Opportunities For Women – Is The Battle Fought And Won? Launch Of Women In NSW 2012

On 3 July 2012, The Hon Pru Goward, NSW Minister for Women, addressed The Sydney Institute to launch the Women in NSW 2012 Report. The launch fulfilled an election commitment to base government policy on rigorous research evidence. Women in NSW 2012 is a comprehensive audit of women in NSW at a point in time. As Pru Goward observed, “This Report is a proper analysis of data which dispels myths about women’s lives and highlights their performance across a range of indicators. In doing so, it gives information about NSW as a whole, and the changes experienced by women and men in our state.”

OPPORTUNITIES FOR WOMEN – IS THE BATTLE FOUGHT AND WON? LAUNCH OF WOMEN IN NSW 2012

PRU GOWARD

I’m here today as the Minister for Women and I extend a very warm welcome to all of you. First and foremost, to members of The Sydney Institute, thank you Gerard and Anne for hosting this launch of another commitment of the New South Wales government – one delivered.

Business and community representatives, policy analysts, researchers and friends and colleagues – thank you for joining me at The Sydney Institute this morning for the launch of Women in NSW 2012. I would like to acknowledge and pay my respects to the traditional owners of the land on which we meet, the Cadigal people of the Eora Nation. I am delighted we’re here today to discuss the Women in NSW 2012 report and to explore the questions it raises – and will continue to raise every year about opportunities for women in NSW today.

There was a report for women in NSW – a comprehensive report – in 1995. This commitment is to an annual report, a report every year, that works as a stock-take and as a test against progress. So, I’d like to start with a change of name – not mine. That’s never happened. I’d like to start by saying that the Office for Women’s Policy, which has worked so hard on this report, has a new name – Women NSW. It’s easier to say and it better expresses the leadership role I would like to see the government take on gender equality in this state. This new title marks my determination to build a women’s policy powerhouse that befits New South Wales, Australia’s most populous, diverse and richest state.

Women NSW is certainly undergoing a rebuilding and renaissance. This important public policy unit is leading the development of the NSW domestic and family violence framework and it is also working in active partnership with NSW government agencies on other policy development to improve opportunities for women in our state.

In any government, the work of a central women’s policy unit such as this one is extremely challenging. And, I can say from first-hand experience, very difficult. Of itself, it brings no additional resources to the table, nor subject matter expertise. But it does bring a very unique and powerful perspective. When this perspective is informed by good data, it is even more so. And for such an office to be effective it requires good data, along with a rare combination of policy vision, policy nous and the negotiation skills and dexterity of a cracker deal matter. That is what we need to build and want to build in Women NSW. I’m pleased to say it is already recognised for its thought leadership in women’s policy and its members’ knowledge and expertise are actively sought-out.

Women NSW must work actively not only with other government agencies, as it has done traditionally, but also with job creators – the business community – and the wider community to improve the lives of women in NSW. This demands rigorous research, policy leadership and collaborative project work. It will be a shift in direction but I am confident, with the input of our new Council for Women’s Economic Opportunity, that our partnership with business will be fruitful.

We are not here to deliver new theory, we are here to make a difference.

Now to the Report itself. The publication of Women in NSW 2012 is an important contribution to building a better, shared basis for judging progress and pursuing increased opportunities for women. Improving the evidence base and sharing the facts on gender equity was one of our government’s election commitments. This report represents the fulfilment of this commitment and I am proud to say it is the most in-depth and multidimensional examination of contemporary women’s lives any state government has undertaken. This Report represents the fulfilment of this commitment and I am proud to say it is the most in-depth and multidimensional examination of contemporary women’s lives any state government has undertaken. The Report will become a yearly barometer on women’s equality and opportunity. And I hope it serves as an ongoing catalyst for reflection and debate – and progress.

The Report is distinctive in including a substantial amount of data contributed by state government agencies. This data will be new to many of you, and for example includes HSC subject choice data from the Board of Studies, patient survey data from NSW Health, and data on perceptions of safety from transport for NSW. It is a powerful complement to the more familiar ABS and HILDA longitudinal survey data used in the Report. Where possible this report will also compare progress in NSW with the nation as a whole.

This title of this talk – Opportunities for women: is the battle fought and won? – raises two inter-connected questions. What is it that we are aiming to achieve? And how do we know we are succeeding? A common but important measure of success is to assess how well we have achieved equal outcomes for women and men. If women and men have similar experiences in the key social and economic domains of life, then perhaps we can be satisfied we have achieved our goal of gender equality.

Let’s look at the facts:

Women outperform men in education participation and attainment at all levels – 72 per cent of girls complete high school compared to 63 per cent of boys in 2010; 9.7 per cent of 15 to 64 year old women were engaged in VET Training compared to 8.9 per cent of women. At universities, women made up 57 per cent of NSW undergraduate higher education enrolments in 2010.

Women are less likely to be overweight or obese; 46 per cent of women compared to 60 per cent of men. I’d like to add that I enjoyed reading the caveat from NSW Health that both women and men tend to over report their height and under report their weight. And I think that we are experiencing healthy levels of representation in politics – yet we know we can always do better here.

However, at one level these are good achievements. But it is a more complicated picture than the headlines.

Beyond these relatively well known comparisons, there remain some stubborn inequalities. If you dig deeper into the data you find that the gender gap for particular groups of women is particularly striking. There are some pockets of disadvantage that are well papered over by means and medians. Based on the data in this report you would have to conclude that the differences between women are as striking as the differences between women and men. They significantly modify the narrative about the success of the women’s movement in achieving change for women. The goal of equal outcomes frankly does not help us make sense of the vast range of differences that exist amongst women as defined by ethnicity or socio economic status. There are clearly women who have been left far behind in the race for equality.

Aboriginal women

Aboriginal Australian women in NSW have considerably higher fertility rates than other women – 2.20 births per 1,000 for NSW Aboriginal women compared to 1.87 per 1,000 for all women in 2010.

The increasing fertility rate in the past decade is associated with the high number of Aboriginal women in their twenties. In addition, the rate of domestic violence assault remains significantly higher (nearly six times higher) than among non-Aboriginal women.

Culturally and Linguistically Diverse

Women in NSW presents data which shows that the gender gap in labour force participation between women and men has been decreasing over the last three decades and is now 14 per cent among women aged 25 to 64 years.

However, the gender gap in many non-English speaking communities is far greater. Please note this data comes from the last 2006 Census.

Among Indian born women the gender gap in Labor force participation is 21 per cent. Among Chinese-born women it is 22 per cent. Among Vietnamese-born women it is 26 per cent. Among all women born in the non-main English speaking countries the gender gap in the labour force participation is 22 per cent or 1.6 times the difference between Australian born men and women.

The spatial distribution of women’s poverty

Income maps based on the 2006 Census show that there is considerable inequality between those living in Sydney and those living in the balance of NSW. This is true for disadvantaged households where men live and for those where women live. However, the metro-regional poverty gradient is greater if one looks at women’s households. Outside of Sydney, there is almost always a greater percentage of women living in disadvantaged households than there are men.

There are no locations in NSW where there are a similar percentage of women experiencing social disadvantage as there are men. The Sydney metropolitan area has by far the lowest levels of people experiencing socio-economic disadvantage. However, the western suburbs of Sydney have more than 52.4 per cent of both men and women living in disadvantaged households in 2006.

How does NSW compare? The most striking difference between NSW and the rest of Australia is again in labour force participation rates of women and the gender pay gap.

Today 57 per cent of women in NSW participate in the labour force, compared to 70 per cent of men. A striking feature of women’s labour force participation is that the traditional dip in participation, reflecting women’s exit from the labour force in child-bearing years, has disappeared in NSW. This change occurred in the decade to 2010. Now, women’s participation continues to rise until the age of 55. Compared to other states in Australia, this is unique. Sydney’s high housing costs and the concentration of high paid financial and property services jobs are thought to be drivers of the new pattern.

While the employment rate of men aged 55 to 59 years fell from 82 per cent to 77 per cent between 1978 and 2012, the employment rate for women of this age more than doubled from 30 per cent to 61 per cent in that time.

Another interesting comparison lies in the difference between the top 40 per cent of female earners and the bottom 40 per cent. The gender pay gap is surprisingly small for the bottom 40 per cent of women and men in NSW. The more dramatic gaps are seen for high earners where the pay gap more than doubles. This is unlike the wider Australian income distribution patterns. In addition to the disparities between groups of women, there are of course some clichéd but highly relevant barriers to success.

Getting married and having children has a dramatic impact on the ability of women to rise to the very top ranks of organisations. This is not limited to those aspiring to run law firms or the Stock Exchange or BHP. Take the young mum successfully managing a small retail franchise in Punchbowl who is invited to be acting regional manager for the northern beaches.

For her to take an acting position means reorganising her school runs, after school and pre-school activities, not being available if a child has an accident at school and taking an extra hour and a half a night to get home to cook the evening meal.

Sure, the acting promotion leads to the confirmed promotion she has dreamt of and knows she can do but she declines the great opportunity anyway because it’s too hard to reorganise the kids and her partner for the three months acting position. Unsurprisingly, a less able male gets the offer and is able to take it up. I recall exactly the same experience at the ABC where the route to being a producer generally followed taking acting positions interstate – which I never could. For all ambitious women, the adage that holds is “choose your mate wisely”.

Knowing all this, we should not be surprised by the career findings in this report. The gap between women who have never been married and men is actually fairly narrow in terms of representation at chief executive level. Women appear to affect adversely their prospects of gaining entry to top jobs if they have children. In their 30s, women with no children are some 2.4 times more likely to be senior executives as women with two children. The gap widens with each additional child born.

This is the persuasive power of data. It can chart progress in an objective manner for all to see; it can test our assumptions – and others’ – about women’s lives; and it can point to areas where we need to focus our effort so that we can achieve real change.

Goward Goals

Women in NSW 2012 tells us that today, in NSW, women hold around 10 per cent of construction industry jobs and that less than 1 per cent of constructions trade apprentices are female. The O’Farrell Government has adopted the goal of increasing women’s share in construction and in other jobs seen today as non-traditional for women. But this goal requires that individual women and girls are able, and do, make different choices.

Our job in government industry and the education system, is to remove systemic barriers. In so doing, we create the context where women can decide on their options with their eyes wide open and are less likely to rule out the rewarding opportunities because of the challenges along the way. The Report also confirms the importance of moulding attitudes to opportunity as early as possible because the pathways women choose are determined surprisingly early and definitively. We can see in the Education and Learning chapter of the Report that boys are considerably more likely to choose to study maths or science than girls.

I hope there are others in the audience who are concerned to know that community and family studies rate in the top 10 most studied HSC subjects for girls, higher than physics or chemistry. This early opt-out from science and maths will exclude girls from any number of wonderful careers in the modern Australian economy once they have finished school.

We need to say how it is

Beyond school, there are other impediments to women working in the male dominated trades. Research done at Illawarra TAFE suggests that many employers hold negative stereotypes about the ability of women to work in manual trades. But they are not the only ones – often so do their families, girlfriends, boyfriends or the girls themselves.

Young women are more likely to choose a construction apprenticeship if the traditional grades become part of their everyday consciousness. We know from that same research that women who have successfully gained employment in the manual trades tend to come from families where parents of siblings are already tradespeople.

I suspect the causal relationship here is two-fold. Both the familiarity of trades-type work and the safe environment of family business, and supervision would be key factors in encouraging young women to take up their father’s trade and encouraging mums and dads to accept it as a safe option for their daughters.

Sometimes systemic changes are necessary before people can choose equality. In the case of making every trade traditional for women, we need cultural changes in classrooms, in TAFEs in workplaces and in families.

A host of people have made the publication of Women in NSW possible, and I would like to thank them:

Anne and Gerard Henderson and staff at the Sydney Institute, of course.

Professor Alan Duncan and Rebecca Cassells from the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling (NATSEM) at the University of Canberra, who were external consultants on the report. Dr Ian Watson, a researcher and methodological adviser. The Australian Bureau of Statistics, the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, Graduate Careers Australia and the Australian Institute of Company Directors, who contributed unpublished data.

A Report like this needs collaboration between government agencies, which this NSW government is encouraging, so thanks are due especially to NSW Health, Transport for NSW Education and Communities, Attorney-General and Justice, Finance and Services, Premier and Cabinet, Public Service Commission and the WorkCover Authority.

Finally I am grateful to the wonderful staff in Women NSW who put this report: Alison Frame, Caroline Alcorso, Gabrielle Flax, Adam Smith and Alicia Thompson.

Change in modern democratic society is only ever brought about by informed public debate. This Report is intended to be, and must be, a catalyst for change. Women in NSW is a powerful tool to help us determine what questions we need to ask to uncover systemic issues affecting women’s opportunities to participate fully in society. Over time, successive annual editions of Women in NSW will be useful in providing a benchmark against which the progress of both sexes can be measured in future years.

Perhaps most powerfully, the Report will assist us to explore which strategies and solutions are successful in leading to true equality for women and men, and which are solutions in name only. I hope Women in NSW 2012 will lead to informed and rigorous debate about where we make changes and how we might do this, for the benefit of us all – women and men and the great state of New South Wales.

The value of the Women in NSW Reports will be in providing thorough research and analysis to inform the debate over gender, equality, and to assist business, the community and governments to make lasting changes in NSW.