Women have achieved greater equality in the past decade, but there is a long way to go and the gains are far from secure.
These are the broad conclusions that can be drawn from Women in Australia, a 300-page book of statistics published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics yesterday.
Women are still lower paid, with and average of 76.2 per cent of male income, and tend to have the worst jobs. Yet women do far more of the housework (despite increased employment). The bureau estimates the value of unpaid domestic and community work at $151 billion, 68 per cent of it done by women.
Women have much lower representation in decision-making positions, with only 117 Members of Parliament against 725 men and only 20 per cent of local government members.
Women were more likely to have been ill or seen a doctor in the past two weeks than men and are less likely to have taken part in sport. The statistics show also more elderly women living alone and needing help.
However, women have a higher life expectancy than men. It exceeded 80 for the first time in 1991.
The gains in education have been greatest. More women are undertaking tertiary education than men, and more girls are completing high school than boys.
In launching the book, the Minister for Family Services and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister of the Status of Women, Rosemary Crowley, said, “”Australia has an excellent record in acknowledging the formal rights of women, other than those of our indigenous population. However, the treatment they receive lags far behind this formal recognition.”
The book showed a picture of qualified progress. Every gain had a caveat. Women’s out-numbering of men in tertiary education was not reflected in pay. Longevity had to be balanced against rising lung-cancer rates for women.
The statistics were important because of the myth that if something was not counted it did not exist. Also, as Australia was ending a recession and entering economic growth it was important to set a measure for future progress.
“”However, statistics can never be more than the bare bones of reality,” Senator Crowley said. “”They cannot tell us about the ordinary lives of women balancing full-time employment and parenthood or of women experiencing discrimination or prejudice in the workplace. The glass ceiling is waiting to be broken.”
She said the book would be a welcome resource for women in the community to lobby both parliaments and governments to give women a better go.
The statistics would ensure debate on the situation of women was grounded in fact, not prejudice and assertion. It would be very helpful at dinner parties when faced with prejudice and assertion, she said as an aside.
“”A society that undervalues the talents of contribution of half its citizens is profligate indeed,” she said. “”To fail to recognise the contribution of so many women in sport, the in the arts in all aspects of our life, denies justice to those contributors and truth in history to all our children.”