Cover Photo by Olia Danilevich
FAIN is keen to hear from women about their experiences in the workplace. Here is a brief glimpse of the paid working life experiences of an Anglo woman from a working-class background and still with a strongly beating working-class heart grafted onto an ill-fitting middle-class brain 40-plus years ago.
To protect confidentiality and privacy, she is named Ellen.
These four workplace short stories are about Ellen’s life and times in four different workplaces. A reflection – both direct experience and observed – on being a woman in those workplaces spanning forty-eight years of paid employment. Differing types of employment yet always within what is now called the community services sector.
Workplace 1:
Underpaid and Sexually Harassed
In 1957, barely 15 years old, Ellen got her first full-time paid job working as a junior secretary in a family-owned, private timber supply company. Over the next three years she learnt that while she had a very supportive female supervisor, including recommending Ellen be sent on a paid training course to learn how to operate a mechanised ten-column ledger system, her supervisor had no control over the male administration, timber customers or yard workers.[1]
Ellen had to deal almost daily with male workers’ unwelcome, offensive and persistent sexually harassing comments and, less frequently, unsubtle hints of ‘what they could do for her’.
The paid training opportunity was welcomed but not the sexual harassment and threats of sexual assault.
While Ellen stood her ground, she worried that her blunt, rarely polite rejections would lead to her being sacked. Her female supervisor’s limited authority lacked the power or control to stop the harassment and their employer – the father and his two adult sons – ignored it. ‘Boys will be boys’, shrug of the shoulders, that sort of thing.
Ellen also learnt that junior rates of pay came along with what is now called sexual harassment and the threat of sexual assault. This sexual conduct was not illegal at the time. There was then no related community standard. No respect.
Workplace 2:
Gender Inequities
In January 1960, Ellen entered a city-based public training hospital as a trainee nurse. In those days, your application had to include two references, preferably from community leaders. If you were short-listed as a potential suitable trainee, you attended an in-person interview with the matron. In Australia, matrons then ran hospitals and demanded great respect – a forceful reminder that some Anglo women gained seniority but within a traditional system of hierarchy and gender roles in a caring sector of undervalued women’s work.
Before and after graduating as a registered nursing sister – now Registered Nurse Division 1 – more gender, race and age discrimination and harassment. For example, female junior sisters got the undervalued hard work with fewer thankless hours of unpaid work compared to Ellen’s trainee nurse years, limited authority and, at times, slight respect.
By contrast, junior male doctors had authority, were respected, and were relatively well paid for their hard work although they worked long hours unpaid.
Junior doctors’ formal authority and respect came through title, rank and networks, skills and expertise within the health system. They might have been at the bottom of the doctor hierarchy but their work was valued. At the powerful top were highly paid doctor/s in charge – attending specialists – then senior and junior registrars, then one or more resident doctors.
Race-based discrimination against women in authority was evident at times within all levels of staff and by some patients and certain visitors.
Class and race-based discrimination was evident across genders. Many low-paid hospital ‘general staff’ employees such as wardsmen, cleaners, laundry workers, and food trolley workers were often highly skilled and held overseas qualifications, then not accepted in Australia, such as doctors, engineers, and architects.
Ellen’s eight years of nursing in public hospital-based settings gave her an up-close experience of gender inequities in roles between men and women and sex and/or race discrimination during these years adding to her earlier three years of experience as a junior typist-stenographer and ten-column ledger machine operator.[1]
In short, Ellen was politicised and found her voice for women’s rights and fundamental human rights.
Was Ellen thinking she could be part of wider societal change seeking a better world for all, and if yes, did she act to do anything about it?
Ellen left hospital-based nursing in 1966, and after two years working in pioneering grassroots drug and alcohol services, followed the well-worn path of overseas travel then found paid work in a grassroots drug and alcohol organisation in Canada.
Workplace 3:
Insecure Terms and Conditions of Employment
In 1972, back in Sydney, Ellen was seconded to a job setting up a halfway house and rehabilitation program for recovering drug-dependent young people.
Ellen was the most experienced and skilled person in a male-led team but was paid half the wages of male co-workers with or without tertiary qualifications. On the quiet, Ellen was told her rate of pay reflected the fact she could not comply with the requirement for tertiary qualifications! No such qualification was required for the male co-workers.
Over the next four years, Ellen was employed in work she mostly loved yet it was insecure, uncertain (funding bases) and underpaid. Sexual comments, innuendos or explicit advances were not uncommon. Some other women workers were also subjected to racial vilification by offensive snide remarks, insults or ridicule – all designed to humiliate.
Ellen moved from one set of temporary arrangements to another as funding sources dried up. This also meant no paid sick leave, no holiday pay and a lack of equitable opportunities for training, promotion, career prospects, or flexible leave opportunities.
Gender inequities in pay and conditions, racial vilification and/or sex discrimination at work continued albeit in different settings and roles, no matter if junior or senior.
A continuation of gender inequities prevailed. There was some progress made towards gender equity yet so much systemic change remained seemingly out of reach.[2]
Workplace 4:
Financial Control, Yet More of the Same
In 1985, after graduating from university, Ellen applied for twenty paid jobs before getting one.
She telephoned one prospective employer for ‘off-the-record’ feedback and was told that as a mature-aged woman, she was competing against mostly younger men. Her application went into the waste bin – culled before the selection shortlisting process began.
Job application twenty-one was successful. Ellen worked for a peak welfare organisation in an employment and training advocacy role within the community services sector. Again, caring women’s work, not only undervalued but underpaid.
Three years later, this job led to another opportunity and Ellen thought at the time of accepting the offer; it was in a ‘well-paid’ senior role with continuous employment and improved conditions.
Ellen considered this to be a well-paid position, as her pay doubled with improved conditions of employment from her immediate past position. Well into her first year in the new role, Ellen discovered she was paid close to half – significantly less – than the equivalent senior roles held by men.
In 1988, Ellen purchased a home with, at the time, affordable mortgage repayment rates.
Unhappily for Ellen – like many others – money was expensive to borrow. By June 1989, Residential Home Loan interest rates had climbed rapidly to 17% and stayed there until March 1990. Thereafter, interest rates fell slowly to reach 10.5% in June 1992. These were cripplingly high mortgage repayment rates, especially for a solo woman trying to pay off a home. High interest rates did not fall below double digits until June 1996.
Link: rba.gov.au/statistics/historical-data.html[3]
In 1992, when national compulsory superannuation was introduced, Ellen could not afford to top up her compulsory superannuation with voluntary contributions at the same time as paying off high interest mortgage repayments on a home purchased four years earlier.
Make a choice … What! This was between a mortgaged house to live in with little superannuation or no house and little superannuation (super). Financial insecurity in retirement loomed not only due to the immaturity of the national super scheme but also underpaid work i.e. the gender pay gap and hence lower compulsory super contributions from wages to draw on in retirement.
This also meant meagre income in retirement from a combination of little super – Ellen’s compulsory super totalled $10,000 as a source of retirement income – and the miserly Age Pension as the only two sources of retirement income. Some choice!
In 2004, Ellen left paid work and relocated to Victoria to coordinate and provide additional home-based care for her frail, aged mother. Ellen’s mother became increasingly frail over the next four years and needed further assistance.
In 2008, when attempting to re-enter the paid workforce, Ellen was seen as too old to get back into paid work.
For the next 12 years, Ellen built on her earlier years of volunteer work undertaken during her paid working life strengthening her involvement in grassroots movements and community groups.
Conclusion & Discussion
While there have been many improvements over the years, from the beginning of Ellen’s paid working life until her retirement, she dealt with discriminatory attitudes and practices throughout her working life.
Ellen’s paid work experiences in differing workplaces reinforced the fact that racism, sexism, sexual harassment and ageism are a toxic mix for women. Does this toxic mix remain entrenched?
What would a reimagined brighter future for women based on human rights values including economic and social justice, equality, peace, dignity and mutual respect for all be like?
What do you think?
Do any of the practices identified by Ellen outlined below relate to your own experiences in the workplace or do you benefit from a workplace with fair pay and working conditions, free from racial vilification and/or sexual harassment, molestation, bullying and/or race-based discrimination?
Have you experienced:
▪ Underpaid and/or undervalued work
▪ Insecure work
▪ No paid overtime
▪ No holiday pay, sick leave or workers compensation
▪ No training or promotion opportunities
▪ Harassment with persistent racial contempt or ridicule
▪ Racist intimidation and threats of assault
▪ Harassment with persistent sexual comments, suggestions or innuendo
▪ Sexual advances
▪ Being refused a paid job because of your age?[4]
Share your experiences and comments below!
Endnotes
- Ellen was sent to learn how to operate this ten-column ledger system, which was used to keep track of the company’s financial transactions and to prepare financial reports.
- Snapshot of the introduction of Race and Sex Discrimination Acts in Australia and Victoria. 1975. The Australian government introduced the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 after years of struggle. This Act ‘aimed to entrench new attitudes of tolerance and understanding in the hearts and minds of the people’ and sought to be free to ensure the general right to be free from being discriminated against on racial grounds.
humanrights.gov.au/about/news/opinions/forty-years-racial-discrimination-act
The first Act in Victoria was introduced in 1977, entitled the Equal Opportunity Act 1977 (Vic).
humanrights.vic.gov.au/about-us/our-history/#
1984. The federal Sex Discrimination Act 1984 was introduced after many years of struggle. This Act sought to ‘ensure that women had the same access to jobs, services and accommodation as men’ and made sexual harassment illegal for the first time in Australia.
nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/sex-discrimination-act#:~:text=
2001. In Victoria, the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001 was introduced which protects people from vilification because of their race and religion. - Reserve Bank of Australia, Statistical Tables, Historical Data, see also Loan Sense, Media Release, 6 May 2015 ‘Interest rates drop again! How low can they go?’
loansense.com.au/historical-rates.html - Thanks to Ellen for her important contribution to this discussion.
Posted by Lew Wheeler.
Fight Against Inequality Network Inc. 