Sex Bias

Time-warp bosses blamed for sex bias | Top Stories | News.com.au

PROGRESS towards gender equality has stalled because Australian bosses cannot move beyond the outdated view that an ideal worker is a man with no caring responsibilities.
Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick has come to that conclusion after a six-month listening tour that took her around the nation.

Ms Broderick, who has launched a five-point plan to address the problem of gender inequality, told The Australian the nation was still far from eliminating discrimination on the basis of sex, and many of the issues she would face in the coming years were the same as those encountered by her predecessors from a decade or more ago.

"I do think our progress toward gender equality has stalled," she said.

"We've had nearly 25 years of the Sex Discrimination Act, and most of the overt discrimination has been removed, but we haven't been able to eliminate attitudinal sex discrimination.

"It remains the case, for instance, that employers think the ideal worker is someone who can work extended hours, has no caring responsibilities and is always available. Now that model has never worked for women, and increasingly it's not even working for men."
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Ms Broderick said Australia sometimes kidded itself into believing it had a lot of flexible workplaces. "The flexible workers are in the casual and low-skilled areas," she said.

"We just don't have quality part-time work options for either men or women."

Under Ms Broderick's Agenda for Equality, she hopes to see, among other outcomes, an increasing number of women in leadership positions, and a balance between paid work and family responsibilities, beginning with a national government-funded paid maternity leave system.

"If there was one thing I could do to promote gender equality, it would be the better sharing of paid and unpaid work between men and women, because that would impact on quite a number of these areas I've referred to," she said.

But the continuing issue of sexual harassment also needed addressing. She pointed to a specific case she encountered of a teenage worker at a supermarket being forced to wear see-through tops as a uniform.