by Janis Shaw
I represented WISENET at the Coalition Women's Forum held at Parliament House on Friday 23 June. The title of the forum, Opportunities and Choices, suggested that women in the 1990s have a new way forward, but most of the presenters spoke to the continuing inadequacies in the status of Australian women. A number of issues were addressed, most prominent being women's participation in the workplace and their financial independence.
The forum was opened by Adrienne Clarke, Chairman (that's what the program said!) of CSIRO. Professor Clarke emphasised the need to encourage women to enter a wider range of occupations and to take up tertiary studies. She said that Australian women needed greater financial independence, equitable superannuation schemes and retirement benefits, and encouragement to develop their own financial know-how.
In contrast, Carole Carrol, national convener of Choice for Families Association, delivered an emotive argument for the 'rights' of those women who 'choose' to stay at home. Ms Carrol located her argument in the debate surrounding the new Child Care Rebate. She was highly critical of Eva Cox's proposition made recently on Radio National that spending time with one's children was a very pleasant private pastime but produced few public benefits. Ms Carroll chose not to speak to the status of single mothers and/or other mothers who must work 'outside the home', nor did she offer any strategies for women to gain the career ground lost when the children can look after themselves.
In his plenary address, John Howard said that he had 'no truck' with people who criticised women who stayed at home to deliver day care personally, nor did he have any 'truck' with people who criticised women who went out to work. He did note that there were 'pathetically few' women in parliament, but provided no plan for rectifying this most obvious gender imbalance. Presumably women will have to leave home during daylight hours to achieve equality in these particular Houses.
Trang Thomas, Chairperson of the Victorian Ethnic Affairs Council, provided one clear message: speaking fluent English is basic to participating fully in Australian society. She outlined the current inadequacies in the delivery of basic English language lessons to ethnic women, not always a matter of deficient funding but of bureaucratic structures and the disjuncture of these with the lived experience of many ethnic women.
Audrey Kinnear, ATSIC Senior Policy Adviser, cast doubt on whether Equality, Equity & Security, the title of her session, was achievable for women at this stage, especially with respect to the status of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women. Both Professor Thomas and Ms Kinnear emphasised the importance of support for communities of people, and support for women to fully participate in their communities.
The only place for young women to speak was during the time allotted for questions from the floor, but many of them took the opportunity to contribute. These young women represented different NGOs but they all sounded as though they expected to participate fully in society and showed little schizophrenia around whether to stay home or go to work.