NTEU WOMEN’S MAGAZINE
Www.NTEU.org.au/women
25
Worth 100%
yrs of nteu women’s journals
bsw2017: worth 100% AHRC sexual violence report bargaining thru a gender lens Calling out sexism job security
ISSN 1839-6186
Volume 25 September 2017
Women’s Action Committee (WAC) The role of the Women’s Action Committee is to: • Act as a representative of women members, at the national level. • To identify, develop and respond to matters affecting women. • To advise on recruitment policy and resources directed at women. • To advise on strategies and structures to encourage, support and facilitate the active participation of women members at all levels of the NTEU. • To recommend action, and advise on issues affecting women. • To provide editorial advice on Agenda and the women’s website. • To inform members on industrial issues and policies that impact on women. • To make recommendations and provide advice to the National Executive, National Council, and Division Executive and Council on industrial, social and political issues affecting women.
WAC Delegates 2017 Aca Academic staff representative G/P General/Professional staff representative
• Monitor and review the effectiveness of issues, policies and structures affecting women. 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 Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Policy Committee.
National President Jeannie Rea, jrea@nteu.org.au
A&TSI Representative Sharlene Leroy-Dyer Newcastle
act Aca Sara Beavis ANU G/P Cathy Day ANU
NEW SOUTH WALES
www.nteu.org.au/women
Aca Sarah Kaine UTS G/P Laura Wilson USyd
NORTHERN TERRITORY Aca Donelle Cross BIITE G/P Sylvia Klonaris CDU
QUEENSLAND Aca Debra Beattie Griffith G/P Diane Lancaster CQU
SOUTH AUSTRALIA Aca vacant G/P Kate Borrett UniSA
TASMANIA Aca Megan Alessandrini UTAS G/P Suzanne Crowley UTAS
VICTORIA Aca Virginia Mansel Lees La Trobe G/P Sara Brocklesby Melbourne
WESTERN AUSTRALIA Aca Margaret Giles ECU G/P Corinna Worth Curtin
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
Editorial Assistance: Anasatasia Kotaidis
All text and images © NTEU 2017 unless otherwise noted. Published annually by the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU). PO Box 1323, South Melbourne VIC 3205 Australia Phone: 03 9254 1910
ABN 38 579 396 344
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: Bluestocking Week celebrations at UNSW, with members including Bronwen Morgan, Louise Fitzgerald, Sarah Gregson, Fiona Martin, Lynn Ferris and Anne Junor. Photo by Kiraz Janicke
WWW.NTEU.ORG.AU/WOMEN
Volume 25, September 2017
australian gender & higher education stats 2017 The average Gender pay gap is now
Editorial
SYDNEY UNIVERSITY STAFF AGAINST RAPE 17
LESSONS FROM THE HANDMAID’S TALE 2 NTEU National President Jeannie Rea.
NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY RE-CAST: WHAT NEEDS TO CHANGE & HOW?
19
FWC TERMINATES MURDOCH AGREEMENT 3 UTAS WOMEN CALL FOR ACTION
3 3
INSECURE WORK AND FEMINISATION OF THE UNIVERSITY WORKFORCE 4 #PAYMOREGETLESS 4 SALLY MCMANUS, ACTU SECRETARY
5
WOMEN @ NTEU
5
a decrease of 0.9% since nov 2016. at tHIs rate, women wIll achieve parIty in 17 years.
enterinG the laboUr market 88.1%
13.4% 59.5%
16.6%
40.5% 86.6%
Australians with a completed undergraduate or postgraduate degree
71.5%
13.2%
8.9% 84%
architectUre & bUIlT envIro. science & mathematics Health services & sUPport law & paraleGal studies business & management agriculTure envIro. studies creatIve arts HumanItIes, cUltUre & soc. sci. nursing rehabIlitation medicIne teacHer education dentistry social work engineering Pharmacy commUnicatIons compUting & info. systems PsycHology
91.1%
89.3%
10.9%
9.3% 80%
80.2%
postgrad (coUrsewk)
Part time Full time
teachinG & researcH
postgrad (researcH)
UndergradUate median full time salaries 2016 15.3%
$50,000
10.0%
$59,000 54
9.1%
Facts & figures
63
53
57
53.5
57
47
Men 64
57.4
6.1% 6.0%
Women
60
58.2
8.9% 7.0%
50
4.5%
54.8
3.5% 2.8%
57.4
58.4
60.5
59
60.7
2.6%
68.2
1.6%
70
62.6 63.6
1.4%
82.8 84
0.8%
60 60.5
0.5%
62.3 62.6
0.5%
43.6 43.8
0%
48 48
-0.8%
60 59.5
-1.5%
54.8 54
vice-chancellors
women in the university workforce all Fte sTaFF
Percentage of graduates entering workforce within 4 months of graduating
91.7% 4.9% 86.8%
70.1%
UndergradUate
researcH only
teachinG only
Female
Male
general/ proFessIonal
2017 FEDERAL BUDGET & WOMEN
29
GENDER PAY GAP DECLINES, BUT PARITY STILL YEARS AWAY
30
43.0%
56.8%
Women’s conference
92.9% 83.3%
Australians undertaking an apprenticeship
GradUate Gender pay gap by sector
CONFRONTING DECADES OF SILENCE 18
FINAL MODEL FOR DVL
15.3%
degrees & apPrenTIceshIPs
48.3%
56.7%
65.8%
The Gender Pay Gap has declined to 15.3%. But before we start celebrating, at this rate, women would not achieve parity for another 17 years.
NTEU WOMEN’S CONFERENCE 2017: REFRACTED BY THE GENDER LENS 20 With over 70 participants, the 2017 National Women’s Conference was the biggest for years.
WAC
WOMEN & JOB SECURITY AT MELB UNI 6 PARTNERSHIP WITH DEAKIN VIOLENCE PREVENTION RESEARCHERS 6
A&TSI women
BARGAINING WITH A GENDER LENS 7 PRESENTING THE CASE FOR WOMEN IN HIGHER EDUCATION 8 FEMINISM IN THE PUB
8
#FEAS 9 ACTU CALLS TO CHANGE THE RULES 9
Bluestocking week BLUESTOCKING WEEK WORTH 100% 10 Bluestocking Week activities took place across the country under the theme of “Worth 100%”. Change the course: NATIONAL REPORT ON SEXUAL ASSAULT AND SEXUAL HARASSMENT AT AUSTRALIAN UNIVERSITIES • 2017
AHRC report CHANGING THE COURSE ON SEXUAL VIOLENCE AT AUSTRALIAN UNIS 14 Universities must act after accepting the recommendations of AHRC survey on prevalence of sexual harassment and assault in universities.
TWO ABORIGINAL FEMINIST UNIONISTS WALK INTO A PUB...
MY WAC SO FAR: DEBRA BEATTIE
32
RETIREMENT: BARBARA WILLIAMS
33
CAROLYN ALLPORT SCHOLARSHIP: JODIE KELL
34
22
Celeste Liddle and Kara Keys in conversation.
A&TSI WOMEN AT THE NTEU WOMEN’S CONFERENCE
24
Leadership JOAN OF ARC, OUR ONE TRUE SUPERHERO 26 Forget Wonder Woman and Batman – Jeanne d’Arc may be our one and only true superhero.
CLARE MCCARTY WOMEN IN LEADERSHIP 28 The pilot for the NTEU Clare McCarty Women in Leadership Mentoring Project was launched at a day-long seminar to discuss the issues and concerns preventing women from taking the next steps in union activism.
International ENDING GENDER BASED VIOLENCE AT WORK 35 TIMOR-LESTE WORKING WOMEN’S CENTRE 36
#Feminism AGENDA TURNS 25!
39
#MANSPLAINING 40
Editorial
Lessons from the handmaid’s tale
jeannie rea NTEU
The 2017 television series The Handmaid’s Tale has shocked viewers, particularly those who were not familiar with Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel. The sexual enslavement, the stripping of women’s rights, the authoritarian state which claimed a religious justification, and use of the guns and spies and torture to crush dissent, were all disturbing. Considering what is now known of the fate of the more than 200 Chibok high school girls kidnapped by Boko Haram within Nigeria in 2014, and ‘married’ off to fighters to produce another generation, real life is much more shocking than any dramatisation. When Atwood wrote the novel over three decades ago, she said she was worrying about what had happened following the 1979 Iranian revolution, where the new regime closed their borders and quickly stripped women of their jobs, bank accounts, drivers’ licenses, university places and participation in public life. Atwood also claimed that there was nothing she wrote of in The Handmaid’s Tale that had not happened to women somewhere and often in the name of religion. The lessons from The Handmaid’s Tale, both the story and television series, should be one of strengthening our collective resolve to mobilise for and with people facing violence, suppression and oppression within and across borders around the world. In Atwood’s tale there was a highly dangerous escape route across the land border. Today, the borders across the world are more permeable, but still dangerous for those needing to escape, and so many more people are on the move. (The depiction, in the television series, of arriving as an asylum seeker was notably much friendly than the real reception from Australia today.) Millions of people are living between borders where national and international laws are not applied – but where people are also under constant armed surveillance and exploitation by opportunists making a fortune out of others’ misery and desperation. Frightening is how readily the likes of Boko Haram and ISIS can establish and hold their own borders within nation states and subjugate people. In some cases other nation states
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VOLUME 25 SEPTEMBER 2017
have intervened to try and usurp such states within states, and in some countries long declared and undeclared civil wars go on with degrees of external intervention guided by many motives. However, despite the rhetoric of concern about the oppression of women, never are political or military interventions initiated to liberate women. (And as male violence goes into hyperdrive during military interventions, it is very dangerous for women and girls.) It beggars belief that 200 young women were able to be kept hidden for years in Nigeria. International social media protestations came to naught, as did the United Nations blacklisting Boko Haram. Within Nigeria people despaired as to the extent of any real domestic or international official support to actually find the girls. In Australia we are often complacent about our steadily progressive record on formal women’s rights and gender equality, whilst still properly angry about systemic and ‘everyday’ sexism and discrimination. We are sick of the persistence and consequences of gender occupation segregation to the disadvantage of women and of the persistent gender pay gap. We are relieved that at last serious action is being taken against the scourge of gender based and sexual violence in the home, workplace, university and other public places. We are not as motivated as we all should be about how much more difficult it is for Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander women and girls seeking gender rights and justice in their communities, while up against the pernicious racism of Australian public policy and opinion that has let the NT intervention, for example, go on for ten years. Atwood’s Gilead regime could get some ideas from Australian government policies on grinding down the already poor and powerless.
What is galling about the recommendations from the recent report on the prevalence of sexual violence at universities is that they propose doing things we already did decades ago. But people moved on, lost their jobs, persistence fell away and institutional and cultural memory faded. What we have learned is that we cannot take advances for granted, but constant vigilance, resilience and repetition is needed. When Atwood wrote The Handmaid’s Tale, all those years ago, she wanted to remind us not to get too smug and comfortable, as what we had won could be lost far too easily. Atwood’s sentiments also remind me of a plea many years ago from a friend, a labour organiser in Thailand, who was trying to get occupational health and safety laws to save the lives of young women working for multinational companies, who were locked in as their factories ignited because of such poor laws and lack of concern. The labour organiser reminded us that we had to work hard to keep and improve what we had won as it showed what was possible for them. Since that time, our working conditions have also deteriorated as our unions have declined in size, density and influence, while our industrial laws ban taking action and standing up for other workers. We need strong and brave unions for ourselves, but also to stand with those who need allies and supporters. Jeannie Rea is NTEU National President and editor of Agenda. jrea@nteu.org.au
NEWS
FWC terminates Murdoch agreement UTAS women call for action On 29 August, the Fair Work Commission (FWC) agreed to Murdoch University’s application to terminate the Enterprise Bargaining Agreement. This means that staff at Murdoch lose enforceable EBA provisions, reverting to vastly inferior Award salaries and conditions.
While Murdoch management has undertaken that they will not cut many key provisions for six months, after that 70 of 110 employment conditions could be lost: salaries could be cut 20–39%; paid parental leave could become unpaid; superannuation contributions could decrease; redundancy payments could fall by one-third; and academic workload regulation could disappear. Staff will be dependent on promises and policies that the University can change at any time. Murdoch management claimed that they could not negotiate a new Agreement with the Union. They did not have to make a great case because the termination clause in the Fair Work Act favours the applicant. NTEU mounted a comprehensive case providing evidence that the Agreement was not the cause of the University’s financial difficulties, nor was it an impediment to remedying the problems. Indeed, the codification of salaries and conditions in the Agreement arguably provides a stable base and the provisions also promote collegiality and consultation, as well as providing important protections for staff including to exercise academic freedom. But this was not enough, and it was too easy for the management to get their way in the FWC, as has happened across other sectors. Employers are cynically using the unfair provisions of the Fair Work Act to undermine unions and destroy workers’ livelihoods. Maintaining decent salaries and continually improving conditions have been achieved in the higher education sector through our determination in enterprise bargaining negotiationa, backed up by industrial action. But the Fair Work Act dramatically constrains our capacity to legally take industrial action. This is one of the many reasons the trade union movement is now saying that rules are broken and must change. Over the years, wages and conditions across many sectors have declined as unions have lost power to organise. NTEU has been a consistent advocate to change the rules so that workers can effectively organise and fairly campaign for decent salaries and conditions – and in doing so address wider issues of discrimination and inequality.
University of Tasmania student Women’s Collective presented a petition of over 3,000 signatures to the Vice-Chancellor calling for action on addressing sexual violence on campus. Women’s Collective spokesperson, Saffire Grant explained that students were concerned that one month out from the national release of the Human Rights Commission’s report on sexual harassment and sexual assault on Australian university campuses that little had changed. Whilst acknowledging that it is only a short time, women’s collective members supported by NTEU, argued that the University was already well aware of the issues on the campus and some posters which put the onus back on women to change their behaviour was not good enough. Speaking at a student and Amnesty International forum, ‘Our Rights to feel safe on campus,’ NTEU National President Jeannie Rea said that the release of the report and endorsement by vice-chancellors across Australia has raised expectations for real change and the onus is upon university managements to show that they are prepared to ‘change the course’ as the report was titled.
As we go to press, NTEU members at Murdoch University are deciding what to do now, knowing that they are backed up by unionists across the country. Jeannie Rea, National President
final model for DVL Australian workers should have a final model for unpaid domestic violence leave (DVL) in awards by the end of 2017.
The Fair Work Commission recently rejected Unions’ case to insert 10 days paid leave in awards, instead consenting to unpaid leave, and the ACTU and employers are preparing final submissions on how this should look. Meanwhile NTEU seeks to extend paid leave provisions in this round of bargaining, building on the 2/3 of agreements which have some form of leave. Two Agreements have been settled this round – at Deakin University and University of Western Australia. At Deakin, staff are entitled to paid special leave at the discretion of the Vice-Chancellor and the new Agreement extends this entitlement to casual staff. The UWA Agreements extend the use of carer’s leave for the purposes of caring for a member of the family or household who is effected by domestic violence. The forthcoming agreement at Central Queensland University includes 10 days paid leave and other improvements to domestic violence leave and at least one other University – yet to settle – has agreed to unlimited leave which will be granted as required. Given the disappointing decision from the Fair Work Commission, it’s vital that paid domestic violence leave be secured in each of our enterprise agreements. We should also seek paid leave for casual staff who already have less certainty in their job security and income.
VOLUME 25 SEPTEMBER 2017
3
NEWS
#paymoregetless: Staff & students protest cuts & fee hikes
Insecure Work and Feminisation of the University Workforce
University staff and students rallied at campuses around the country on Tuesday 8 August for a National Day of Protest to urge the Turnbull Government to scrap planned cuts to higher education and increases in student fees. A series of on-campus meetings endorsed a statement calling on the Senate to reject all cuts to higher education in the 2017 Federal Budget, as well as the proposed increases in HECS HELP rates and decreases in the debt repayment threshold.
Female full time equivalent (FTE) employment grew 43% and 42% for, respectively, academic and general/professional staff between 2005 and 2015.
“The Federal Budget confirmed the Government intends to swindle students by charging more for degrees at the same time as cutting teaching funding to universities, which is why this day of protest was necessary,” said NTEU National President Jeannie Rea. “The statement endorsed by staff also called upon university managements to not only actively reject the higher education package, but to also stop the excessive use of insecure forms of employment and negotiate collective bargaining agreements that strengthen job security.”
This is more than twice the rate of that for males (20% for academic and 24% for general/ professional) over the same period.
The total Australian university workforce grew from 93,993 FTE persons in 2005 to 124,355 FTE persons in 2015. This is an increase of 30,362 FTEs or 32%. The stronger growth in the size the female workforce means that in 2015, female FTE accounted for 56% of the total university workforce compared to only 52% in 2005.
Students also held their own rallies in city centres on 8 August in opposition to the Government’s package. The protest fell the day before Parliament received the report of the Senate Committee Inquiry into the Government’s higher education package, and was timed to send a clear message to politicians, that they must heed the united calls of the sector and oppose the cuts.
At the time of writing, the package was yet to be brought back before Parliament, but was expected to be debated before year’s end.
A more detailed analysis, in a recent Advocate article (July 2017)) which broke down employment into type of employment contract (casual, limited term or tenurial) showed that the categories of FTE employment that grew fastest over the last decade were all insecure forms of employment namely:
The Day of Protest garnered significant media attention, with #PayMoreGetLess and #SecureJobs trending on Twitter all day.
• Limited term female general/professional (81%)
Andrew MacDonald, NTEU Media & Communications Officer
• Actual casual female academics at (66%) • Actual casual female general/professional (61%), and • Actual casual male general/professional (58%). By contrast the two categories that experienced, by far the slowest growth were: • Tenurial male academics (3%) and
Australian University Workforce by Gender and Function, FTE 2005 to 2015
• Tenurial male general/professional (9%). The data show both strong growth in female employment and an unmistakable trend towards more insecure forms of employment. In 2005, 59% of all university FTE were ongoing (tenurial) positions. By 2015, this proportion had shrunk to 53%. The data show a strong relationship between increasing feminisation of the university workforce and rising employment insecurity. The question is whether the increased feminisation of the university workforce has resulted in lower levels of employment security, or whether the lower level of employment security has resulted in the feminisation of the workforce. Paul Kniest, Policy & Research Coordinator
140000
120000
100000
80000
60000
Male G/P
Male Academic
Female G/P
Female Academic
93,993
95,754
19,343
19,207
25,470
25,847
98,289 19,349
26,414
102,270 19,950
26,958
107,220 20,898
27,789
110,930 21,475
28,295
124,355
23,075
23,546
23,897
30,237
30,452
30,502
20%
29,851
120,355
22,737
29,184
114,882 22,112
38,011
39,549
40,116
41,496
42,323
42%
43%
29,830
30,448
31,489
33,123
19,350
20,252
21,037
22,239
23,484
24,560
25,575
26,094
26,927
27,454
27,633
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
20000
0
Source: Data Supplied by Department of Education and Training
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VOLUME 25 SEPTEMBER 2017
24%
36,600
35,049
40000
32%
122,948
118,231
NEWS
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Women @ NTEU
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of higher education over half of staff are w NTEU mem omen and bers are w Yet we still omen. experienc e sexism an discriminat d face ge ion, which nder base explains w not propor d hy women tionally re presented ar making ro in senior an e still les and ov d decision er represen casual an ted d short term contract po in part-time, There is st sitions. ill a Gende r Pay Gap sector aver in the educ ag ation national G ing around 10% (c ompared en to the case in ou der Pay Gap of 17 %). This is r universitie also the s. Illustrating the persiste nce of the graduate from univer problem, women sity into a Gap which 3.4% Gen blows out der Pay to 9.3% in just three years.
NTEU has produced a brochure to explain to members (and potential members) the activities of women in the Union, including the Women’s Action Committee, Women’s Conference and Bluestocking Week. Download the PDF at www.nteu.org.au/women/publications/nteu_women_flyer
Join the NTEU Women’s network NTEU has established an online mailing list for women members, known as the NTEU Women’s Network. The Network was one of the many actions to come from the 2017 Women’s Conference, with 68 women initially signing up, and the list continuing to grow. The Network is intended to be used for information, news and discussion on topics of interest to NTEU women. All NTEU women members are welcome to join! Subscribe by contacting Terri MacDonald at tmacdonald@nteu.org.au
7
Sally McManus ACTU Secretary When Sally McManus was appointed ACTU Secretary in March this year, there was some nervousness as Sally is the first woman in the role and joins Ged Kearney the ACTU President as the leaders of the Australian trade union movement. Two women, two strong feminists, from the Australian Services Union (ASU) and the nurses union (ANMF), both majority women unions. What was happening to the ACTU? Media and employer commentators immediately harked back to the good old days of Bob Hawke and Martin Ferguson. There would be no doubting now that gender was central to the ACTU agenda! What they seemed to have missed was that women are now the majority of trade union members, joining unions at a faster rate than men. Unfortunately, the decent unionised “men’s” jobs continue to disappear and the new jobs, often insecure jobs, are hard to organise. But the nervousness went into overdrive as Sally McManus announced in her first television interview that she agreed bad laws should be broken. This has morphed into a thoughtful re-focusing of the ACTU’s public and internal approach to the need to change the rules governing industrial relations. Labor’s Fair Work Act is now being strongly defended by employers, which is surely evidence that it does not represent the interests of workers. Since becoming Secretary Sally has been using all the skills and experience she gained most recently as director of ACTU Campaigns, and previously as the Branch Secretary and as an Organiser with the ASU in NSW & ACT for 22 years. During Sally’s time as NSW/ACT ASU Branch Secretary their membership grew from 9,500 to 12,000 members. She has led many successful campaigns in the private, public and community sectors including a campaign preventing water privatisation and the Equal Pay campaign for community and disability workers that delivered between 18–40% pay increases. Jeannie Rea, NTEU National President Above: Jeannie Rea, Sally McManus and Virginia Mansel Lees at NTEU National Executive meeting April 2017
VOLUME 25 SEPTEMBER 2017
5
NEWS
women & job security at melbourne uni Why are we campaigning for secure jobs what do it mean for women workers? Well lets’ take a progressive well-endowed university in the Go8, the University of Melbourne and find out. The University of Melbourne’s Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) 2015-16 Public Report states that in 2016: • 58.4% of non-manager employees were women. • 59.5% of non-manager casual employees were women. • 42.6% of non-manager women were employed casually. • 28% of non-manager women were on fixed-term contracts. Looking at these statistics we can confidently say that the problem of precarious work is a gender issue at the University of Melbourne. With precarious employment comes a range of problems – such as being subject to having employment terminated periodically despite good performance, unpaid gaps between employment, lack of promotional opportunities and career paths. Additionally, the bulk of these workers are only earning the superannuation guarantee of 9.5% in an industry where the NTEU has negotiated a 17% employer contribution. Watering down the necessary protections and regulations on labour in collective agreements, or to put it another way, leaving the gate open for unfettered casualisation of work by higher education
employers, means that women are clearly being left behind. For example, according to UniSuper the average savings balance their members at age 65 is $333,000 for women and $529,000 for men (2015 figures). This equates to a retirement saving gap between men and women who have worked in universities of 37%. It’s this 37% that the Union is trying to make up through campaigning for secure jobs. This 37% is the time women take off for caring responsibilities and to raise children. It’s the systemic discrimination that faces women face at work, the lack of promotional opportunities and career paths and the gaps in between contracts. The rise of precarious work means lifelong inequality for women throughout their working lives and into retirement. Chloe Gaul, Industrial Organiser, University of Melbourne
Partnership with Deakin Violence Prevention Researchers on IPV Project
Above: Amelia Sully, Victorian Division Growth Recruiter at the Engineering Faculty, University of Melbourne.
Over the last 12 months, the NTEU has worked with Deakin researchers and NTEU members, Dr Arlene Walker, Dr Lucy Zinkiewicz, Dr Shannon Hyder and Mr Nic Droste, in a study investigating the impact of intimate partner violence (IPV) in the workplace. The research also investigates how IPV (which encompasses domestic, family and other forms of relational violence and abuse), intersects with the use of substances and mental health. The initial research is intended to provide a basis for a later ARC grant. The NTEU is an external partner in the research project and has facilitated the surveying of NTEU members at 13 institutions nominated by the research team. The survey asked a series of questions that investigated and mapped the use (and barriers to use) of family and domestic violence (F&DV) policy/strategy, the implementation of F&DV policy/strategy and what assistance for those seeking help in the workplace was available (this also included asking about barriers to seeking help). At the close of the survey in August, over 1000 NTEU members had responded to the survey. Both the NTEU and Deakin’s Violence Prevention researchers are aware of the importance of maintaining employment for those impacted by IPV, as it allows for financial security, a means to leave a violent relationship, a safe haven from the violence and increased self-worth. Research has also shown that appropriate workplace support can increase job retention and career advancement for victims and lead to greater awareness and better responsiveness from employers. However, while the NTEU has led the way in ensuring that all Enterprise Agreements have F&DV leave entitlements and many institutions have gone further in policy, there is little Australian research that evaluates their overall effectiveness. As such, the results of this important research will assist the NTEU both in gauging the effectiveness of the various domestic and family violence clauses and policies currently in place, and help us to determine where further improvements can be made. Terri MacDonald, Policy & Research Officer
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VOLUME 25 SEPTEMBER 2017
NEWS
Bargaining with a Gender Lens NTEU Round 7 bargaining is framed by a crisis of insecure work. This is why job security is front and centre of our negotiations across universities. The figures are stark:
Our industry superannuation fund, UniSuper estimates that there is a retirement savings gap of 37 per cent between men and women in universities. If we don’t increase superannuation contributions for women and bargain to close the gaps (for example, by insisting on superannuation contributions during periods of parental leave), this is projected to get worse.
• 4 out of 5 teaching-only staff are casuals • At least half of all university teaching is performed by casuals • 4 out of 5 research only staff are on fixed term contracts • 2/3 of total university staff are employed insecurely Aside from trying to secure continuing work for casual and fixed term staff, we are also approaching secure work from the other end – attempting to stop ‘sham’ redundancies. We are asking employers to consider work, not jobs, and to reconfigure work and individual jobs rather than make whole jobs ‘redundant’ when only part of the work is no longer required. As the majority of staff in insecure employment are women, women stand to benefit most from any improvements in conditions.
A recent Per Capita and Australian Services Union report, Not So Super, For Women: Superannuation and Women’s Retirement Outcomes1, examined the “wicked problem” of women’s retirement savings. The report listed a range of factors which contribute to inadequate and unfair retirement savings for women, including: • Part time and casual work • The gender pay gap
So claims to convert fixed term and casual staff to on-going employment and to improve conditions for contract research staff are central to our bargaining strategy.
• Carer responsibilities
Bargaining claims at Universities include:
• Living longer
• Conversion for long-term academic casuals
• Poor financial literacy
• Conversion for fixed- term staff on a 2nd contract
• Cost and availability of child care
• Consolidation and extension of the Scholarly Teaching Fellow (STF) category to replace casual employment
• Relationship breakdowns
• Redundancy as a last resort • No new fixed term categories • Quality part-time rather than casual wok for professional staff • Improved paid parental leave
• Age discrimination • Unaffordable housing
Unions can directly impact just a few of these factors; industrially by negotiating improved wages and conditions, via our membership and participation on Industry Superannuation funds, and through submissions and lobbying on government policy, for example around models for affordable child care and paid parental leave.
• Improved superannuation
At the time of writing, two Round 7 Agreements have been concluded – both achieved improved superannuation for fixed term staff. At the University of Western Australia, fixed term staff will be on full 17 per cent superannuation payments by June 2021. At Deakin University fixed term staff will receive 17 per cent superannuation from 1 March 2018.
Superannuation
Retirement savings are just one example of where job insecurity can impact workers.
The focus on superannuation this round is an attempt to achieve full superannuation contributions for university staff on fixed-term or casual employment. This would go some way to addressing the earnings gap in retirement savings between men and women.
Applying a gender lens to bargaining is meaningless if we don’t consider job security. With more secure jobs comes better pay, superannuation, career progression, savings and planning for every area of women’s lives.
• Payment of superannuation contributions while on parental leave • Right to return to the same job from parental leave • Flexible working provisions
Currently most NTEU members need to be on a 2-3 year minimum period of contracts before they are eligible for full industry superannuation payments of 17 per cent. Many fixed term and all casual staff receive the SGC minimum payment, currently 9.5 per cent.
Susan Kenna, National Industrial Officer 1. Hetherington, D & Smith, W, Not So Super, For Women: Superannuation and Women’s Retirement Outcomes, Per Capita and Australian Services Union, July 2017.
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NEWS
Feminism in the Pub Presenting the case for Women in Higher Education Members and staff of NTEU attended a forum at Melbourne’s Trades Hall to discuss gender equality and the experiences of women in today’s workforce with Lisa Chesters, Shadow Assistant Minister for Workplace Relations.
Feminism in the Pub is a series of events held at pubs in Melbourne at which feminist activists speak on a panel about taking action on gender equality issues. People attending the events listen to and participate in the panellists’ discussions of the issues and how we can take action on them (and eat hot chips). Feminism in the Pub first arose as one event in the festival calendar of the Women’s Rights at Work Festival (WRAW Fest), a week of events about women’s workplace rights organised by the Victorian Trades Hall Council Women’s Team. At the event at the 2017 WRAW Fest in March, panellists, including NTEU Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Organiser Celeste Liddle, spoke about feminist activism. The event was so popular that further panels on sexism at work, and feminism and intersectionality were held.
The panel events are organised by the VTHC Women’s Team and a group of activists, who meet to plan the events and to discuss our feminist politics. We spoke about the impact of insecure work and NTEU members and staff have participated as speakers, on the panel, and casualisation on women in higher education, where a as activists planning the events. casual job was initially a stepping stone to a good career but how these roles now form a treadmill that casuals can’t get At our upcoming Feminism in the Pub event (6.30 pm on Wednesday off, where they are completely unable to access the initiatives 12 September at The Bull and Bear Tavern at 347 Flinders Lane, to support gender equality in the workplace. We outlined Melbourne) we will discuss equal pay. our concerns that for casual employees, to whom many of the Amelia Sully, Victorian Division Growth Recruiter National Employment Standards do not apply, that a gender pay If you would like to participate in organising future Feminism in the Pub gap analysis has no consideration of casual workers, and that they events, contact VTHC Women’s Safety and Rights Organiser Connor are excluded from all of the initiatives in the Enterprise Agreement such Borchard-Burns at cborchardburns@vthc.org.au or 0476 295 332. as flexible working arrangements, carers leave and parental leave. Every year, each university is obliged to undertake a Workplace Gender Equality Audit, and provide data to the government on staff access to things like parental leave, carers leave, equal opportunity promotion, a gender pay gap analysis and so on. We outlined that these initiatives are great for ongoing staff, but for the 50 per cent of the workforce who were casual and don’t receive access to these initiatives, no reporting is done.
Below: Feminism in the Pub planning meeting
The challenges with work and caring responsibilities in higher education were highlighted, with members providing examples of where requests for family friendly working arrangements have been refused. Lisa Chesters MP spoke about the challenges she sees in the current workforce, with employers equating productivity with reducing their employee numbers and replacing them with a low paid labour hire workforce. She spoke about the importance of the Trade Union movement in standing together to achieve improvements within our workplaces and the importance of our movement in campaigning for improvements for the broader community. Miranda Jamieson, Victorian Division Organiser
Left: NTEU women at the VTHC event with Lisa Heap, Trades Hall Lead Women’s Organiser and Lisa Chesters MP
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Feminist Educators Against Sexism #FEAS Feminist Educators Against Sexism #FEAS is an international feminist collective that was founded in 2016 by Mindy Blaise (VU), Emily Gray (RMIT) and Linda Knight (QUT). #FEAS develop arts-based interventions into sexism in the academy. We use a mix of humour, irreverence, guerrilla methodology and collective action to interrupt and disarm both everyday and institutional sexism within higher education and other spaces. Our interventions aim to draw attention to the inequalities that shape higher education for women. We perform our interventions as pop ups at conferences to push issues of gender inequality into spaces where it is not usually found. Examples of our interventions are sexist/anti-sexist bingo cards; stand up comedy; and pipeline myth t-shirts that display statistical data that demonstrates that sexism is endemic within Australian universities and that the academic ‘pipeline’ is a myth for many women – in the Australian professoriate, women are outnumbered by men who outnumber women by more than 2 to 1 according to Strachan et al.’s 2016 research. We also wish to promote women’s scholarship and so have set up a Cite Club that has 80 members who have shared 57 of their publications over the past 3 months. Cite Club therefore aims to bring attention to the ways in which knowledges are privileged and subjugated and of the role we ourselves may play in this, and have done historically. As academics we work in institutions that are characterised by inequalities, for women, for queer people, people of colour, disabled people and Indigenous people. Emily Gray, #FEAS
feministeducatorsagainstsexism.com Right: FEAS comedy routine in action. To join Cite Club email emily.gray@rmit.edu.au #FEAS NTEU edition t-shirts coming soon!
ACTU calls to change the rules
The ACTU has released the findings of its survey highlighting the issues faced by carers juggling a caring role with paid work.
The survey of more than 54,000 people found that one in eight Australian employees is a family or friend carer of someone who has a disability, a chronic condition, a mental illness, a terminal illness or who are frail or aged. The ACTU’s new campaign “Change the Rules for Working Women & Families” calls for workers to have the right to be able to reduce their hours on a temporary basis. Currently, there is a right to request, but the employer can simply refuse and there is no right of appeal. The survey found that 60 per cent of people have never asked for reduced hours to assist with juggling family caring and work, with many worried about their job security and many suggesting that their workplace management and culture does not support flexible hours of work. The ACTU is arguing in the Fair Work Commission (FWC) that all employees should be entitled to reduced or part-time working hours when they have caring and parenting responsibilities, on a temporary basis, and go back to their role and previous hours when caring responsibilities reduce or cease. The FWC will hear the case in December. The Change the Rules campaign is also targeting the gender pay gap, insecure work and inequality, and 10 days paid family and domestic violence leave for all workers. Terri MacDonald, Policy & Research Officer For more information go to www.australianunions.org.au/campaigns
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Bluestocking week
Bluestocking week worth 100%
Terri MacDonald NTEU
Bluestocking Week (BSW) was held from 14–18 August 2017, with activities in all states and territories. The theme for this year was Worth 100%, which was inspired by the gender pay equity campaign used by the public sector union in New Zealand in 2016. However, BSW expanded on this theme, using it as a touchstone to highlight gender based discrimination both in higher education institutions and more broadly. Read below edited accounts of BSW events from around the country.
ACT The ACT Division was delighted with the success of this year’s Bluestocking Week events. The week began with an after-work drinks gathering at Australian Catholic University Canberra, with a presentation and discussion on gender inequality in employment. ACT Division Secretary Rachael Bahl highlighted the problems of feminised work, and National Industrial Officer Susan Kenna focused on insecure work which affects women disproportionately.
an overview of WAC initiatives in 2017, including the Clare McCarty Women’s Leadership (Mentorship) pilot program that aims to empower women members with opportunities for leadership through mentoring.
Liddle, ‘Black Feminist Ranter’ and NTEU National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Organiser spoke powerfully and from the heart about three generations of women in her family and their pursuit of education.
The evening was MC’d by the ever-dynamic Janet Giles, former SA Unions Secretary (now at the PSA). Guest speaker Celeste
Sandra Dann, Director of the SA Working Women’s Centre, presented on the vital work of the Centre and drew the raffle.
At a lunchtime panel at the University of Canberra, Susan spoke again about job security, which is one of the highest priorities for the NTEU in the current enterprise bargaining round. National President Jeannie Rea refuted arguments that the gender pay gap is simply due to women’s interrupted careers or lack of interest in senior roles. She highlighted instead the ways sexism influences promotion and pay decisions. The climax of Bluestocking Week was the Feminist Trivia Night, which raised $700 for Union Aid Abroad-APHEDA, and raised consciousness, with not-so-trivial questions about women in history and today.
SA The SA Division hosted its fifth annual Bluestocking Week dinner on 17 August at the Thai Lemongrass Bistro in Rundle St. The fundraising dinner was a sell-out success and the Division’s biggest, most inspiring event yet. SA WAC representative, Kate Borrett, opened with a brief history of ‘Bluestockings’, the motivation behind the theme for BSW 2017 and provided
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Top: The highlight of the ACT Bluestocking Week was the Feminist Trivia Night. Bottom: Compilation of photos from SA’s successful Bluestocking Dinner.
bluestocking week A portion of the proceeds from every BSW event ticket sold and sales from the evening’s raffle helped raise over $1600 to go towards the vital work of the Centre.
Victoria The Victorian Division once again ran a Trivia Night for Bluestocking Week attended by an enthusiastic group of Trivia buffs. The event took place at the Division offices in South Melbourne with a flurry of decorating undertaken by the organising committee so that when people arrived there was a sea of blue including blue lights. Questions are always a large part of any trivia night and this year was no exception ...some complained that the feminist questions were too difficult, with other tables able to streak through them! APHEDA ran the raffle on the night with some wonderful things donated from the Timor-Leste Women’s Centre including a signed poster from their current campaign. Money raised from the night was donated to APHEDA and will be used for the East Timorese women. A terrific night with lots of fun and frivolity. Roll on 2018!
NT Charles Darwin University celebrated BSW by leading a campaign to raise awareness and “Celebrating Indigenous Women in Academia” with a focus on fighting attitudes that seek to silence the voices of women, and highlighting the importance of women speaking out and sharing their stories and views particularly Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and women of colour. The annual BSW morning tea at Casuarina CDU campus was opened by Sylvia Klonaris (Division Vice-President General/Professional Staff) and was well attended with more
Above: Sara Brocklesby, Melbourne Branch Secretary at the Victorian Division Feminist Trivia Night. Below left: NT Division Secretary Lolita Wikander gunning the Worth 100% t-shirt. Below right: Sylvia Klonaris, Dr Sue Stanton and Donelle Cross at the CDU morning tea.
than 90 NTEU members. Guest speaker and Aboriginal Elder, Dr Sue Stanton dedicated her speech to the memory of her grandmother, and shared her personal experiences and views. She encouraged women to continue to challenge sexist and racist attitudes in western academia.
Hundreds of students and staff also engaged in discussion on the Tuesday when the NTEU collaborated with the UTas Women’s Collective to run a BSW stall in the centre of campus, which included information about the week, and campaign material to promote the safety of staff and students.
There were also BSW Library displays at the Casuarina and Palmerston campuses and Darwin Waterfront.
On Thursday evening, the discussion around gender equity continued at the NTEU’s screening of the film Norma Rae, with the take home message for the evening for both staff and students that if they want to take action on gender inequality they should join and support the Union.
Tasmania During Bluestocking Week, students and staff across UTas campuses considered the range of disadvantages that still face women in higher education at a range of events. The week kicked off with an NTEU gender pay gap morning tea on the main Sandy Bay campus, which was then replicated at UTas’ satellite venues in the following days to engage a diverse range of staff members.
At all of the events throughout the week, the NTEU also collected donations for ‘Share the Dignity,’ which provides sanitary products for homeless, and domestic violence affected women. The donations will be delivered before the end of August. continued over page...
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bluestocking SECTIONweek
focused gender disparities in terms of pay and seniority in both the legal profession and academia. Participants in the meeting expressed concerns about the apparent lack of application of gender equity principals during the recent professional staff restructuring at UNSW Sydney, and resolved to raise these issues with the University in the Union’s annual meeting to discuss the WGEA report.
Top: Celebrating Bluestocking Week at ACU Banyo Campus. Left: Striking a pose at Curtin. Right: Bluestocking decorations at the University of Tasmania.
NSW
Federation, who were awarded tickets to the upcoming Equal Pay Dinner.
The NSW Division celebrated Bluestocking Week with a feminist trivia night, raising money for Rape and Domestic Violence Services Australia (R&DVSA). Sixty people gathered at Sydney’s historic Trades Hall to test their knowledge on iconic women and feminist achievements, set to a playlist of feminist tunes. Our fabulous MC for the night was Suzanne Jamieson, who was presented with her NTEU Life Membership award on the evening. Attendees raised $1,000 to help R&DVSA provide 24/7 telephone counselling services for anyone in Australia who has experienced or is at risk of sexual violence, family or domestic violence and their non-offending supporters. The trivia winners were a table of our friends from the NSW Teachers’
UNSW Branch hosted a lunchtime panel discussion about women at work, the historic campaign for equal pay, how women fare in the university sector and how we manage work/life balance. Branch Committee member and UNSW Branch Representative to the NTEU Women’s Conference, Louise Fitzgerald, facilitated a discussion with Assoc. Prof. Anne Junor (Industrial Relations Research Centre, UNSW) and Assoc. Prof. Fiona Martin (School of Taxation and Business Law, UNSW Business School, Solicitor of the Supreme Court of New South Wales (non-practising), Federal Court and High Court of Australia). Anne presented on the historic campaign for equal pay for women, up to the present day. Fiona
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At Southern Cross Branch the debate ran hot at this year’s BSW event with this year’s theme Worth 100% reflecting the question “Why is there still a 10% gender pay gap in education, when women and their unions have organised so successfully over so long for gender equity?“ A lively discussion ensured with reasons ranging from interrupted careers to the impacts of sexism and male domination in the workplace. When asked “In light of what we have talked about today, what advice would you give yourself on your first day of work at SCU if you knew then what you know now?” The answer was an interesting “say no to more” Participants were keen to meet again to explore this and other topics more fully. Macquarie Branch held a morning tea around the theme “Not So Super, For Women”. The Macquarie Branch President Dr Alison Barnes extended an invitation to Natalie Lang, Secretary of the Australian Services Union (NSW and ACT Branch) to come and speak to a report the ASU commissioned on superannuation. The report found that Australia’s universal superannuation system is failing many Australian women. Apart from the disappointment of knowing that the superannuation system is failing women, a good day was had by all the women that attended.
Bluestocking week Authorised by Jeannie Rea, NTEU National President, 120 Clarendon St, Sth Melbourne VIC 3205
Above: Bluestocking Week Q&A at Griffith: What women have won and what women still fight for. Below: Morning tea Bluestocking celebrations at the University of Newcastle.
WA The UWA Branch held a panel discussion featuring some of the key women from the successful campaign to stop the controversial Roe 8 Highway progressing through the Beeliar Wetlands during the recent WA State election. Bibbulmun woman Corina Abraham, who challenged WA Aboriginal Affairs Minister Peter Collier under the WA Aboriginal Heritage Act, performed a Welcome to Country. Corina was then joined by Oxford graduate and journalist Phoebe Corke, Rethink the Link coordinator Kim Dravnieks, UWA graduate and investigative journalist Lou Wales, and sustainability changemaker and non-violent direct activist Shona Hunter.
Queensland At James Cook University, issues of sexual assault, sexual harassment and everyday sexism were the focus of Bluestocking Week events. A screening of The Hunting Ground, followed by a Q&A panel with sexual assault services and JCU Counselling staff started the week in both Cairns and Townsville.
This was followed up with a women’s afternoon tea, co-hosted by NTEU and JCU’s Gender Equity Committee. Over brownies and tea, women talked about experiences of everyday sexism and the importance of collective efforts to combat sexism. Griffith University had morning tea in the sunshine outside the library, highlighting the ‘blue’ theme, with blue iced cupcakes and blue stockings, with professional/general and academic staff enjoying each other’s company. Passers-by stopped for cupcakes and conversation, including some students, young women and men who were happy to learn about Bluestocking Week and were very supportive. In the library adjacent, there was a large window display of posters and Bluestockings, where those women in higher education who have demonstrated collegiality and support as well as personal achievement were celebrated. The library staff were also very supportive in hosting this display and ensuring that it had good visibility. At Griffith Gold Coast Campus a Q&A panel of students and staff debated what women
have won and what women still fight for. Guest speaker Prof Patricia Wise discussed feminism across the generations. At UQ Bluestocking Week was celebrated with a lunch shared with staff and students. It was an important event covering two significant and current issues, the release of the Change the Course report as well as the negotiation of a Domestic and Family Violence clause in the Enterprise Agreement. Chairing the lunch was Victoria van Schie, a proud Gamileroi woman and NTEU representative on the Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Employment Steering Committee. Speaking about the University’s response to the Change the Course report was Dee Gibbon, Associate Director of Equity and Inclusion. Deborah Walsh, Branch Committee Member and domestic and family violence specialist spoke about developing appropriate provisions in a domestic violence clause. Rounding up these engaging talks was Sabina Rooney, Student Union Vice-President (Gender and Equity) who gave a students’ perspective on the Respect. Now. Always campaign. For a more comprehensive list of BSW activities visit the BSW website:
www.nteu.org.au/women/bluestockingweek
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ahrc report
Changing the course on sexual violence at Australian unis
Jeannie rea NTEU
We did not need another survey to tell us that sexual harassment and sexual assault is an ongoing issue for Australian universities impacting upon students and staff on campus, at university events on and off campus, travelling to campuses, in residences and online. Foreword to Change the Course, AHRC national report of the survey on sexual assault and sexual harassment at Australian universities. There are three unavoidable conclusions in this report: • Sexual assault and sexual harassment are far too prevalent in university settings as they are in the broader community. • There is significant under-reporting of sexual assault and sexual harassment to the university, and • Universities need to do more to prevent such abuse from occurring in the first place, to build a culture of respect and to respond appropriately by supporting victims of abuse and sanctioning perpetrators. The results of the prevalence survey are a reflection of the unacceptably high levels of sexual violence in the broader Australian community. We know from existing research that young people, especially young women between the ages of 18 and 24, are at an increased risk of experiencing sexual violence. The rates of violence experienced by young people are a call to action for Australian universities. Every young person who is contemplating a university education is entitled to expect that they will be able to study in an environment that is safe and promotes their wellbeing. Kate Jenkins, Sex Discrimination Commissioner
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However, the NTEU strongly supported Universities Australia (UA) in commissioning an independent survey - but not just as a data collecting exercise. Our interest was to shine a light on the scourge of sexual harassment and sexual assault to make lasting changes. For too long students and staff at Australian universities have been ignored, criticised and often silenced for speaking out on sexual violence. However, as stated in our media release following the release of the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) report on 1 August, the Union views sexual harassment and sexual assault as a critical issue affecting the work and lives of students and staff.
Management responsibility The NTEU also stated that the responsibility for responding to the findings of the national survey on sexual harassment and sexual assault at Australian universities lies with university managements. This was another reason why we supported the survey as it would focus attention on a systemic problem and make it harder for any university to ignore their individual and collective responsibilities for addressing the issues. We said that we expected every university to address both the issues in general, and those specific to their situation. It was not an occasion for rankings and comparisons, but for sharing good practices and shedding bad ones. When the report was released, UA and individual vice-chancellors responded
appropriately, respectfully acknowledging and even formally apologising to those who had been sexually assaulted and harassed. Importantly, there was acknowledgement that universities at the highest levels had presided over a culture of cover-ups, where to report harassment or assault was considered at best useless and at worst likely to attract retaliation. University leaders and senior management have promised to do better. As Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins wrote in her foreword to the report, “Swift and deliberate action with clear accountability is required by universities to improve their response to sexual violence.” It was very disappointing that rather than jumping on the bandwagon of recognising that sexual violence at universities is unacceptable, as is the case everywhere else in our society, some commentators could not help themselves but to quibble about the rigour of the survey methodology. This was particularly ironic as Universities Australia was persuaded to commission the prevalence survey because they questioned the methodology of the National Union of Students (NUS) Talk About It survey. The AHRC survey was developed in consultation with Roy Morgan Research and the ABS amongst others. Written submissions were also invited through the AHRC website with over 1800 received. However, there are legitimate concerns with some of the questions and consequent findings. The questions were open to interpretation, ironically because of low shared knowledge and understanding of
AHRC report what constitutes sexual harassment and assault in popular culture and legally. However, properly constituted university committees responsible for implementing the report’s recommendations should include, or invite in the expertise, to investigate further surprising results.
Change the course:
What is going on?
NATIONAL REPORT ON SEXU AL ASSAULT AND SEXUAL HARASSMENT AT AUSTRALI AN UNIVERSITIES • 2017
The submissions highlighted a number of recurring themes, including that alcohol was a factor particularly in sexual violence at social events, and that residential settings provided easy access to bedrooms for perpetrators, whether ‘in a residential college, private home, university camp or overseas trip.’ A common theme was also that of perpetrators abusing a position of power, not only in some cases as staff, but much more often by students in leadership positions in clubs, on camps and in residences. The ‘rape culture’ on residential campuses featured in the US film The Hunting Ground does have shocking corollaries on similar settings in Australia, which have to be exposed and stopped. The research showed over and over again that underlying attitudes towards women, gender roles, relationships and sex explained the prevalence of sexual assault and harassment at universities. Put together with the findings that the majority of students who had witnessed an incident of sexual assault or harassment failed to take any action at the time, and that bystanders and those who were harassed or assaulted did not report it to the university (or to the police), these results are indicative of a climate where too many students are accepting of sexual harassment and assault. Furthermore, they may also assume that nothing will be done, or if they do report an incident, it may do them and others more harm, but not necessarily impact upon the situation or perpetrator(s).
Changing attitudes & behaviours Therefore, the reasoning behind the recommendations of the report makes real sense. An immediate focus must be upon developing, implementing and monitoring policies and procedures for managing, reporting and following through on sexual harassment and sexual assault, but just as importantly the focus must be on changing attitudes and behaviours. All the lights, sexual harassment advisers, shuttle buses, posters, demands to report sexual assault, restrictions upon students (and staff) free movement around campus and online monitoring may all assist, but
only in terms of giving students (and staff) some comfort that it makes it harder for potential perpetrators. No tolerance clauses in policies and codes of conduct and mandatory reporting of criminal actions to the police will assist in showing that universities are serious about addressing these issues and not covering up. But most of these are crisis responses to ameliorating risk, in the first instance to the students, but somewhat more cynically, the risk to the universities’ reputations and adverse financial exposure. We do not want the outcomes, though, to be the creation of an environment that circumscribes movement, communication and relations between and amongst students and staff because of the behaviour of a few (too many, but still a few). For example, NTEU is currently working with UA and the Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations (CAPA) on protocols for managing the supervisor/ supervisee relationship to prevent incidences of sexual harassment or assault. This is
necessary, and any potential implications more broadly on productive scholarly work have to also be addressed. Frankly, we have to own up to and deal with power dynamics and how this intersects with predatory sexual behaviour. So the big challenge is changing attitudes and behaviours and this is about education and training reinforced continually until it is ordinary. This means that the facilities department responds immediately when told sexually explicit and sexist graffiti has appeared; the lecturer reacts to the male student who seems to be sitting too close to a woman and when she moves away he follows; the casual tutor notices and asks a trusted senior colleague what to do when she sees a colleague has been named as a sexual harasser on the toilet wall; a PhD coordinator persists with querying why a student is avoiding meeting with his supervisor; a recreational officer investigates why a women’s sports team does not want to attend the university games; a PVC Students continued over page... VOLUME 25 SEPTEMBER 2017
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AHRC report SECTION the glare of publicity subsides. Some NTEU members have already observed that attention has shifted and they are concerned that little is really going to be done at their institutions. They are therefore taking it upon themselves to both take actions and pressure university management to act, and not just wait for the next review.
responds to all student and staff emails and when delegating insists on report backs; the junior lecturer is supported when she proposes that a slide be included at the start of each lecture reminding students of their rights and responsibilities to call out and report sexual harassment and assault; the supervisor does not dismiss her staff complaint that his colleague is leering and touching him despite given no permission to do so; and it goes on. The big changes will happen when no tolerance is not a poster or a rule, but ordinary behaviour. We have a long way to go for universities to be models of good practice, but there is no reason not to try, and a responsibility to do so.
Staff responsibility NTEU has acknowledged that universities have over time, to varying degrees, attempted to deal with sexual violence through policy and practices. However, constant cost cutting has also adversely impacted upon the continuity and
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effectiveness of services and structures. Frankly, many of those responsible for the sorts of actions recommended by the report have lost their jobs. While vice-chancellors have responded immediately and favourably to implementing the recommendations, we also know that they will not be doing this work themselves (indeed few would even have written their own emails to staff and students). As always, they rely upon staff. NTEU’s concern is that staff will volunteer, or be directed, to take on more work, rather than these new responsibilities being appropriately recognised and counted into work plans and workloads. Otherwise, good plans and programs are set up to fail because of inadequate recognition of the resource requirements. There are industrial implications in implementing the recommendations and we need to be vigilant that staff are not exploited. We also know from past experience that good initiatives have fallen away as soon as
Staff have also suffered from the silencing of the reports of sexual violence in their workplaces, and the preference of some managements to deal with these matters as isolated incidents. NTEU urges further investigation into the prevalence of sexual harassment and assault of staff. We would have preferred that staff were included in this survey, but respected the decision to respond to student demands for action, following the lack of follow through on the findings of National Union of Students (NUS) surveys. However, we are working with the AHRC on including universities in the next Workplace Sexual Harassment phone survey. NTEU will monitor university responses through feedback from Branches and the Women’s Action Committee and invites feedback, reports and ideas from members. Jeannie Rea is NTEU National President Above: Photo campaign organised by End Rape on Campus. Source: www.endrapeoncampusau. org/photo-campaign
ahrc report
Sydney Uni Staff Against Rape
Anna Hush Sydney Uni
“I want to support students and end sexual assault on campus. Enough is enough.” “As a former staff member I stand with students (current, former and prospective) and advocate for these rights.” “All strength to this campaign, which deserves unqualified support from the institution.” These are just a few of the messages of support I have received from staff at the University of Sydney, since founding Staff Against Rape last year. Staff Against Rape is a joint initiative of the undergraduate Women’s Collective, and the local Branch of the NTEU. Through this initiative, we hope to engage staff in the student-led campaign against sexual violence in our university community. There are many reasons that staff care about this issue. A devastating one in five Australian women has experienced sexual violence since the age of fifteen, so many staff have had their own lives, or the lives of family and friends, marked by such violence. We also know that harassment and sexual assault are far too common in the workplace, which creates a clear work health and safety risk, particularly for younger staff, female staff and LGBTI staff. But staff also care about building safe and supportive educational communities, where we do not have to fear violence or harassment, on or off campus. Staff and students are natural allies in holding university managements accountable for their role in fostering safe communities, in providing adequate support services to students, and to taking an active role in the prevention of sexual violence. Through Staff Against Rape, we developed resources that staff can use to promote services that exist for people who have experienced sexual violence. These can be included in Unit of Study outlines, or on lecture slides, to help promote awareness of key services. When we suggested to university management that
all unit outlines should include a section on sexual violence support services, we were told that it would be far too difficult to implement – staff across the university have taken this into their own hands, proving that this simple step was far from impossible.
Together, staff and students, along with parents, alumni and other members of the university community, are a force to be reckoned with. By joining together and demanding evidence-based primary prevention campaigns, properly funded and trained support services on campus, and substantial reform of university sexual misconduct policies, we can create communities that are free from the threat and trauma of sexual violence. Anna Hush is a casual staff member and a current Honours student at the University of Sydney. She is also an Ambassador for End Rape on Campus Australia, and was the Women’s Officer at the USyd SRC in 2016.
Staff Against Rape is a network of University of Sydney staff taking a stance against sexual assault on campus . Visit staffagainstrape.or g to pledge your suppor t and access resources you can use to support students and survivors, including: A list of key services and resources on sexual assa ult to be included in Unit of Stu dy outlines A sample lecture slide informing students of the services and support ava ilable to them Information about resp onding to disclosures of sexual assault
is an initiative of the
On the Staff Against Rape website, staff can access a range of tools to become allies in this campaign, including resources on how to respond to disclosures of assault, information on current events, and how to treat sexual violence sensitively in course material. If you want to know more about Staff Against Rape, have suggestions for further resources, or are interested in setting up a branch on your campus, please contact anna.hush@gmail.com.
www.staffagainstrape.org
USyd Women's Collective .
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ahrc report
Confronting decades of silence
Sophie Johnston NUS
The day the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) released the data of sexual violence on university campuses was an incredibly sobering day. It wasn’t just the severity of the issue that was confronting, but the reality of decades and decades of silence perpetuated by a failure from universities to tackle this issue. The survey found more than 1 in 2 students had experienced sexual harassment in 2015 or 2016 and 6.9 per cent had been sexually assaulted. However this only looked across a two year period, you can only imagine the decades of survivors who weren’t recognised in the data. For over 30 years, student unions and women’s officers have been fighting for recognition of campus sexual violence. Universities refused to take seriously this issue and in doing so silenced countless victims. The failure by universities to implement adequate reporting systems, support survivors and appropriately deal with perpetrators fed into the severity of the problem. It is shocking that 40 per cent of those who experienced sexual assault didn’t report it because they felt that it wasn’t bad enough. We’re told that sexual violence is a stranger who jumps out of the bushes and attacks you; not your classmate or a supposed friend. No victim should ever feel they do not deserve justice and support.
The serious lack of education around consent and respectful relationships feeds into the problem. Particularly for universities, where the very integrated and diverse communities creates an environment where these behaviours can easily manifest, makes it crucial they take responsibility to educate their students. The failure by some universities to put victims and survivors at the heart of responses has created a barrier in overcoming sexual violence on campus. While recommendations made by the AHRC and the 10 point action plan by Universities Australia are steps in the right
direction; until universities are completely transparent and honest about past failings, they will continue to be on the back foot. The National Union of Students (NUS) is here and willing to work constructively with universities, but we will be candid and honest in calling out the failings we see in front of us. NUS welcomes the report from the AHRC that puts students and survivors at the heart of it. This good-practice framework should form the basis of the response going forward. Universities have the data – this report outlines what needs to be done – the responsibility is now theirs. This is just the beginning of a very long road ahead. Students and survivors will continue to fight for justice; until we have report systems, support services, education programs, and clear consequences for perpetrators of this violence. Sophie Johnston is NUS National President Images: NUS AHRC survey release rally. Credit: Mia Carey
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women’s conference
The university re-cast: what needs to change & how?
Virginia Mansel lees QUTE
When asked to be part of a panel that would suggest ways in which the ‘university could be re-cast’ my imagination went into overdrive. However, much of what I thought about is most likely unprintable so I will proceed down a more orderly path ...perhaps! The title of our 2017 NTEU National Women’s Conference ‘Refracted Through the Gender Lens’ raised some questions for me, so I set out to find the correct meaning of the term “refracted” as my starting point. The dictionary meaning of the term is… to make a ray of light change direction at any angle in which it enters. A curious fact that sets out a clear path-awaiting discovery. In seeking to understand the term “refracted” and my subsequent low-rent research, it gave me some ideas about how we might tackle what seems to have become a perennial problem in the academy. Namely, that although women are in a majority, their positioning in areas of major decision-making and/or leadership are still not accessible to many. It seems that the invisibility of women comes about because of that much-refracted ray of light. Perhaps I was onto something… When I think about my own entry to the academy many years ago, it was even more difficult to see a way forward. Perhaps more particularly in regional campuses of major universities where there seemed to be a “set and forget” attitude. There was little recognition that those who chose to work in the regions, often seen as the antipodes by staff on large urban campuses, had somehow set their minds on a different course to being academics specifically because of geography. For me this created endless frustration, not the least of which was that I had failed dismally at geography at school and now faced the prospect of my career being determined by something
completely outside my scope of interest or expertise. Having survived thus far with always working in the antipodes, I began to consider the ways in which universities operate to see if there was indeed a clue as to how to address the problem. Would we need to refract the ray of light in the opposite direction, to be visible or was there some other more interesting way possible? On entry to the academy as a radical lesbian feminist, with a penchant for bright colours, alongside matching shoes and jewellery, my career barely reached lift off and certainly not to the dizzy heights possible. Clearly, invisible I was not, but somehow that wretched ray of light kept eluding me or somehow bending out of shape who I was and where I wanted to be. What I observed was that most senior committees were made up of well-meaning people, some of whom were women, but displaying little diversity in their membership. Was this then the place to begin to unravel the puzzle and to ensure that women in all their forms could proceed to different heights thus creating a more nurturing inclusive environment? It seems simplistic, but unless there is change then we will continue to see the same outcome. In thinking about what those changes might look like, perhaps decision-making could be a starting point. Decisions consistently made within a budgetary framework, make it easy to lose sight of the people who are on the receiving end of those decisions. When there is an insistence that strategic
work be undertaken by external consultants, with a short time frame for feedback, it is hardly surprising that staff are disengaged and highly cynical that their input will be considered and be at all visible in the change proposals. For many it feels as if they are the push-me-pull-me animal from Dr Doolittle stories with little idea of where they may be heading. Leadership needs to be able to demonstrate as mandatory the requirement for there to be inclusive practices so that staff from all areas of the academy are able to position themselves and not hold back because of geography or sexuality or any other element outside of conformity to what has been for many years. We speak of academic freedom as if it was a rarefied being when it is the lifeblood of an institution. In harnessing the greater good, the intersectionality between the many elements that produce a university where the gender lens refracts in a positive manner is what I continue to seek. Finding that ray of light is my mission so that I can be part of the group that bends it to a form and shape that is exciting, exhilarating and ultimately creates renewal. Let us construct those possibilities through our work within the union so that all can benefit. Virginia Mansel Lees is National Convenor of the Queer Unionists in Tertiary Education (QUTE) Caucus.
nteu.org.au/qute
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women’s conference
2017 NTEU Women’s Conference
Refracted by the Gender Lens
With over seventy participants, this year’s biennial NTEU National Women’s Conference was the biggest for years. Almost all branches were represented and delegates confirmed that they expect our union to be a strong and consistent voice for gender equity and women’s rights across all of our activities. This year our focus was upon taking the gender lens, through which we scrutinise NTEU, employers and government policy and practices, to the next level and refract the lens by focusing on intersectionality. The opening plenary squarely focussed upon challenges of intersectionality in unions, with provocative addresses from the NTEU National President Jeannie Rea, the ACTU National Campaigns Director, Kara Keys, a descendant of the Yiman and Gangulu peoples of central Queensland, and Victorian Trades Hall Lead Women’s Organiser Lisa Heap. All addressed how sexism and racism and other prejudices in trade unions impact upon unions’ appeal and effectiveness, noting that lack of reflection and normative assumptions can undermine policies and campaigns. Deakin University Vice-Chancellor Professor Jane den Hollander’s speech reinforced the ongoing frustrations of making women fit into a university structure and practice which rewards (literally) men over women. She is taking this on at Deakin by challenging
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senior men to recognise and own up to their own biases, while also intervening through concrete actions like including issues of diverse genders, sexualities and cultural backgrounds in senior managers’ KPIs, reviewing bonuses and loadings and examining biases in the language and practices in job section and promotions. Importantly, Professor den Hollander emphasised that universities have an obligation to lead the way in making change.
Dr Emily Gray shared some direct actions we can take to call out ongoing sexism in universities. With Mindy Blaise and Linda Knight, Emily founded Feminist Educators Against Sexism #FEAS feminist collective, which is dedicated to developing interventions into sexism in the academy and other educational spaces. A key focus of the conference was upon gendered violence and sexual assault.
women’s conference
Despite decades of calling it out and taking action, the pervasiveness and persistence of gendered and sexual violence in workplaces, including in higher education, remains a major impediment to women‘s and gender rights. In the plenary, chaired by NTEU National Policy & Research Officer Dr Terri MacDonald, the Director Strategic Initiatives for Universities Australia, Dr Renee Hamilton, addressed the student survey part of the Respect. Now. Always. campaign, with Alyssa Shaw, CAPA Women’s Officer and Anna Hush from the University of Sydney Staff Against Rape Campaign, providing student and staff perspectives. The Victorian Trades Hall Women’s team explained their campaign against gendered violence, while Dr Shannon Hyder spoke to Deakin University’s Intimate Partner Violence Research Project, which is investigating the efficacy of workplace actions to support those dealing with such violence. Delegates decided that they would like to keep talking across their Divisions and the country so we are establishing a women’s network (see p.5). Jeannie Rea is NTEU National President For presentations, readings etc:
www.nteu.org.au/women/conference/2017 Images: opposite page: Jeannie Rea opens the Conference.This page, from top: Small group sessions underway; Queensland delegates keeping warm in Pussy Hats; “The university recast – what needs to change and how?” session with (L–R) Dr Sharlene Leroy-Dyer, (Deputy Chair, National A&TSI Policy Committee), Assoc. Prof. Kristen Lyons (UQ), Kate Borrett (Adelaide), Virginia Mansel Lees (QUTE) and Cat Pausé (Women’s Vice-President, NZ TEU); Jenny Smith (UTas), Rachael Bahl (ACT Division Secretary), Miranda Janieson (Vic Div); Deakin University Vice-Chancellor Professor Jane den Hollander.
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A&TSI women SECTION
Two Aboriginal Feminist Unionists Walk Into A Pub...
Celeste liddle NTEU
Kara Keys is a descendant of the Yiman and Gangulu peoples of central Queensland. She commenced work at the ACTU in February 2013 as the ACTU Indigenous Officer and now leads campaigns as an ACTU National Campaign Coordinator. Celeste Liddle is an Arrernte woman and the NTEU National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Organiser, a role she has been in for nearly 7 years. She is also a social commentator, community activist and beer and trivia aficionado. She had some questions for Kara over a pint (a lager for Queenslander Kara and a craft beer for Melburnian Celeste). CL: Let’s go back to the beginning of your union career, Kara. You’ve worked within the AEU, ASU, CPSU and of course the ACTU as the Indigenous Officer for several years prior to taking on your current role as a National Campaign Coordinator. What are some of the most successful and enjoyable campaigns you have been a part of? KK: Yeah, I’ve been around a while, have seen some pretty good blues and been privileged to work with some strong and amazing community members and unionists. I was pretty green during the Your Rights at Work campaign but I remember the exhilaration of hitting the streets talking to everyday people about Howard and his nasty IR laws. Election night 2007 was special. The crew I was with kept blasting The Herd’s The King is Dead – still one of my favourite songs! The energy, and sometimes heartbreak, you get from connecting on a deep level with people about the issues they care about is what keeps my fire burning. Campaigning on issues like Stolen Wages in Queensland and hearing those old people talk of what it was like growing up in Queensland under the Protection Acts was one of the hardest campaigns I’ve been involved in. On the other hand though, the generosity of those Aunties and Uncles in sharing their
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wisdom and strength really made me the campaigner I am today.
a lot of emotional labour into this education/ relationship building process.
As a unionist, working as a workplace organiser or community campaigner, some fights you win and some you lose. That said, if I am having conversations about the power of working together, building collective community strength and creating a vision of hope with the people and communities I work with then yeah, I reckon I’ve been involved in heaps of enjoyable and successful campaigns.
Organising in the women’s space is totally different. At 46 per cent of the population and 51 per cent of the union movement, the base is already there. Everyone understands the issues; the policy work is done and accepted. The spinifex just needs a match!
CL: Within your ACTU National Campaign Coordinator role, you have carriage of women’s campaigns within the union movement, as well as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander campaigns. It’s early days yet, but in what ways have you found organising for the elevation of women’s rights within the movement differs from that of Indigenous issues. Conversely, what are the similarities?
There are plenty of similarities too. The ‘Harvester Man’ notion is still alive and well in Australia; in our industrial laws, institutions, workplace cultures and government. If you are not a middle-aged white male in Australia you will face some form of discrimination and inequality. When reflecting on this, both from an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspective and campaigning for women’s rights, I recall the image of a little old lady at a protest holding a sign “I can’t believe I am still protesting this shit”.
KK: An early reflection about what’s different with the new organising work is sheer numbers! In some ways blackfellas are almost always reliant on allies. At only 3 per cent of the population and union movement, you need your comrades. You have to strategically cultivate those relationships, constantly educate and invest
CL: As mentioned, prior to this year your work in the ACTU was based mainly around Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander workers and their rights; both in the workplace but also driving more broad social justice agendas because our lives are rarely separate from those issues. What are the key lessons you believe all working women
A&TSI women could learn from the struggles of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander workers; but in particular, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women unionists? KK: This is something that I think about a lot. I think both blackfellas and women organise in a more relational way, as opposed to transactional organising. This stems from the fact that like blackfellas, women’s workplace agendas are inherently intertwined with social inequality, and structural discrimination. What I think we can learn from each other is a deeper understanding of intersectionality. As women unionists and workers we need to be much more aware of our own privilege. I have been humbled working with amazing Aboriginal women who, relative to city-based women, have nothing and yet they still understand their privilege in relation to their own community and they exercise that privilege to work for the betterment of their families and communities. When you understand your own privilege and that you are part of the system you draw benefit from; even when you are also discriminated against within that system; this is the first opening to understanding deep relational organising and what true solidarity looks like. I always return to the words of Lila Watson: “If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” CL: We are at a point in the movement now where only 15 per cent of workers are union members despite 60 per cent of workers benefitting from union-negotiated pay and working conditions. In your view, is some of this decline due to the union movement being slow to embrace an intersectional political mindset? How do you believe the movement working in more intersectional ways will boost the relevance of the union movement and lead to membership growth in times where people don’t necessarily see the benefits of collectivisation? KK: Firstly, I think some of our decline is because our entire industrial relations system is broken. It largely still revolves around the notion of the “Harvester Man”. That legal decision was based on a white man’s ability to work a set of hours for which he was paid a base rate and therefore considered a worthy unit of production. This is also premised on the fact that a wife would be home tending to the needs of children and family. It is this antiquated system which
strangles the effectiveness of collectivised labour. It also doesn’t speak to the broader institutional and systematic discrimination faced by women and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. You don’t get the statistics about women retiring in poverty and persistent racial discrimination in employment for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people just because of the IR system, or indeed unions not being as intersectional as they could be.
movement to be a paid work transaction with little value add to their life, then decline is the outcome.
However, the reality is if we change the rules for workers to have more power and the union movement stepped up our efforts in campaigning with diverse groups of workers, this would certainly make a dent in the structural discrimination and racism we see in society today.
All of the unions I have worked for have had amazing and fierce women leaders: Julie Bignel (ASU Clerks); Nadine Flood (CPSU); Susan Hopgood (AEU); Sharan Burrow, Ged Kearney, Sally McManus (ACTU). There are so many others who have influenced me and really this is a just a snippet.
For me the crucial change – which I have referenced before – is we need to be more relational in our organising. Workers aren’t just units of production; life is not just about work: we are a movement of families; friends; multiple identities; sexualities and lived experiences. Whilst our core business tends to be seen as based in the workplace; and indeed this is ultimately where the locus of power is for workers; we can organise relationally rather than transactionally.
Additionally, though, the women that I think of in moments when I need strength are women like Darcel Russell (ex-AEU Deputy Federal Secretary) who was my rock in my early stages of becoming a union campaigner; the amazing teacher aides of Yuendumu/Warlpiri region who taught me about strength of spirit & sense of self; all of the Aunties involved in the Stolen Wages (Qld) campaign who had such strength and grace and through their resistance taught me to never give up.
Through our organising and campaigns we need to be a movement of people, people who care about a range of issues both related to work and to our lives outside work. This would add to the growth of the movement and therefore our collective strength in order to build a fairer and more equal future. This sits in contrast with the individualistic view that people don’t necessarily see the benefits of collectivism. I believe people are inherently collective; they live, love, laugh and cry in a collective of family, community and friends. But if people perceive the
CL: Finally, as an Aboriginal Feminist Unionist, which women have inspired you in your time working in the movement? KK: I feel like I have been incredibly lucky in how many women have invested in me and inspired me personally, culturally and professionally.
And my contemporary black sisters-in-arms, so much to respect and inspire me day to day: Lara Watson (ACTU), Jo Kerr (Chair ACTU Indigenous Committee) and you Liddle – you are ace! Celeste Liddle writes online as Black Feminist Ranter:
www.facebook.com/blackfeministranter/ Above: Celeste Liddle and Kara Keys at the 2017 NTEU Women’s Conference.
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A&TSI women SECTION
A&TSI women at women’s conference
This year’s NTEU Women’s Conference saw a record number of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander (A&TSI) delegates and speakers participating. The particular focus on intersectionality within the women’s movement and the institution offered an opportunity for Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander participants to contribute to panels, offer perspectives and engage in knowledge exchange which could be applied in both women’s and Indigenous perspectives on campuses. The conference opened with an Acknowledgement of Country by National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Organiser Celeste Liddle. While paying respects to the traditional owners, Celeste also reinforced the NTEU’s long commitment to women’s and Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander rights by stating “as unionists who believe in the power of negotiation to achieve a fair outcome, and feminists who fight for the end of gendered discrimination, we acknowledge that the unfinished business of negotiating a treaty is a shame our country carries and that we will never reach maturity as a nation until the wrongs of yesterday and acknowledged properly and rectified.” ACTU National Campaign Coordinator and former Indigenous Officer Kara Keys joined National President Jeannie Rea and Victorian Trades Hall Council Women’s Officer Lisa Heap on a panel entitled “Unravelling Harvester Man” – or the deeply embedded union culture based on the Harvester Case of 1907 which declared that the wage of an unskilled man should be enough to keep himself and a wife and three children in reasonable frugal provisions; in other words that a worker is a hard labouring white man who should have fair entitlements.
In the plenary session on the final day, Deputy Chair of the Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Policy Committee and A&TSI nominee on the Women’s Action Committee Sharlene Leroy-Dyer spoke not only on how universities must become more inclusive places which provided space for our knowledges , but also provide more opportunities for the advancement of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander women in the sector. She also noted that increased numbers of Aboriginal women taking up representative positions within the NTEU (and other unions) was crucial for change.
Keys spoke of the challenges that Aboriginal people have had not only being paid for their work – both historically but also currently through government initiatives such as the Community Development Programme (CDP), as well as the difficulties we have when it comes to getting our issues recognised within the union movement. This becomes even more difficult for Aboriginal women workers who are well-unionised, but are fighting workplace oppression on both gendered and racialised fronts.
Reflecting later on the Women’s Conference, Batchelor Institute delegate Rena Stanton; while acknowledging that some struggles Aboriginal women have on campus come about via conflict with white women; stated that feminist spaces such as the Women’s Conference give us the opportunity to explore issues and start to break them down. Stanton particularly highlighted that being engaged in the workshop sessions gave her a lot of food for thought.
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She relayed to the NT Division Forum the particular use of the idea that the knowledges of white men had for too long been centred in academia and how a workshop unpacked the idea that instead referencing works and research undertaken by academic women would help break this cultural monotony. Stanton felt this idea could also usefully be applied to the academic works undertaken by Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander researchers so that they become seen as crucial rather than peripheral all the time. All Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander delegates, speakers and staff involved in this year’s Women’s Conference agreed that it had been a fantastic conference. They additionally looked forward to strengthening the Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Women’s Caucus within the NTEU to keep these intersectional issues within the academy on the agenda. Celeste Liddle, National A&TSI Organiser Above: Rena Stanton (Batchelor), Jeannie Rea, Sharlene Leroy-Dyer (Newcastle).
Equality is union business.
leadership
99% of the work we do as union members is about fighting for our right to decent, safe, well-paying work. But that’s one fight in a larger battle to build a just and fair society for everyone. We can’t build a just and fair society for everyone while our lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) workmates are treated differently to other workers. They have the same right to happiness as every other union member and the same right to have their loving, committed relationships treated equally. We stand up and fight for all workers, because equality is union business.
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LEADERSHIP SECTION
JOAN OF ARC, OUR ONE TRUE SUPERHERO
Ali Alizadeh Monash Uni
One need not be a parent of a young child, as I am, to be conscious of the full-blown resurgence of the superhero in contemporary popular culture. One need not be a parent of a young child, as I am, to be conscious of the full-blown resurgence of the superhero in contemporary popular culture. Beyond the dizzying proliferation of fetishised merchandise to do with Marvel and DC protagonists and the frankly obscene sights of middle-aged folk squeezed into uncomplaining lycra and leotards at Comic-Con gatherings, one may sense the spectral presence of the hero, that crucial cultural figure which has beguiled humanity since the epics of Homer and the demigods of ancient mythology. Yet there is more to the hero than a fanciful tale of courage and exceptional strength. Heroes and heroines are the most explicit and visible manifestations of our aspirations as well as our limitations, poetic accounts of our capacity for transformation within the boundaries of human imagination. What, then, does the ceaseless preoccupation with a particular heroic icon tell us? And why is it that despite all our cynicism and exhaustion, we still find resonance and meaning in the images of those, fictional or factual, who embark on quests for the betterment of their conditions with an unflinching optimism and self-confidence? I want to address my own decision to write a novel about one of history’s most enduring heroic personae, the medieval Frenchwoman known to us as Jeanne d’Arc (1412–1431), or Joan of Arc in English. I also wish to assess her perseverance as a figure of global fascination despite her historical origins in a world that is very different to ours. Jeanne’s world was one of conflict, tragedy and turmoil. She was born during one of the most brutal phases of history’s longest war, the Hundred Years War, which pitted an embattled French Kingdom against the forces of an intrepid England and an even more dynamic and rapacious medieval feudal duchy of Burgundy. Her native village and community were directly affected continued opposite...
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leadership by the war’s ravages, and it was perhaps in response to the miseries of war, and perhaps also due to unique personal and psychological factors, that the young peasant woman, claiming to have been instructed by divine “voices”, left her village to end “the pity in the kingdom of France”. She was, much to the astonishment of future historians, received by the French king, armed and sent to fight the English as the “chief of war” of French forces. Her unexpected victories turned the tide of the war and made Jeanne into one of the most famous and most heroic figures of her epoch. Has it been unsophisticated of me, a contemporary writer all too aware of the unheroic realities of our age, to devote so many years to researching and writing a book on the life of a woman who may be seen as an archetypal image of female heroism? Why is it that so many other writers and artists continue to write their own novels and songs and make films and musicals about this enigmatic icon of early European history? I’ve been deeply fascinated with the story of Jeanne d’Arc since early childhood, when I came across an image of her – a horsed knight in an excessively shining armour, with an indisputably feminine face and hairdo – at a bookshop in Tehran in the early 1980s. But fascination alone does not result in an artistic project as complex and all-consuming as writing a modern literary novel. So it is that I must admit that the tale of the young peasant woman who ran away from her village to become a knight, does not simply interest me. I find it exhilarating. Even though I have spent more than three decades reading and thinking about her, I’m still in awe of some of the basic elements and contradictions of her story. How could an uneducated teenage girl lead armies to victory? How could a woman as highly attuned to the material conditions of her world – the topography of the battlefields, the byzantine milieu of late-medieval French politics – also sincerely believe in the metaphysical and believe that she heard the voices of saints and angels?
Orléans. For me, these are not entirely resolvable, nor are they reducible to one or more possible resolutions. In her I’ve found a potent paragon of the human subject at its most radical, most truthful embodiment. She is one of the most extreme manifestations of the singularity of humanity, and a testament to our capacity to break with what reduces us to bare life. I will therefore offer this definition of the hero/ine for our time: s/he is one who, against the obsessions of bourgeois individualism and late-capitalist identity politics, fights to eradicate all impositions of individuality and identity to reach universal selfhood. S/he becomes a champion for all of us, and in her we find that most impossible and improbable phenomenon – genuine, irrefutable hope. In my view, Jeanne d’Arc, despite living a good 350 years before the advent of the modern revolution, is an exemplary materialisation of the figure of the revolutionary. Long before Robespierre, Marx, Lenin, Luxemburg and Guevara, Jeanne the Maid of Orléans committed herself to the cause of transforming the world from the bottom up. She fought for justice in the direction of a universal collectivity – a very early, very nascent notion of a unified nation under the rule of one sovereign – and not in the interest of a particular identitarian or sectarian grouping. In the medieval, pre-modern heroine, we find a pre-emptive inversion of the mantras of the “progressive”, reformist, non-revolutionary bourgeois activists of postmodernity. For Jeanne the Maid, the public was the personal, and not merely the other way around. She made the world be the change that she wanted to see in herself. She thought local and acted global.
Revolutionary rupture
she too has been a heroine, a woman who, against the limitations and expectations situated in socio-personal contexts, fought, defeated and was martyred by formidable manifestations of those very socio-personal limits. Nevertheless, mine and my other contemporaries’ versions of Jeanne’s heroism perhaps dramatically differ in their content, if not in their basic, heroic discourse. Unlike pop star Madonna – whose recent song, Joan of Arc, depicts the Maid as metaphor for the multi-millionaire entertainer’s own discontent with fame and disagreeable pop culture journalists – I don’t see Jeanne as a symbol of my personal maladies. Unlike former pop star David Byrne – in whose recent musical, Joan of Arc: Into the Fire, Jeanne is an anti-Trump (pseudo) riot grrrl enraged by misogyny and binary gendered ideals – I can’t, despite my own overt political leanings, bring myself to ascribe to the medieval heroine the ethos of a contemporary ideological project. And unlike the great Bruno Dumont – the maverick French philosopher-filmmaker, whose own musical, Jeannette: l’enfance de Jeanne d’Arc, aspires to gently mock and deconstruct the religio-ideological premise of the cult of the Maid – I have approached her life with seriousness and with fidelity to the truths of her narrative. Whatever one may conclude from considering the trajectories taken by the heroic image of Jeanne d’Arc since her brutal death in the hands of her AngloBurgundian enemies in 1431, one cannot but be stricken by the sheer variety of the Maid’s reincarnations. She’s been depicted as a national heroine and a nationalist symbol (and also, to my and many a leftists’ dismay, a popular mascot by French ultra-nationalists), a rebellious heretic and a goodly saint. A feminist role model and a belligerent military leader, an innocent mystic and a tortured victim. However one may choose to view her, there can be no denying that she is, and will continue to be, one of the most singular and significant exemplars of our troubled species. Forget Wonder Woman and Batman – Jeanne d’Arc may be our one and only true superhero.
Paradoxes & complexities
If Jeanne the Maid is a heroine, then, she is the heroine of the rare, luminous event of revolutionary rupture. This take is one which I’ve placed at the heart of my novel, The Last Days of Jeanne d’Arc. The novel is not only an articulation of her radical character as I understand her; it is also a story of forbidden amorous love and intense, heretical spirituality. But central to the novel’s fictionalised account of a historical figure’s life - and my depiction of her sexuality and unique psychology is my view of her as a woman who was transformed by her drive to transform the world in which she lived.
There are many more paradoxes and complexities one may discern when it comes to the life of the so-called Maid of
Other artists, ideologues and believers have had widely differing configurations of the famous Frenchwoman. For most, however,
Image of Joan of Arc in the Panthéon de Paris, by Jules Eugène Lenepveu (1889). Source: Wikipedia
And why is it that this woman, so devoted to her political cause and to her vision of a united France, chose to be burnt at the stake at the age of 19 instead of acquiescing to her judges’ directives during her infamous trials of condemnation, and not live to see to the completion of her figurative crusade?
Ali Alizadeh is Senior Lecturer in Literary Studies and Creative Writing at Monash University, and an NTEU Delegate. “The Last Days of Jeanne d’Arc” is published by Giramondo. This article was originally published in The Conversation on 18 August 2017:
theconversation.com/friday-essay-joan-of-arcour-one-true-superhero-81097
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leadership
Clare McCarty Women in Leadership
Juliet Fuller NTEU
On 30 March 2017 the pilot for the NTEU Clare McCarty Women in Leadership Mentoring Project was launched in South Australia with over 40 members attending a day-long seminar to discuss the issues and concerns preventing women from taking the next steps in union activism. Following research into the gender equity distribution within the NTEU’s elected structures, which identified patterns of gender imbalance in elected positions within the Union, the 2016 NTEU National Council resoundingly supported a motion to develop a mentoring program designed to support and encourage women’s participation at all levels of the Union and encourage more women members to nominate for leadership positions. The motion noted that: NTEU believes that encouraging more diversity in senior and leadership roles better represents the membership and encourages a co-operative approach in leadership that benefits membership driven, collective organisations. Such leadership structures are characterised by the use of role models, inspiring others, strategic thinking, innovation, mentorships and developing others within the movement and this improves the strength, capacity and capability of the organisation. SA Division WAC Representatives, Jenn Fane and Kate Borrett, who had been instrumental in conceptualising the motion, received the support of the WAC to run the pilot for the Mentoring Program in SA. It was decided to name the project for the late
Above: Seminar panel: Prof Mary Margaret Fonow, Janet Giles, Prof Suzanne Franzway, Jeannie Rea. Below: Jenn Fane and Kate Borrett
Dr Clare McCarty, a unionist, leader, and mentor to many over a very diverse career in education. The seminar program began with a panel of expert speakers including Professor Suzanne Franzway of UniSA, Professor Mary Margaret Fonow of University of Arizona, Janet Giles, former Secretary of SA Unions (and who had also worked with Clare McCarty in the leadership team of the SA AEU) and NTEU President Jeannie Rea. Participants were given an overview by Jeannie Rea of the statistics of gender (im)balance in the university sector as well as the Union ahead of being asked to reflect on what might hold women back. Within the NTEU, while at branch committee level the gender gap is relatively small, there are currently almost twice the number of male Branch Presidents to women Branch Presidents (14 women and 24 men). Suzanne Franzway, author of Sexual Politics and Greedy Institutions, Union women, commitments and conflicts in public and in probate (Plutopress, 2001) presented about the difficulties women face with activism and involvement in “greedy institutions” (like unions) from a variety of directions including conflicting priorities and concerns over the perception of a lack of dedication- but also
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VOLUME 25 SEPTEMBER 2017
(and particularly often) due to the emotional labour that can be involved. Janet Giles shared stories from her wealth of experience with unions beginning as a delegate within the AEU and ultimately rising through the ranks into leadership positions. International visitor, Mary Margaret Fonow, Director of the School of Social Transformation and Professor/Head of Faculty of Women and Gender Studies at Arizona University, raised the importance of wellbeing for women- particularly those suffering under the weight of emotional labour and conflicting priorities. In addition to sharing her wisdom about feminist participation, she took the participants through a Feldenkrais exercise to help everyone to stretch and focus both their thoughts and their bodies. Participants were then asked to discuss issues they believe hold women back from being more involved in the NTEU at a leadership level, what resources, information and tools might be missing from their awareness of the Union that could be useful, and to develop a roadmap for what a mentorship program could and should look like. A major issue discussed was the problem of not having women leaders to follow or seek advice from. continued opposite...
leadership
2017 BUDGET & women
The National Foundation for Australian Women (NFAW) published A Gender Lens – Budget 2017-18 which provides a comprehensive analysis of the impact of the Budget on women. While NFAW notes that additional spending on infrastructure, disability support, health and housing places a higher priority on the provision of government services and reverses previous policies aimed at addressing the Budget crisis by cutting programs overall, it doesn’t radically turn things around for women. The unfortunate reality is that women are overrepresented at lower income levels. Latest ATO statistics show the median income for women was $47,125 in 2014-15, while for men the amount was $61,711. Therefore, changes to government benefits and/or increases in taxes have a disproportionate effect on women. Economists refer to the proportion of each extra dollar of earnings that is lost to both income tax increases and decreases in government benefits (such as Parenting Payment, Family Tax Benefit (FTB), the Age Pension) as the effective marginal taxation rates or EMTR. The proposed changes to the Medicare levy, FTB and HELP income repayment threshold means that some people in the income range $42,000 to $50,000 will experience EMTRs of 100% or more. That is, as result of these policy changes these people may experience a loss of disposable income should their incomes rise. That is, a pay rise will result in lower take-home pay. Under proposed changes to Higher Education Loans (HELP) program university The feedback from participants at the end of the seminar was overwhelmingly positive. In addition to identifying a number of ways that the NTEU can provide support to women members, 100 per cent of seminar participants nominated themselves to be a mentor, be mentored or both.
graduates will start repaying their HELP debts once their income levels reach $42,000 per year (down from current level of approximately $52,000). These changes are particularly harsh for women. Income tax statistics show that the reduction of the HELP repayment threshold to $42,000 will disproportionately affect women, who not only earn less over a lifetime of employment, but also in the first ten or so years after graduation.
education and other postsecondary training. The reforms paint a bleak picture for young Australians hoping to undertake post-secondary education, and those who are paying off student debt. Young people will be paying more for their degrees, and the overall cuts to university funding are likely to affect the security of academic staff, including women who are already highly concentrated in lower-paid and less secured positions.
The interaction of these changes to HELP and lack of coherence with other taxation or welfare payments means that many graduates are likely to experience significant financial stress. For example, NFAW estimates that graduates earning $51,000, the majority of whom will be women will have less disposable income than someone earning $32,000.
The focus of the vocational education and training (VET) measures in the Budget is on apprenticeships and traineeships, with little for the majority of VET students who are studying other programs. Without adequate funding for VET programs other than apprenticeships and traineeships, options for education and jobs are reduced, particularly for women who continue to find it difficult to secure apprenticeships in skilled occupations in high demand because they are still largely considered male fields.
Changes to penalty rates may also have a significant impact on some graduates if they are extended to the aged and health care sectors, as well as the childcare sector. In addition to the punitive changes outlined above, the Budget lacks measures that improve the accessibility of higher A follow-up session was run in July that looked deeper into what mentoring could mean for members, and discussed the different types of mentoring that could be useful for women in the NTEU. Participants were placed into pairs, or trios, and asked to work together to develop a mentoring contract for further progress. It was determined by those participating in the pilot that, for them, the most import measure of success
Paul Kniest is NTEU Policy & Research Coordinator
would not necessarily be in an immediate increase in women holding leadership roles at each NTEU Branch, but it would be in more women members feeling able to participate, be better informed and more educated, and be engaged in peer networks facilitated by NTEU. The seminar launch was recorded and has been made available on the WAC website. A guide will also be developed to enable other NTEU Branches and Divisions to run local versions of the program. Juliet Fuller is Branch Organiser, Flinders University Branch and SA WAC Support Officer View the videos at:
nteu.org.au/women/initiatives/clare_mccarty_ leadership_program Left: Participants trying the Feldenkrais exercise.
VOLUME 25 SEPTEMBER 2017
29
Gender Stats
GPG declines but parity still years away Did you hear the news? The Gender Pay Gap (GPG) has declined to 15.3 per cent. But before we start celebrating, at this rate, women would not achieve parity for another 17 years. As the NTEU Women’s Action Committee observed we are tired of waiting, which was why we adopted the Bluestocking Week theme of ‘Worth 100 per cent’, right now, not in the future.
are not rushing to enter ‘traditionally’ female occupations. (See analysis of casualisation by gender and field and study in Connect vol. 10, no. 1, 2017)
We are told that women’s workforce participation is different to men’s, but really is that the explanation for the GPG? On entering the labour market, within four months of graduating, the data reveals that more women are getting jobs, but are more likely to be part-time and so already earning less. The Graduate Careers Council (2016) finding that women graduate from university into a 3.4 per cent GPG, which widens out to 9.3 per cent in just three years is revealing. How different are women’s and men’s lives in those first few years after graduating?
Whilst jobs in some areas are contracting and more jobs do require university qualifications, young men are still encouraged into apprenticeships as a path to a sustainable career. Over 86 per cent of apprentices are men. Now nearly 60 per cent of graduates are women, which is because a degree is required to enter the occupations where women still predominate and want to work. These statistics sum up the tight gender segregation of labour in Australia.
So we thought we would focus the annual Agenda Gender Stats infographics (opposite) upon gender occupational segregation. While higher education is becoming more feminised, in terms of both staff and students, the reality is that already feminised fields of study and university occupations have become more so, rather than opportunities for women and men opening up. The gender balance in law and medicine is not matched by the classic STEM areas where women remain a small minority, despite the admirable work of gender parity advocates, brilliant pioneers to emulate, and affirmative action policies and programs. Unfortunately, what is also evident is that as women do gain more promotions and advancement cracking the academic and professional staff ceilings, we are seeing decent secure jobs melting away into casual and short term contract positions. To be very specific, the fields of study where women predominate as staff and students are those most casualised, so the model students see is women academics in precarious employment. No wonder men
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VOLUME 25 SEPTEMBER 2017
The so called ‘caring’ professions are expanding rapidly, but despite trade unions working hard at improving wages and conditions and job security, we are up against structural and systemic sexism, as well as changes to employment modes, privatisation and laws that make it hard to organise – but certainly this has not stopped us! In the expanding and new professions often a post graduate qualification is required to enter or to progress through a career. However, rarely are these post graduate programs Commonwealth Supported Places (CSPs) with capped tuition fees, but unregulated. Students have to take out HELP loans to finance very expensive courses. Women find themselves, paying off earlier HELP debts while accumulating more debt and working and studying and often raising families. And then they face increasingly precarious employment, with part-time, casual and short term contracts. People in these positions need income surety, not flexibility that suits employers trying to skimp on their obligations and relying upon workers’ commitment to their clients, students or patients.
The recommendations of the recent Senate inquiry into gender segregation in the workplace and its impact on women’s economic equality, focuses upon addressing many of these issues. In our submission, and in giving evidence, the NTEU focussed upon the impacts of the crisis of insecure work in already feminised, but expanding sectors including higher education. Current ABS data confirms that women’s superannuation balances are systemically lower than men’s and that the gap increases throughout our working lives, reaching $70,000 by the statutory retirement age of 65. The women who make up just a third of vice-chancellors are, however, amongst those with the big remuneration packages. Our interest is not in evening up extreme remuneration for those at the top, although sexism is rife and men are more likely to get bonuses, regardless of merit. The NTEU, along with other trade unions, is more interested in equal access to decent secure jobs for women across their careers and working lives. Jeannie Rea, NTEU National President Above: The gender pay gap portrayed in cake at a the University of Tasmania Bluestocking Week morning tea.
Gender Stats
australian gender & higher education stats 2017 The average Gender pay gap is now
15.3%
a decrease of 0.9% since nov 2016. at tHIs rate, women wIll achieve parIty in 17 years.
degrees & apPrenTIceshIPs
enterinG the laboUr market 88.1%
13.4% 59.5%
16.6%
40.5% 86.6%
71.5%
92.9% 83.3% 13.2%
8.9% 84%
91.7% 4.9% 86.8%
89.3%
10.9%
9.3% 80%
80.2%
Part time Full time
70.1%
UndergradUate
GradUate Gender pay gap by sector architectUre & bUIlT envIro. science & mathematics Health services & sUPport law & paraleGal studies business & management agriculTure envIro. studies creatIve arts HumanItIes, cUltUre & soc. sci. nursing rehabIlitation medicIne teacHer education dentistry social work engineering Pharmacy commUnicatIons compUting & info. systems PsycHology
postgrad (coUrsewk)
teachinG & researcH 43.0%
postgrad (researcH)
UndergradUate median full time salaries 2016 15.3%
$50,000
10.0%
$59,000 54
9.1% 8.9%
6.1% 6.0%
63
53
57
53.5
57
47
Men 64
57.4
7.0%
Women
60
58.2
50
4.5%
54.8
3.5% 2.8%
57.4
58.4
60.5
59
60.7
2.6%
68.2
1.6%
70
62.6 63.6
1.4%
82.8 84
0.8%
60 60.5
0.5%
62.3 62.6
0.5%
43.6 43.8
0%
48 48
-0.8%
60 59.5
-1.5%
54.8 54
vice-chancellors
women in the university workforce
56.8%
91.1%
Australians undertaking an apprenticeship
Australians with a completed undergraduate or postgraduate degree
all Fte sTaFF
Percentage of graduates entering workforce within 4 months of graduating
researcH only 48.3%
teachinG only 56.7%
Female
Male
general/ proFessIonal 65.8%
VOLUME 25 SEPTEMBER 2017
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WAC
My WAC so far: Debra Beattie
Debra Beattie WAC
On being asked to write a reflection on the past months of being a member of the NTEU Women’s Action Committee (WAC), I felt grateful to be able to say a few words about the extraordinary women I have met through this experience. WAC meets twice a year. This year included a one-day meeting held in conjunction with the biennial Women’s Conference. The first meeting I attended was at the NTEU National Office in Melbourne, and I was gratefully accompanied by Barbara Williams who was ‘showing me the ropes’. It was at this first meeting that it dawned on me just how important this national group is for exchanging State and Territory-based stories of struggles within individual universities for both general and academic staff. The realisation of the commonalities but also the idiosyncratic differences was affirming as we all came together seeking solidarity and support at a national level. This day also coincided with a demonstration called by the ACTU to protest penalty rates, and the NTEU women did not hesitate to lend our voices by attending that event as well. The WAC meeting is attended by one academic representative, and one general/ professional staff representative from each Division, plus an Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander nominee (this year Sharlene Leroy-Dyer from Newcastle Branch). Also attending was the Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander National Organiser, Celeste Liddle. The committee was chaired by the National President (and I was in awe of the leadership given by Jeannie Rea during that all day meeting) ably assisted by Terri MacDonald, our indefatigable Policy & Research Officer. NTEU Women’s Conference is held biennially, again in Melbourne, and this year in chilly June (hence the image of the Qld delegates wearing our Pussy Hats). This event provides delegates from Branches around the country, along with elected officials, staff and guests a chance to exchange information and provide mutual support. The second WAC meeting was held the day
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before the conference and again provided me the wonderful opportunity to gain new knowledge about a range of issues relevant for women in unions, women in the workforce and specifically women working in the tertiary sector. Women are now in the majority at our universities – as staff and as students. However, when it comes to determining our own narrative, it still feels as though women are a minority, with limited voice and agency. The 2017 NTEU Women’s Conference maintained a strong focus upon key issues in higher education and also in unions. On the first day we were all visibly moved by the panel of union women sharing their experiences, especially Lisa Heap from the Victorian Trades Hall and Kara Keys, ACTU Campaign Director. These ongoing descriptions of feminists as ‘difficult women’ prompted Barbara Williams to print out copies of Don’t Be Too Polite, Girls which was sung on the second day to rouse our spirits! The next event for me, as the WAC rep, was to help with Bluestocking Week. This was the fifth year that NTEU, together with NUS have run Bluestocking Week, after successfully relaunching it in 2012. The theme for this year, “Worth 100%”, was drawn from the highly successful gender pay equity campaign used by the public sector union in New Zealand in 2016. Details of the campaign were shared and discussed by the NZ representatives at the Women’s Conference. It then became a touchstone for us here in Australia to highlight many aspects of genderbased discrimination in higher education institutions. While bluestocking attire and blue cakes were enjoyed, activities also provided a positive way to address issues and assert
women’s voices and agency. Even in 2017 there is the crass fact that men are the main recipients of bonuses, which are outside of Agreement regulation; and the gender pay gap (GPG) is there immediately at graduation at 3.4% and widens out to 9.3% in just three years according to the Graduate Careers Council (2016). Women seeking career advancement tend to remain concentrated in middle level positions and the funnel through to senior positions continues to be narrow. The flow-on is that women are also then less likely to repay HECS debts as quickly as their fellow male graduates. It has been an affirming and heartening experience to be a member of the 2017 WAC, to be able to hear and share in the specific struggles of the women in the LGBTI caucus and the women from A&TSI communities, to know more of the ongoing difficulties of sexual harassment, especially for female students on our campuses, to see the statistical research being developed to back our arguments against inequality in remuneration and promotion opportunities for female staff. And to be reminded “Don’t be too polite, girls! Don’t give up the fight, girls!” Debra Beattie is the Queensland Academic rep on WAC and a Senior Lecturer, Griffith Film School.
WAC
Retirement
Barbara Williams
Barbara Williams has been serving Queensland members since before the NTEU even existed. Barb started work for the NTEU’s predecessor, Queensland Association Of Academic Staff In Colleges Of Advanced Education in January of 1991. Barb has announced that she will retire at the end of the year after 27 years with the Union. Barb has always been the friendly welcoming face of the NTEU in Queensland. She has organised and attended countless rallies, meetings, committees, morning teas and picket lines. Barb knows everyone and everyone knows Barb. As an Organiser, Barb has unparalleled experience in making things happen for members. And always with a smile and a kind word. NTEU members have valued Barb’s down to earth nature and her willingness to talk Union to anyone. Barb’s ability to connect with our members and make them feel like this is their Union has developed innumerable activists over the years. As a staff member Barb has always been prepared to drop what she is doing to assist or support other staff. Barbara can always tell us what we need, where we get it, how many we need, what it will cost, how we get it here (or there), and how long it will take. So, when one of the staff has a tricky
question or needs guidance, the answer is always: “Ask Barb!” She has been the sticky glue which binds us. And she knows the history of NTEU in Queensland better than anyone else. Some of Barb’s most important work has been with Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander issues and advancing the rights of women. Along with then Division Secretary, Howard Guille, Barb took the lead on the Stolen Wages campaign in Queensland. She has also been a member of the Queensland Council of Unions Women’s Committee for many years and promoted the cause of women within NTEU through WAC and the Women’s Conference. Barb has also been a driving force behind Queensland unions’ international solidarity efforts, through long-term involvement with APHEDA – Union Aid Abroad, as well as collecting goods and donations on behalf of other local community organisations.
Above: Barb Williams with Ged Kearney and Michael McNally. Below: At another union rally. Left: Barb covered in flags and banners at a “No $100K Degrees” rally.
NTEU and the Union movement will be the poorer for Barb’s departure (though I suspect that Barb will find a way to stay involved). Regardless, I am certain that all members would join me in thanking Barb for her commitment to the labour movement, and to the NTEU and its members. Michael McNally, Queensland Division Secretary
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scholarship SECTION
Carolyn Allport Scholarship
Jodie Kell
Jodie Kell is this year’s recipient of the Carolyn Allport Scholarship, a postgraduate scholarship in feminist studies. Jodie is doing a PhD in ethnomusicology at the Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney. Jodie’s research explores how women in Maningrida, traditional country of the Kunibídji people on the coast of north-eastern Arnhem Land, use musical performance and expression to negotiate agency and identity. Jodie’s own skills as musician and recordist are fundamental to this collaborative research project that she has spent over a year developing with women musicians and community groups in Maningrida. In 2001, Jodie moved to Maningrida to teach music to high school students and it is here that she first met the women. “I knew the music scene of Maningrida through bands like Letterstick Band and Sunrize Band as well as the wealth of traditional recordings from the region,” she said. “The girls got a band together and started playing music that brought traditional languages and story into contemporary music styles. They wrote songs in their languages of Ndjébbana, Na-kara, Burarra and Kune. Music helped them to maintain a powerful connection to their elders and their own people.” In 2006, Jodie left Maningrida and moved back to Newcastle with her family. Ten years later the young women she had been working with got in touch with her through social media. “They wanted to get their band back together and return to playing music, and writing songs. In the meantime, they too had graduated, started working and raising their kids.” Jodie’s research will examine how young women are changing the power structure, enabling them to find a new voice in the musical landscape. “Until recently, both ceremonial and contemporary musical forms in Arnhem Land have been almost entirely the domain of men, with very few women participating in public music making in any genre. The young women in Maningrida are
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VOLUME 25 SEPTEMBER 2017
charting new territory both as composers and performers.” For Jodie, music and social structures are linked. She says that “by exploring the process of musical performance, particularly with the changes in the contemporary musical space, the research will contribute to feminist studies by examining structures of power and how women negotiate agency through and in the modality of music.” Earlier this year Jodie was the mixing and mastering engineer on the sound recordings that accompanied the book Yurntumu wardingki juju ngaliya kurlangu yawulyu: Warlpiri women’s songs from Yuendumu, published by Batchelor Institute Press 2017. Jodie also coordinated the foundation of the University of Sydney Music and Ethnography Study Group (MESG). To date, her fieldwork has been entirely self-funded, and this award will make a huge difference to her ability as a sole parent and self-funded student to undertake this important research. NTEU established the scholarship in 2014 in recognition of Dr Carolyn Allport’s contribution to the leadership and development of the NTEU in her 16 years as National President. The scholarship is available to a woman currently enrolled in an academic award of an Australian public university and undertaking postgraduate feminist studies, by research, in any discipline. It pays $5000 per year for a maximum of three years. Applications are assessed by prominent feminist research scholars. Helena Spyrou, National Education & Training Officer
www.nteu.org.au/myunion/scholarships/ carolyn_allport
Dr Carolyn Allport was NTEU National President from 1994 to 2010, becoming a prominent lobbyist at both the national and international levels. Described as a ‘warrior for women’, Carolyn was tenacious in advocating for women’s rights to employment equity. Particularly influential in the struggle for paid parental leave, Carolyn established 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 & Torres Strait Islander education, employment and social justice. Within the NTEU, she was a driving force to ensure that A&TSI business is core NTEU business. Prior to becoming National President, Carolyn worked as an academic for over 20 years at Macquarie University. Her teaching and research publications were in the areas of economic history, urban politics, public housing and women’s history. Carolyn sadly passed away in 2017.
international
ending gender based violence at work
Campaigning to eliminate gendered violence at work is not confined to the Australia (see p.17), there is global momentum to take this on. For several years the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and global union federations, including Education International to which NTEU is affiliated, have been researching the prevalence and characteristics of gendered violence in the workplace. The findings have been horrific with gendered violence including sexual harassment and assault not only common, but endured across all forms of work and workplaces across the world. While women and men are at risk of experiencing violence and harassment due to unequal gender power balances and discriminatory behaviours, women are particularly vulnerable to violence and harassment in the workplace. For many there are added dimensions of racial prejudice, homophobic discrimination and taking advantage of age, disability, location and citizenship status. Women repeatedly reported that they could do nothing because they could risk being labelled trouble makers and even losing their jobs. Education International (EI) has noted that gender based violence and harassment around educational settings can be commonplace in and around educational settings and have encouraged affiliates to join the campaign.
In some countries local, industrial and discrimination laws are assisting as well as utilising workplace health and safety protections, but their effectiveness is generally limited and hard to enforce. Trade unions and women’s organisations
often work on these issues in isolation. Therefore, the initiative coordinated by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) to campaign for an International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention on Violence Against Women and Men in the World of Work accompanied by a Recommendation is gaining global support. Without a Recommendation in addition to the Convention, the instrument will not be binding and holding employers accountable will be much more difficult. This initiative is coming from unions, and further evidence is being gathered to try and persuade employers make this issue a priority and take adequate measures to prevent and address instances of violence and harassment. The intention is to address the GBV at the ILO’s Conference in 2018. Visit the campaign website here:
www.ituc-csi.org/gender-based-violence Read the campaign toolkit, here:
www.etuc.org/sites/www.etuc.org/files/ document/files/en_-_brochure_-_safe_at_ home_1.pdf Images courtesy ETUC toolkit VOLUME 25 SEPTEMBER 2017
35
International
Timor-Leste Working Women’s Centre
The Working Women’s Centre of Timor-Leste (WWCTL), a Union Aid Abroad APHEDA Partner and NGO based in Dili, was established in 2011. It is led by APHEDA Country Manager in Timor-Leste, Elisabeth Lino de Araujo with support from the Working Women’s Centres of SA and the NT. The idea for the WWCTL was seeded during Elisabeth’s participation in the SA Anna Stewart Memorial Project in which included a placement at the Adelaide Working Women’s Centre with Sandra Dann. One of the first activities of the Centre was to host the fourth Our Work, Our Lives Conference in Dili. Prioritising support for vulnerable and precarious women workers, the WWCTL has focused much of its attention since 2011 on women in the non-formal sector of domestic work in Timor-Leste. Domestic workers are very often young women with limited education, brought to the cities of Dili, Suai or Oecussi to work in affluent houses. Without access to employment information, these workers are often isolated, vulnerable and open to exploitation. The first meeting of Domestic Workers in Dili was held on October 19,
2014 and 75 women turned out to attend. The team from the WWCTL now has a membership base of 180 women, built through a dedicated outreach team who
travel across the cities knocking on doors to see who is working, sharing general information and inviting women to visit the Centre. Through this intensive organising, the WWCTL also identified core skills and knowledge gaps (e.g. some women had come from towns with no electricity yet were expected to use washing machines and irons) and commenced offering skills training as a way to bring the women together and build their confidence as well as providing industrial education. Over the past 12 months the WWCTL has been moving towards a significant change in Timorese Labour law to finally include domestic workers in existing labour law protections. Campaigning with a growing group of Domestic worker activists, including participation in May Day activities and most recently a public celebration of International Domestic Workers’ Day on 16 June 2017, the WWCTL celebrated a major victory when the Ministry of Employment presented the workers with a first draft of legislation to recognise domestic workers’ rights in Timor-Leste. The WWCTL is also active in a network of
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International
Women Centred NGOs and INGOs in Dili who are currently meeting on a monthly basis to share and strengthen the rights and opportunities for Timorese women. The next advocacy role for the WWCTL is to make submissions to ensure that the best possible draft legislation with unambiguous labour rights for workers in the sector, is presented to the new Timor-Leste government enshrining labour protections for all domestic workers in the country. One of the long-term visions of the WWCTL is the consolidation of a domestic
worker’s union in Timor-Leste, perhaps as a branch of the larger General Workers Union (SJT-TL). The support from Australian union members, including visits from travellers and ongoing financial contributions to the running of the WWCTL through membership of Union Aid Abroad APHEDA, have seen the WWCTL grow into a dynamic organisation of proactive women leaders and activists.
Coordinator’s thanked the NTEU for its support and solidarity in the struggle.
The 2017 NTEU Victorian Division Bluestocking Week Fundraiser raised money for the WWCTL. Ricar Pascoela, WWCTL
This page: WWCTL at this year’s May Day march. All images courtesy APHEDA.
Samantha Bond, APHEDA
apheda.org.au View the Bluestocking Week message of thanks from WWCTL:
apheda.org.au/nteu-supporting-wwctl/ Images: Opposite page, top: WWCTL training. Below: WWCTL members and workers.
VOLUME 25 SEPTEMBER 2017
37
SECTION SECTION
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38
For more information call: 1300 853 352 VOLUME 25 SEPTEMBER 2017
Anniversary
Agenda turns 25!
NTEU has been publishing our annual women’s magazine for 25 years this year, originally as Frontline, now as Agenda. The magazine is sent to every women member and to all others who opt in to receive it. Looking back over previous editions, it is clear that many of the same issues are still on the agenda and are pursued again in this year’s edition. However, the story of the last 25 year for women higher education unionists is one of tremendous achievements in seeking gender equity and systematically working at reducing structural and ideological sexism. We are not there yet, and that is of course why we are now campaigning around the slogan – Worth 100%. But we should not diminish the significance of our successes in getting issues on the union agenda, and then pursuing them through industrial and political means. For example. NTEU’s leadership on paid parental leave is well recognised throughout the Australian union movement and amongst international education unions.
nTEu WOmEN’S maGaZiNE
WWw.nTEu.org.au/women
Critical to our successes has been having the national Women’s Action Committee, which includes one academic and one professional staff delegate from each Division. WAC has been a very effective way for women activists to get together and influence the direction of the Union, as well as a stepping off point to take on other leadership roles at all levels of the Union. Frontline/Agenda has chronicled the experiences of many of these women.
Our femiNist agenda safe schools & academic frEedom sexism as a political weapon doN’t read the commENts! broGresSives in unioNs
Find previous editions at nteu.org.au/women/publications
ask me about my feminist agenda isSN 1839-6186
vol. 56,
no. 1, 201 4 ISSN 0818–8
Published by NTEU
Volume 24 SeptEmber 2016
AUR is published twice a year by the NTEU.
068
Since 1958, the Australian Universities’ Review has been encouraging debate and discussion about issues in higher education and its contribution to Australian public life.
AUR is listed on the DEEWR register of refereed journals.
AUR
Australia n Unive rsities’Re view
NTEU members are entitled to receive a free subscription on an opt-in basis . If you are an NTEU member and would like to receive AUR, please email aur@nteu.org.au
www.aur.org.au VOLUME 25 SEPTEMBER 2017
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#feminism SECTION
#Mansplaining
When it comes to sharing instances of mansplaining on social media, it comes as no surprise that women in universities and research are well represented. Here’s a small selection of some we’ve found on Twitter and Tumblr.
And finally...
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VOLUME 25 SEPTEMBER 2017
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