Men at work
Is it fair, or even true, to say that Germaine Greer has enjoyed more success in internationalising the ideas expressed in The Female Eunuch than implanting them in her native land?
There's no doubting that a feminist revolution has been underway in Australia for decades, but has it been a little slow, a little stunted and not yet reached its full fruition?
This week Australia will mark a landmark "female first". Quentin Bryce will become the first female governor-general in the country's history. The deputy leaders of the two main political parties, Julia Gillard and Julie Bishop, are female. Last year, Anna Bligh became the first female premier of Queensland. Kevin Rudd has appointed a record-breaking seven female ministers, four of whom are of Cabinet rank.
Away from politics, Kay Goldsworthy has recently been consecrated as the first Australian female bishop in the Anglican church. Gail Kelly has also broken through another glass ceiling by becoming the CEO of Westpac, one of the country's "Big Four" banks.
For all that, Australia has never had a female prime minister. Neither New South Wales, Tasmania nor South Australia has ever produced a female state premier. Victoria and Western Australia can boast one each, but neither received a popular mandate. No Australian state has elected a female premier (although the Australian Capital Territory and Northern Territory have).
It was not until 1990 that Australia saw the appointment of its female Federal Court judge. It was not until 1992 that Janet Holmes A'Court joined the male-dominated Reserve Bank Board, the first woman to do so.
Even now, only 6% of the CEOs of Australia's top 200 companies are women. They account for only 13% of the nation's judges. When Kevin Rudd convened the 2020 Summit, where forward-thinking was at a premium, he originally asked only one woman, the Oscar-winning actress Cate Blanchett, to chair one of the ten, brain-storming panels.
Almost 40 years after the first landmark equal pay case, the latest figures from the Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Liz Broderick, revealed that women earn only 84% of what men get paid. Along with America, Australia is the only westernised democracy that does not have a statutory paid maternity leave scheme.
Before you start firing off your comments, I'm not arguing that Australia remains a bastion of beer-swilling, ocker male chauvinism. Neither, for that matter, do I subscribe to the view of the former Labor leader Mark Latham about the "crisis in male identity" and how "Australian mates and good blokes have been replaced by nervous wrecks, metrosexual knobs and toss-bags".
I'm simply asking whether it is still the case that women struggle to penetrate the upper reaches of Australian politics, business, law and the military. And if so, why?
I'm 
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Hi Nick,
Thank you for this latest blog from 'Down Under'. What I want to know is how the figures that you mention compare to other OECD countries or similar nations? Are we really so 'unreconstructed' to merit such specific scrutiny?
My impression (as a male) is that Australia, while conservative at heart, is also a pretty good place for my mother, sister, partner and female friends to fulfil their potential and experience the sort of everyday 'equal' treatment that you'd expect in a modern western democracy.
I have lived in the UK, Ireland, Switzerland, and spent enough time in the USA to have a reasonably informed opinion about how Oz compares with these nations, and frankly, I have seen enough 'inequality' in each of these nations to make Oz look good. Perhaps, it is a question of perspective and I look forward to reading the comments from your other readers to help me expand my views on this issue.
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I'm not sure that it is that different in Britain, or in fact in any English- speaking Western country:
For example, here is a link to The Daily Telegraph (UK), today:
http://tinyurl.com/58ewdm
As for why Germaine Greer might have had less impact in Australia, I suspect it is that she complains vociferously about what a terrible place Australia is every time she visits.
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Australia is very different to Britain on this sort of issue (sexism, racism etc....). The UK is the least sexist countries I've lived in (USA, UK, Ireland, Australia), there is of course a lot of room for improvement.
I'm a female Aussie/Brit and chose not to live in Australia because of the sexism I have encountered there. Infact, I now live in Ireland - there's sexism there too, but it's not so aggressive as it is in Australia. The Irish are more surprised that I'm carrying something heavy, or driving a truck more than worried about being supplanted.
I found in Australia, that it was easy to slip into a 'good housewife/make sandwiches for the cricket club' role. Don't get me wrong - there are plenty of women not fitting that mold, but it seems that in Australia you have to be one extreme or the other. You can't just be 'you'.... a unique person.
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I'm pretty sure as the previous comments say that Australia is any different from most OECD countries.
Politically speaking, does it also have something to do with the background of a significant proportion of migrants? Plenty of patriarchal cultures thrive in Oz that are not of British, or even Western european heritage, and all citizens are allowed to vote.
As for corporate success (or lack thereof), there is much discussion in the Australian media right now about paid maternity leave, and whether the decision to have a family adversely affects a woman's chances at promotion. Most commentators and statistics that I have observed recently say a resounding yes here.
In all, I suppose that both of my points reflect a very conservative vibe still holding Australia back in equal opportunity!
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Nick, it may not be still a 'beer swilling ocker male chauvinism' thing going on here, but it is (very broadly speaking) still a place where men run the show and any woman who makes it to the top is treated as some sort of novelty - sad but true. One day, we will have a PM (or a deputy PM) or some other powerful woman and there won't be articles written about her hair colour, the clothes she wears and whether or not she has children. How many articles have we had about Kevin Rudd's hair colour? Is the media to blame or are they just reflecting the views of society?
On the other hand, I do agree with cocori mostly that we can do anything and there are such things as equal pay (that don't necessarily exist in the US). However, there is a feeling that the glass ceiling does still exist, even if not officially. Men still do business on the golf course, in clubs and at the footy. Women don't necessarily operate this way and will often have to be doing stuff like picking up the kids etc.
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Australian Women are tough, strong minded and some of the most fiesty in the world. They have the character (that both men and women need here) to survive and thrive in this difficult and challenging environment.
The generational change that will herald in more women into parliament, business and government is already in full swing and as more and more wartimers and baby boomers go into retirement I think you will finally see the balance that all are mentioning.
For all those Americans and Brits that are lamenting the status of women in Australia, I would remind you of the fact that Australia was the second country in the world to give women the vote. NZ did it first in the late 1890s and Australia did it federally in 1902, with the first votes cast in 1903. The US had full suffrage 1920, UK 1928.
p.s. one of the best exports we ever made apart from our high quality iron ore and great wines, was Germaine Greer. Imagine having her live in your country for 40 years!
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no6, nice move with greer, though don't forget the UK got Kylie as well!
As a man, I can't say I'd noticed any increase in levels of sexism in the workplace here in Aus when compared to the UK. You do hear a lot of Aussies telling you how it used to be (no women in pubs, blah, blah) and they often seem rather proud.
Not been out into the sticks proper yet (Brisbane doesen't count despite what's said) so not sure how different that is, from say rural England.
Now that zsnow_girl mentions it, I have noticed the good housewife role here more than at home. I had put it down to certain middle class suburbs in Brissy being a bit like 50's USA, but maybe it's more widespread.
Nails in the coffin are the chair sniffing politician guy and this Latham's dumb comments. Can't see even our (UK's) excuse for leaders trying either of those. They leave that kind of amusing if purile stuff for the likes of Clarkson.
Finally, didn't realise there was no maternity pay here. Mum will be glad to hear; means we'll definitely be home WELL before her grandkids are on the scene!
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No.6 - I do owe my 'spikiness' to growing up in Aus! It doesn't go down fantastically in the UK environment, but they love it in Ireland (guessing that could be an ancestry route?).
No.7
Maternity pay is a tricky one:
Company's tend to assume that a women will have children at some point and treat her accordingly.
There is an argument that small companies will refuse to employ child-bearing aged women, just in-case they get pregnant- since the company would not be able to afford to pay maternity wage plus someone to replace the new-mother, plus waste time training someone who will be there for a year tops.
Women tend to get paid less than their male counterparts with the argument being that the time invested in training them is somewhat wasted if they're going to spend a lot of time away from the work place and loose the experience that the company essentially paid for.
My sister (who is on maternity leave at the moment) says that she would get paid more if she was job seeking then from maternity pay - it's £100 a week?. And when she went back to work part time after her first she only got paid enough to pay for childcare for the time she was working (and on a full-time wage she would be earning more than her husband)!
This all comes round to the problem of people not being open about their pay packets and women generally not being demanding enough at work for equal pay.
If we want to be treated with equal respect we can start with getting equal pay!
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I'm frightened by Australian women. They lack substantial differences to Australian men.
Gender politics these days seems to be land grab for androgynous power.
Why can't our differences unite?
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having lived in Oz for the past year, i completly agree with what 6 has said.
"Australian Women are tough, strong minded and some of the most fiesty in the world. They have the character (that both men and women need here) to survive and thrive in this difficult and challenging environment."
they are with out a doubt this, and i admire them completly. As far as the way the Uk thinks and acts towards woment i personally think they should take a leaf out of the Aussies book and treat the women like they would like to be treated. I am grateful that i have been treated with respect i would never have been considered for in the UK
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It occurs to me that since Australia is now the most liveable country in the world (or something like that) then these "feisty" Australian women bred from a "difficult and challenging environment" must either be dying out or finding themselves slighlty out of place within their new metropolitan lifestyles.
Also, one person's "feisty" is another's "annoying and overbearing". Not that I'm saying that is how I've found the women here to be.
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Perhaps stats about women CEOs aren't the true measure. Germaine Greer also said "I didn't fight to get women out from behind vacuum cleaners to get them onto the board of Hoover"
But then you could quote GG to support - or mock - just about any view.
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You only need to look at the way obnoxious politicians in NSW are treated. In the case of Michael Costa, his "demeanour and penchant for expletives are legendary" ... just one of the boys really. Whereas Belinda Neal is an "ugly bully" according to the leader of the opposition Brendan Nelson and has been sent for anger management counselling by the PM.
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I must say Australia is definitely both more sexist and more racist than the UK - I can't comment on anywhere else.
I notice it most at work. I am an engineer so working in a male dominated industry which may not be as representative of Australia as a whole - I regularly hear comments of both sexist and racist nature that you would rarely hear now in the UK.
I still get treated primarily as a woman first and an engineer second, something which I was rarely aware of in the UK (not that sexism is dead there either!!)
Having said that, Australia is moving in the right direction, and making a concious effort to reduce both sexisn and racism - You can't ask more than that - other than maybe the process speeding up a little!!
Bottom line is Australians are great people, and it's a great country.
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