Shock! Sex Discrimination Commissioner discovers existence of sex discrimination!
As widely featured on tonight’s news, maiden member for Goulburn Pru Goward considers politics a sexist world. Well, newsflash, she has a point. But then I saw this:
“I have never worked in any profession as male-dominated or as ruthlessly sexist as this,” she said. “I was quite shocked by it.”
While her previous jobs had been “tough”, nothing had prepared her for this new challenge.
“Now I’m 54, I’m not cute anymore … I’m reasonably toughened and I thought I was ready for anything.
“Politics and particularly that parliament is particularly male-dominated and extraordinarily chauvinistic, in a very primitive physical way that I didn’t expect people to still behave.”
Let’s think about this…
Consider for just one moment that Goward, who was sex discrimination commissioner for a number of years, and whose job it was to promote gender equality a) didn’t think that men “still behaved” in a chauvinistic, primitive way; b)had never in fact experienced such an environment, and was shocked by it; c)thought that being older and no longer ‘cute’ would protect her somewhat from sex discrimination, despite also being the age discrimination commissioner since the inception of the role.
There are some problems here, and I would think that most of them were problems for HREOC and for the women of Australia. I also wondered, like the wonderful Meredith Burgmann who featured heavily on tonight’s news, where the hell Goward had been for the past thirty years.
According to her Saxton Speakers bio, Goward has worked as a journalist, media consultant, economics tutor and journalism lecturer. White collar, highly paid ivory tower industries, where women are paid equally to men, actively recruited under affirmative action and EEO policies, supported by inbuilt structures to speak up should something go wrong, given a voice and a process to slap and rap errant dudes with attitude problems over their wrists and knuckles and whatever else they’re waving about with gay abandon.
The biggest problem for women in these positions is the glass ceiling. I know, because I work in a similar industry. The problems that women in these positions encounter are not systematic put-downs in the workplace, unequal job and pay structures, sexual harrassment and name calling, physical intimidation and bullying. If any of these problems occur, the Pru Gowards and arleeshars of the world can mount a court case and ride to victory like Boadiccea. Ain’t no mountain high enough to keep me from prosecuting the boss who tries to fumble his privates in my face.
As such, the idea of sex discrimination comes to produce an ingrained response of righteousness - men behaving badly ‘get caught’ and punished, and the woman is sympathised with for her terrible experience. Which is a fairly ideal system, let’s face it.
The real problem begins when women in these positions fail to look beyond their own worlds and see that this is not the norm, that for most women sex discrimination is a subtle and daily working experience, and that when it becomes less subtle, you just have to grin and bear it or else lose the only job you can get that gives you time off on wednesdays to go pick the kids up early, or lose the pay rise, or lose the respect of your co-workers for ‘making a fuss’ about what is normal and, some people still believe, natural.
One of the most formative experiences of my professional life was volunteering for a women’s industrial relations advice service during my honours year at university. The people who called that service were at the last stop. They were being sexually harasssed and assaulted in the workplace. They feared to speak up because, in a small country town, they would not get another job if they lost their current position after accusing their boss of discrimination and harassment. They had lost their job because they were pregnant, but couldn’t prove it. They lived with daily teasing from their coworkers that they thought might be sexual harassment but couldn’t be sure. Things like that, and the sort of things that I would think would be on the daily radar of the sex discrimination commissioner.
But apparently, either they just weren’t up there for Pru, or else she never thought it could happen to her. She didn’t think that people ‘still’ behaved like that. And when someone like that is put in position of advocacy for the vulnerable, that is a problem.
Mark wrote:
Well, what was her qualification for being sex discrimination commissioner again? I believe the charitable version of events goes that she wrote a nice biography about John Howard.
Although I have not been able to find the reference, my recollection is that in 2004, the SMH published comments by Goward to the effect that men and women were now paid the same for doing the same job, prompting a furious letter to the editor from me decrying the fact that someone could be sex discrimination commissioner while denying one of the best-attested forms of institutional sex discrimination even exists, which was not published.
On this note, my feeling is that Goward will do less harm as an opposition state parliamentarian than as sex descrimination commissioner.
Guy wrote:
Not even, Mark. She is the wife of David Barnett, who wrote the only biography of John Howard anyone has bothered to write. And it is woeful and tiresome.
arleeshar wrote:
Do you know what? Goward had no tribunal or advocacy experience and as such was woefully unqualified to serve as sex discrimination commissioner.
But Pru Goward was not, by the standards of many political appointments, [pdf] unqualified to be the sex discrimination commissioner. She has just achieved a higher public profile because of the fact that she is a woman.
Apply to Goward the same standards that would apply to most of Howard’s crappy political appointments, most of whom were men. Goward was a journo and academic, high profile woman who ideologically held the same point of view as the Howard establishment on issues of sex discrimination. She would further the Government’s agenda for sex discrimination issues - sidelining discrimination as aberrant rather than mainstreaming it as a terrible problem to be dealt with, reducing the sorts of problems that business had with dealing with the sex-discrim lobby.
Consider, for instance, the appointment to the Australian Industrial Relations Commission of ex-Reith staffers. Think of ex Howard staffer Paul McClintock’s recent elevation to chairman of Medibank Private or Geoff Cousins to Telstra, or various entirely inappropriate appointments to judicial bodies like the Federal Court.
Think of the elevation of Professor Ian Harper to the head of the Fair Pay Commission - a guy who was an academic economist, which bears much the same relationship to the role as Pru’s political journalism credentials did, and who was put in charge of determining the minimum wage for millions of people. Harper is another guy who shouldn’t be in a position that should be filled by someone who is an advocate for the vulnerable, based on his lack of expertise. In this speech [pdf], he in fact says:
arleeshar wrote:
BTW I would also like to say hello to our several anonymous viewers who arrived here via a google blogsearch for ‘sex’.
Fiasco da Gama wrote:
To be fair, arleeshar, I think she was talking about politics in the specific context of behaviour on the floor of the Legislative Assembly, which is well past any line of decent conduct. Even compared to journalism.
Yet, Joe Tripodi remains a Member of Parliament…
arleeshar wrote:
I don’t know, F - of course it’s beyond what’s reasonable, but then so is alot of behaviour in alot of workplaces.
Though you’re right, it’s not many workplaces where screaming obscenities at your colleagues is not only accepted as normal but in fact is required.
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