Clare Burton Memorial Lecture 2001
The 2001 Clare Burton Memorial Lectures were given by Professor Belinda Probert, Head of the School of Social Science and Planning and Professor of Sociology at RMIT University. The lecture was entitled ''Grateful slaves' or 'self-made women': a matter of choice or policy?' It was based on research interviews focusing on identities and experiences of work, gender and citizenship, which Professor Probert undertook with working couples from the 1950s, a period of full employment, and the 1990s a period of uneven employment.
Professor Probert underlined the fact that Australian society is still deeply divided about its attitudes to working mothers. And this is happening at a time when a higher proportion of mothers of young children is going back to work than ever before.
Philippa Hall (NSW Department for Women), Professor Belinda Probert
and Fiona Krautil (EOWWA) at the Sydney lecture.
"It is now widely accepted that mothers should go back to work - so much so that full-time mothers feel resentful about what they perceive as social pressure to get a job," said Professor Probert. "At the same time, Australians are surprisingly suspicious of formal childcare, and generally feel that young children should be with their mothers. This ambivalence about working mothers provides the cultural grounds on which the Federal Government has been able to wind back the gains of the 1970s and 1980s, and stall further progress in support of working women.
"Changes in government policy have increased the costs of childcare,reducing the choices of low income women; the deregulation of the labour market has reduced women's protection under awards; the normal working day is getting longer and longer; and Australia remains one of the very few developed countries without statutory maternity leave.
"If we want to revive the notion of gender equality we need to confront the contradiction between the irreversible trend towards women working and the continued insistence that caring is something that mothers do at home without public support. Otherwise we will continue to force women into choosing to become 'grateful slaves' or 'self-made women.'"
At each lecture, there was a response by Fiona Krautil, Director of the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency. She discussed the changes that had been introduced to the agency, once known as the Affirmative Action Agency, and to the Act that governs it. She announced that the Agency will be taking a tough stand on employers who do not comply with the act and will play an active role in promoting equal opportunity for women in the workplace.