger women starting out that might ameliorate at least some of the stress.

Among the list of things she advised, my favourites were: • Say no to things that don’t fit – it almost certainly won’t be your ‘last chance’.

• Do one thing at a time – focus is a resource.

• Don’t work on weekends.

• Build support among colleagues, especially through the union.

• Working with someone who makes you laugh is better than working with someone just because they’re famous.

• Don’t take things too seriously if they’re not that serious, and many things are not.

• Don’t over-venerate position power – speak truth to it, especially collectively.

The energy in the room was palpable after Barbara finished speaking and everyone was buzzing to know when the next talk would be.

At UNSW, management has done its best to marginalise ideas about unions, equity and quality of life in a sea of metrics and performance targets. Thank you to Barbara for being such a wonderful inaugural speaker and reminding us that we work to live, not live to work.

Sarah Gregson, NTEU UNSW Branch President www.barbarapocock.com.au

VOLUME 22 SEPTEMBER 2014

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mySECTION career

Andrea Brown Making a difference

helena spyrou hspyrou@nteu.org.au

A passion for social justice is what drew Andrea Brown to her role as Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Officer at Victoria University (VU) and, for almost 20 years, she did a job that she loved. This same passion and commitment also enabled her to simultaneously participate as an active member of the NTEU VU Branch. Andrea is very proud of both her career achievements and her union activism at VU over the last 20 years.

Redundancy and departure from VU earlier this year came as an unexpected blow.

Andrea strongly believes that reducing the resources, including the number of staff working in equity and diversity is problematic as equal opportunity is needed now more than ever in the higher education sector. [See Andrea’s article in Agenda, vol.

21, Sept 2013, pp.10-11] Just prior to starting at VU in 1995, Andrea completed a post-graduate diploma in Equal Opportunity Administration at Swinburne University. Later that year she began her career at VU in Administration of a Research Centre. Then in 1998, she moved into the EEO Officer role in the Equity and Social Justice Branch at VU.

More than compliance Andrea describes her EEO role as comprising elements of both proactive and compliance work. She goes on to say that the ‘equity target groups in employment in higher education remain as: women; staff with a disability; Indigenous staff; staff from a non-English speaking background and, more recently, staff who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex - LGBTQI). Some institutions also add a sixth target group and that is staff with carer responsibilities.

‘Common pitfalls in EEO work are that you get caught up and bogged down with the compliance requirements, commonly because the University does not resource the role properly, so you can’t be proactive enough,’ she says.

Despite this, Andrea worked very hard to progress proactive initiatives in her role. The main focus of her job was to plan, develop

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and implement initiatives for staff that foster and achieve equal opportunity.

‘Let’s look at women as one of the equity target groups,’ Andrea says, ‘we know women are under-represented at senior levels in the sector – a workforce profile that has changed very little over the past 20 years. To address this, we developed gender equity programs to improve the representation and the rate of advancement of women staff at the more senior levels.’

Mentoring for change One such program was the Women in Leadership program which began at VU in 2002 after Andrea had secured funding for a pilot. This program is still offered every year and Andrea continued to develop it further over those years and added to it a Mentoring for Change program. It has become a more structured and tailored professional and personal development program that supports women staff to enhance their organisational knowledge and power and develop their self-confidence and resilience in order to advance their career.

While such leadership programs obviously aim to address historical disadvantage on the basis of gender, Andrea emphasises that ‘it is also critical for such to programs to provide strategic intervention that incrementally, changes organisational culture.

Women in Leadership programs must move beyond a ‘let’s fix the women’ approach and aim to deconstruct ‘leadership’ by critically examining the role of gender, power and politics in the workplace and offering a different paradigm.

Ally network Another initiative that Andrea is proud of developing and supporting is the VU Ally Network that encourages inclusive practice and culture. The Ally Network consists of a

my career

Your NTEU Member Advantage benefits are waiting.

diverse group of trained and active staff and students who work to combat homophobia and queerphobic attitudes at the University and to support staff and students who identify as LGBTQI. ‘I’ve been so lucky to be able to do a job that I loved and to be proactive in that job. I was also lucky to work in a university that is collegiate and reverent.’

In the last 20 years at VU Andrea was also an active member of the NTEU and Branch committee.

‘I was already educated about and committed to unionism before I came into the sector. When I started at VU, I quickly learnt that the NTEU was a very active and visible union at VU.’

Active unionist Andrea was the Branch secretary for eight years, a Victorian Division Councillor for one term, on the National Executive for one term, and on the NTEU Women’s Action Committee for many years. However, since having a child in 2008, her involvement reduced.

Andrea sees a real connection between EEO work and union work.

‘Both address disadvantage and inequality.

Both support and influence change around Indigenous disadvantage, around improving and advancing the interests of workers.

Much of the focus of my work in EEO and as a union activist has been about informing and educating people and about supporting and empowering people to advocate for themselves and to organise collectively.

Unions aim to analyse and tackle systemic practices that are unfair. EEO work does that

too. Both are about trying to bring about positive change.

‘It is fair and true for me to say that this work has confirmed that pursuing my passion for strengthening EEO and unionism in the sector has been and continues to be the right thing to do. At times I have felt exhausted, I have felt like giving up and walking away but I’ve learnt to accept that this work is incremental and long term.

Over the years I’ve also learnt that determination and persistence are critical because this work is just as important in 2014 as it was in 1995 in that what you might typically define as progress can be very quickly undone.’

Making a difference Making a difference in people’s lives has been paramount for Andrea and she believes she was able to achieve that at VU. ‘I’m proud of the level of insight and support I was able to provide over the years in relevant and meaningful ways to many people at VU. When I left VU only a few months ago, I was touched by the numerous messages I received from colleagues who had indicated that working with me meant a lot to them.’

Finally I ask her the typical closing question, ‘Where to from here, Andrea?’

She confidently replies, ‘I really hope to be able to continue to pursue my passion for and commitment to EEO, preferably in the higher education sector.’

Contact us on 1300 853 352 or log onto the website at memberadvantage.com.au/nteu

VOLUME 22 SEPTEMBER 2014

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my career Margaret Lee first joined the NTEU in 1996 and has served at Division Secretary for Queensland for the past eight years. When Margaret, then a lecturer in Industrial Relations, joined the Griffith University Branch Committee, she brought with her a wealth of expertise as an industrial relations expert and labour lawyer, with significant publications on labour market regulation, industrial disputes and union rights, and bargaining and negotiation, and a wealth of experience of working with and for the union movement.

In moving her Life Membership at this year’s National Council, the Queensland Division has said, ‘More importantly, she brought with her a solid core of strong union values which would be a great source of guidance and strength for everyone in the Queensland Division who has had the privilege of working with her. As a marvellously unpretentious and down-to-earth (but always stylish!) person, Margaret may not be aware of the extent to which she has educated those around her. The Queensland Division in particular is in her debt, as she leaves the Division bigger and stronger than it has ever been. We look forward to a continuing association in her Life Member capacity.’

Margaret Lee my swan song

On 17 October this year I will have been Queensland Division Secretary for eight years. It will be my last day of work for the NTEU and my last day of paid work. Now I have five grand-daughters, and it’s hard to explain what I do for a job, much less make it sound like the pinnacle of a well-planned career.

Perhaps my swan song should be about how I ended up being a union boss and why I think it matters.

I was a scholarship girl at Sydney University, and only had to work for 8 hours a week to make ends meet. The first thing I learnt there was that my gender and my poverty marked me out from the mainly rich male student body, and not in a good way. I studied economics, politics and industrial relations, largely in a state of fear and confusion, but it really did change my view of the world. By the end of my studies, I probably would have worked for a union for free. Unions at that time employed few staff, mainly female administrative workers and a hand full of researchers (usually male), and the union bosses were mainly men.

I did get job with a union that actually came with a salary, thanks to a good reference from my well-connected academic supervisor. It was half time union researcher and half time administrative hand-maiden. Yes, I know, it wouldn’t have happened to a bloke. Sexual harassment was an ongoing challenge, but the work was fascinating.

That job taught me about unity: everyone’s job is to be active in their union and support the decisions made through its democratic processes. Over the years, it transmogrified into industrial work and I did a law degree at night.

I moved to Queensland and got a job at a university. I became progressively

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more involved in the NTEU, until in 2006 I was elected Division Secretary upon the retirement of the Division’s first Secretary, Howard Guille.

Being an NTEU Division Secretary is inspiring and wonderful, but mainly it’s a lot of hard work. Nearly every day, a Division Secretary confronts conflict and the challenge of turning that into collegiality and unity, and makes decisions that affect the

health and welfare of members and NTEU staff. As my mother observed, there’s always a gender angle.

When I told my PhD supervisor I’d been elected, she said that being a trade union secretary was a much more interesting and useful thing to do than write a PhD thesis.

That turned out to be true.

general staff

‘Employers of choice’ failing general staff

The final report of the 2011 Work and Careers in Australian Universities Survey contains disturbing findings on women general staff access to professional development and career advancement. These findings should be considered as NTEU monitors the implementation of clauses on general staff advancement.

The broader aim of the Gender and Employment Equity: Strategies for Advancement in Australian Universities ARC funded research led by Professor Glenda Strachan and co-partnered with the NTEU, was to advance our understanding of existing gender inequalities in Australian universities.

Gender inequality in employment persists, despite increasing gender equity policy and program initiatives focusing their attention on work and family.

This comprehensive, national study of the university sector provided an opportunity to examine organisational practices in a sector which is considered ‘high performing’ in relation to employment equity. Universities offer extensive gender equity policies and our industry has the greatest proportion of employers with the national accolade of Employer of Choice for Women Citation awarded by the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA). Yet, despite our ‘high performing’ reputation, pronounced gender inequalities remain in universities.

career advancement Of the female and male general staff surveyed, 59% reported receiving help from supervisors in advancing their careers.

However, career support from senior staff and staff at their own level was substantially less than this. Approximately 50% of the general staff respondents felt that help received from supervisors in applying for promotion, guidance in performance reviews, and a level of support to gain qualifications or attend training, had been helpful to them in advancing their career.

Nonetheless, there was a substantial proportion of respondents (23%) who had not received any support in regard to career development.

Only 13% of general staff had participated in a formal mentoring scheme and among

these, one quarter found that the program had been of little benefit. Just over a third reported that their job classification was lower than it should be. Less than half of the general staff had applied for promotion in the preceding five years and among those who had applied, the majority were successful on at least one occasion that they made an application for promotion.

When asked to what extent certain variables had helped in advancing their career or been a problem in holding back their career, almost twice the proportion of general staff women than men reported that the attitude within their university towards people with family responsibilities had held back career development or support. Similarly, when asked how much help they had received from supervisors, senior staff or fellow colleagues in advancing careers, women general staff were more likely than their male colleagues to not have sought any career development help.

Professor Glenda Strachan concluded, that taken together, these findings suggest that attention is needed to improve professional development support and programs for general staff.

Working part-time A recent paper by Janice Bailey and Glenda Strachan (2014) using the same survey data sought to examine whether ‘good’ part-time jobs contribute to, or at least not impede, career advancement for general staff women in Australian universities. It considered whether general staff women equally use part-time work opportunities irrespective of their job classification, and whether a period of part-time work acts as a significant ‘brake’ on their career trajectory. The study revealed mixed findings, as moving between part-time and full-time work did not markedly impede career advancement for women. Yet, they concluded that

part-time work stalled career advancement compared to working full-time, but that the ‘brake’ for general staff women was reduced if she transitioned back to full-time work.

This unique dataset enabled examination of the effects of periods of part-time work over time, rather than just at a single point in time. It revealed the common context in which women combine part-time with fulltime work over their life course, recognising the fluctuating or ‘frayed’ nature of women’s careers. The findings of this study also highlighted the point that even in Universities, a sector with a comparatively more ordered career structure, part-time work can still have contradictory meanings for women’s career advancement.

Part-time work can support continuation of a career while fulfilling other commitments outside of employment. However, it can still impede women’s career progression and widen the gap between men and women on the classification scale, that usually begins with an average one-level difference on appointment. As general staff move up the university career ladder, the gap is likely to form between the provision and utilisation of opportunities to work part-time. The results of this study underline the general conclusion that part-time work is both a ‘support’ and a ‘trap’.

References Strachan, G., Troup, C., Peetz, D., Whitehouse, G., Broadbent, K. & Bailey, J. (2012) Work and Careers in Australian Universities: Report on Employee Survey.

Centre for Work, Organisation and Wellbeing, Griffith University.

Bailey. J, Troup. C. & Strachan. G. (June 2014).

Part-time work and advancement: A study of female non-academic staff in Australian universities. The Centre for Work, Organisation and Wellbeing. Working Paper Series. Griffith University.

Andrea Brown is currently working as a research officer for the NTEU National Industrial Unit.

VOLUME 22 SEPTEMBER 2014

27

scholarships SECTION

Carolyn Allport Scholarship

julija knezevic

Julija Knezevic is the successful recipient of the inaugural Carolyn Allport Scholarship, a postgraduate scholarship in feminist studies. Julia is a PhD student at RMIT undertaking an exploratory study into the professional occupation of interpreters employed as temporary agency (haken) workers in Japan. NTEU established the scholarship in recognition of Dr Carolyn Allport’s contribution to the leadership and development of the Union in her 16 years as National President.

The scholarship is available for a woman undertaking postgraduate feminist studies in any discipline, who is currently enrolled in postgraduate studies by research in an Australian public university. The scholarship pays $5000 per year for a maximum of three years. In this first year, the 17 applications we received from all over Australia were assessed by prominent feminist research scholars.

The assessors concluded that Julija Knezevic’s PhD research will make an important contribution to knowledge about gender and work. NTEU National President, Jeannie Rea commented that ‘Julija is a most appropriate recipient of the first NTEU Carolyn Allport Scholarship as her field of research and indeed her own work experience go to a most salient issue of our time – the rise of precarious work as the norm, rather than exception. All the efforts of feminist labour campaigners for women’s workplace rights are diminished by increased precarity.’

As well as working on her PhD, Julija is employed as a freelance interpreter for governmental agencies in Melbourne and undertakes legal educational and technical translations through agencies in the UK and US. Until recently, she taught in the Diploma of Interpreting at RMIT. She is a fluent speaker of Japanese.

Julija’s research explores a particular group of working women, potentially a junior management class located across different industries in Japan. She focuses on interpreters for a number of reasons, such as their ‘premium’ value, their constructed images as ‘global’ and ‘cosmopolitan’ women in Japan. Her project is based on personal experience as a so-called house interpreter who works in corporations known for their sex and gendered segrega-

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VOLUME 22 SEPTEMBER 2014

tion. She is exploring gender relations in the workplace and the lived experience of interpreting work – the physical embodiment, the silencing, the use of emotional labour – and how all of these contribute to regulating behaviour in the workplace.

Her research question is: ‘How does a temporary agency worker (haken) interpreter, located at the intersection of a managerialtrack and non-managerial track of employment, negotiate their “professionalism” within corporate Japan?’ She starts with a paradox: ‘haken interpreters are located within a precarious, gendered workforce, but at the same time the occupation of an interpreter may be a “gender escalator” by providing women with an opportunity to tap into the “boys club”.’

Julija’s study seeks to explore how women haken interpreters understand and deal with the complex and contested meanings of their work. The study is based on in-depth interviews with 20 interpreters in Melbourne and Tokyo.

Helena Spyrou, Union Education Officer

Dr Carolyn Allport was NTEU National President from 1994 to 2010, becoming a prominent lobbyist at both the national and international levels including as a consultant for UNESCO, through Education International.

Described as a ‘warrior for women’, Carolyn is tenacious in advocating for women’s rights to employment equity.

Particularly influential in the struggle for paid parental leave, Carolyn establishing the NTEU as the leader in setting high benchmarks for other unions and employers to match.

Carolyn is also recognised as a leading advocate for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education, employment and social justice. Within the NTEU structure, she was a driving force to ensure that Indigenous business is core NTEU business.

Prior to becoming NTEU National President, Carolyn worked as an academic for over 20 years at Macquarie University in New South Wales. Her teaching and research publications were in the areas of economic history, urban politics, public housing and women’s history.

scholarships

Joan Hardy Scholarship

katrina recoche

The NTEU established a scholarship for post-graduate nursing research in memory of the late Joan Hardy, who died in 2003. The successful recipient of the 2014 Joan Hardy Scholarship is Katrina Recoche, a PhD candidate in the School of Nursing and Midwifery at Monash University.

The Joan Hardy Scholarship ($5000 for one year) is available for any student undertaking a study of nurses, nursing culture or practices, or historical aspects of nursing as a lay or professional practice.

The student need not therefore be or have been a nurse and can be undertaking the study in disciplines/schools other than nursing. Applicants must be currently enrolled in an academic award of an Australian public university, and expect to submit the thesis within one year of being awarded the Scholarship.

NTEU received ten applications, which were assessed by senior scholars in nursing and nurse education.

Successful recipient Katrina Recoche is undertaking a study of palliative care for homeless and disenfranchised persons in Australia, with a particular focus on policies, organisational documents and other discourses that either facilitate or act as barriers to service access.

The assessors concluded that her topic has significant merit as it deals with issues for nurses in current practice that to date have undergone very little research, despite the increasing volume of presentation by homeless persons in emergency departments. The topic also addresses one of the issues most associated with unionism – social justice. In addition, it will influence nursing knowledge

and practice in emergency departments and importantly may provide policy initiatives that improve outcomes for homeless people.

Joan Hardy was active in higher education unionism for over 30 years, during which time she held many positions at local and state levels.

Katrina brings her own personal and extensive experience to this study. She worked for most of her career in palliative care service until transitioning to academia where she now teaches undergraduate and postgraduate palliative care.

She was the first woman President of UACA (one of the predecessors to NTEU) a position she occupied for five years. Joan was a tireless advocate for union amalgamation and was a key negotiator in the formation of NTEU, becoming Vice-President when the Union was formed in 1993.

Katrina has been a long time volunteer for the Frankston Community Breakfast Program and the City Life Café which provide food and other services for homeless and disenfranchised people in the local community.

The Joan Hardy Scholarship for postgraduate nursing research recognises the contributions Joan made to higher education and higher education unionism.

Helena Spyrou, Union Education Officer

vol. 56,

no. 1, 201 4 ISSN 0818–8

Published

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068

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www.aur.org.au VOLUME 22 SEPTEMBER 2014

29

indigenous SECTION

the perils of being an Unsettled woman

celeste liddle cliddle@nteu.org.au

If there was one political gaffe that grabbed my attention recently, it was the unfortunate announcement

by Tony Abbott that Australia was ‘unsettled’ prior to 1788. Indeed, my immediate response on hearing this was to be dumbfounded. For some absurd reason I did expect slightly better from our Prime Minister and self-appointed ‘Minister for Indigenous Affairs’, particularly considering much has been made of this man’s ongoing connections with remote Aboriginal communities. Then again as Abbott, and other members of his government have proven, political gaffes are all the rage this season.

As an Aboriginal woman, when it came to parliamentary representation I felt that we had already been served the doublewhammy with Abbott holding the women’s portfolio alongside the Indigenous one. Add Christopher Pyne to the mix as the education minister and it was set to be an ‘interesting’ first year of Coalition governance.

Where this Government has failed when it has come to providing sound policy, they have made up for it in abundance with flinch-worthy moments. Consistently we have seen them erase the experiences of Indigenous people and women whilst reinforcing the privilege of white, middle class men. There is little hope of this trend not continuing into the next two years of their government.

The NTEU was pleased when the Government announced that proposed changes to the Racial Discrimination Act would not be pursued. Of the 5000 public submissions received, with the NTEU providing one and many members providing individual submissions, at least 70% opposed the changes.

The NTEU submission, whilst highlighting the potential dangers of the limiting of section 18C to ‘vilification’ and indicating experiencing physical harm as an indicator for enforcement, strongly indicated that the proposed law changes would only benefit the most powerful in society and further marginalise those who are frequently denied voice.

When Senator Brandis stated that people ‘do have a right to be bigots’, he perhaps highlighted this government’s agenda for education and social justice more succinctly than his colleagues have.

It is a well-established fact that Indigenous women are fast outpacing our men when

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VOLUME 22 SEPTEMBER 2014

it comes to engagement with the higher education sector, both as students and staff, accessing it at double the rate. When concerns were raised by the NTEU about the disproportionate impact Pyne’s proposed course fee hikes would have on women, it was immediately apparent that Indigenous women would be affected most of all.

This is because we are more likely to be from low socioeconomic status backgrounds with little capacity to pay fees upfront. We are also more likely to be mature-age students and supporting numerous people on meagre student allowances.

Therefore, Aboriginal women will accumulate larger debts due to accessing loan-based student allowances, and will be paying these debts back over an even more extended period than other women. It’s just as well, according to Christopher Pyne, that women study the low-cost courses like teaching and nursing rather than ‘man courses’ such as law and medicine otherwise Aboriginal women may have to live until they are 200 to pay off their education debts…

Finally, it emerged that while Tony Abbott was coming under fire for not disclosing his daughter’s $60000 scholarship to the private Whitehouse Institute of Design on the

public interest register, a $4000 scholarship was also awarded to an Aboriginal woman to undertake a course that was unlikely to run as it had not achieved desirable enrolment numbers for several years. Whether Frances Abbott’s daughter was a deserving recipient of such a prestigious scholarship is not up for discussion here. Rather, this case acts as a handy metaphor for the future prospects of equity for Indigenous women in a higher education system hit by cuts and pushed towards privatisation.

It is incredibly likely that the Government’s reforms will see the educational red carpet rolled out for the most privileged whilst the most marginalised will be forced to jostle for scraps. Education is no longer a right and should these bills pass both houses, it is clear who will suffer the most.

It’s never been easy being an Indigenous woman engaged in the higher education sector. We not only have to fight for recognition on the basis of our gender within a system that continually preferences maleness, but also on the basis of race in a system that preferences whiteness and mainstream knowledges. Under this current Government things will just get harder for Indigenous women in the sector.

On the plus side though, as we march every other week for equality, you can bet we will have more ridiculous privilegeenforcing quotes from this Government to display on our placards. As an industry that places a lot of prestige on the penned word, we couldn’t even write this stuff!

Celeste Liddle is NTEU National Indigenous Organiser.

Image: ‘The Landing of Captain Cook at Botany Bay 1770’, Percy Trompf, 1930.

feminism

mra’s on campus a cause for alarm

Georgia Kennelly

womens@unistudent.com.au

‘In short, simple “patriarchy” is a myth, or at least greatly exaggerated. This is proven by the fact that there were many queens throughout history.’ Thanks to the kind Men’s Rights Activist (MRA) who informed me of this, we no longer need to be fighting the patriarchy. Thank goodness! Years of feminist struggle could have been avoided if we had just realised how lucky we were to have Queen Elizabeth I. In theory, men’s rights activism sounds totally reasonable. Indigenous men are paid far less than their white counterparts, have a much higher chance of ending up in jail and a lower life expectancy. There is a culture of silence around men’s mental health that definitely should be addressed and results in high rates of suicide, there are many diseases that specifically effect those born as men and men are socialised not to seek help and of course many issues surrounding masculinity and a ‘boys don’t cry’ society.

However, MRAs don’t actually fight for any of these issues. Instead they spend their time attacking women, particularly those who identify as feminists. Their main website, A Voice for Men, regularly posts articles attacking specific high profile feminists and referring to them as b*tches and wh*res – not exactly advancing the cause of men.

Recently, we have seen MRAs attempt to break into Australian universities, with efforts to recruit at Monash University and the University of Sydney, amongst others. As a predominantly US-based organisation this in itself is concerning. These MRAs dispute the claim that men have more power or privilege in society and argue that in fact women are oppressing men.

They argue that because women control sex, we actually control everything and that we use this ‘sex control’ to oppress men.

They also take huge issue with the family court system, arguing that women are more likely to gain custody of their children. They frequently use statistics to argue the point that men are a majority of the victims of violence, bullying and sexual assault.

Women’s liberation has come a long way in the last century but we are very far from being able to tip the scales in favour of a matriarchal society. In Australia in 2014 we

still have a society where female graduates will earn an average of $5,000 less than their male counterparts in their first year out of university. Women make up only 18% of people on ASX 200 boards, roughly 30% of members of parliament, and even less than that as a percentage of vice-chancellors, despite the fact a majority of students and staff are women. Women are more likely to be sexually assaulted, attacked by their partner or face street harassment.

These rates increase for women of colour, transwomen and women with disabilities. These are just a few of the many, many reasons why feminism and women’s activism is important. These should be enough to show that men by far still hold the power and privilege in society.

That is not to say that men are not victims of violence, sexual assault, harassment or bullying. But they are not the majority and by far the vast majority of these crimes are committed by men – whether the victims are men or women.

MRAs on campus spreading this kind of hateful speech and misinformation only pushes the feminist cause backwards and breeds more misogyny on campus from men who feel as though they are ‘entitled’ to sex from women – an attitude that MRAs are more than happy to promote. If that’s not enough to give you strong concern, then looking at what these attitudes have caused in the US should.

Earlier this year we saw a horrific case where an MRA went on a shooting spree in California, killing seven including himself.

Before going on his rampage he posted a

racist, sexist manifesto, describing his motivation for the violence, in which he ranted about the injustice of women who were not attracted to him. This attitude of sexual entitlement at such an extreme level is terrifying and is yet another reason why the growth of these movements on campus should be fought at every level.

The patriarchy does exist and it affects everybody. It’s the reason why women aren’t promoted at work and also the reason why men aren’t allowed to be emotional. It’s the reason why men are encouraged into more dangerous jobs and the reason why women don’t feel safe at night.

The only way to fight the patriarchy is by acknowledging the power that men have over women and any movement that exists purely to hate women is not welcome on university campuses.

Georgia Kennelly is Women’s Officer at the National Union of Students

VOLUME 22 SEPTEMBER 2014

31

feminism

#idontneedfeminism

Social media platforms have continued in their role as hubs of feminist debate. The ‘I don’t need feminism’ hashtag and ‘Women Against Feminism’ tumblr (womenagainstfeminism.tumblr.com) ignited a wave of debate across various media and social media outlets forcing people to question how far we had really come in the quest for women’s equality. In turn, the debate provoked a range of responses and parody accounts that particularly drew attention to the irony in a lot of the posts. Have you seen them yet? #IDontNeedFeminism

#IDoNeedFeminism

WomanAgainstFeminism twitter.com/NoToFeminism

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VOLUME 22 SEPTEMBER 2014

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