Equality of outcome
In a submission last week to the Howard government's review of the Affirmative Action (Equal Employment Opportunity for Women) Act, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry proposed that the name of the legislation be changed to Equal Opportunity for Women Act.
While the name may seem a trivial consideration for one of Australia's leading business organisations, in fact the proposed change encapsulates the ACCI's, and the government's, objectives in this review.
The Affirmative Action Act currently requires higher education and private sector employers with 100 or more employees to create the conditions to promote equal opportunities for women in or entering the work force and eliminate discrimination against women by adopting appropriate policy, consulting with staff and trade unions, setting objectives and forward estimates, and monitoring and evaluating these. The ACCI is calling for the removal of all legal sanctions against businesses which refuse to comply.
The sanctions are hardly severe. No fines or compensation payments can be imposed; all the law allows is the public identification of those companies that fail to comply, and their barring from tendering for federal government business. Nevertheless, the ACCI argues that the Affirmative Action Agency (which implements the act) needs "a more positive role, as a resource centre, not as an enforcer".
The proposed name change reflects this shift from obligatory to voluntary compliance.
"Equal opportunity" is difficult to quantify and, therefore, to enforce. It is a qualitative goal: a work environment in which women have the same chances as men for on-the-job security, satisfaction and advancement.
Even the most "equal" workplace conditions, however, do not counteract the many facets of gender oppression that impact, from outside, on women's waged work. Even when they're encouraged as much as men to apply for promotions, for example, women still tend to have less confidence than men to do so.
Encouraged as much as men to undertake study to improve their job prospects, women still have to spend more of their study time than men fulfilling family responsibilities. Given the right to equal pay, women are still concentrated in stereotypical female jobs at lower pay than men.
Equality of opportunity for all women in all workplaces is a fundamental demand of feminism — one that we have still to win in most job sectors.
But equality of opportunity is not the same as, and does not automatically result in, equality of outcome. That's where affirmative action comes in.
Affirmative action policies — the result of almost three decades of struggle by feminists — acknowledge the institutionalised disadvantage women (or disadvantaged minorities) suffer in this society and the need for positive discrimination in women's favour if equality of outcome is to be achieved.
Workplace affirmative action policies usually involve specific quotas for the hiring and promotion of more women than would normally be the case. Because the results are measurable, they are also enforceable.
Workplace affirmative action does not eradicate the source of gender inequality, but it does re-balance the scales a little by guaranteeing more women more and better jobs, more job security (especially in periods of high unemployment) and more positive role models. It is a conscious, direct and concrete assault on the sexual division of labour in capitalist society — and that's why the ACCI wants to abolish it.
The reason for being of companies like those the ACCI represents is to make as much profit as possible. In so far as providing people with jobs or helping to close the gap between men's and women's employment conditions and economic well-being factor into their calculations, they are as costs, lowering profits.
The persistent sex segregation of the work force (and Australia's is the most segregated in the OECD) increases private profits by constituting women into a large reserve pool of labour which is cheaper to employ, less unionised and "demanding", and more readily hired and fired according to companies' needs.
Private employers have no interest whatever in measures designed to reduce this segregation. Rather, in their constant drive to cut costs and increase profits, they will do everything in their power to eradicate, not just affirmative action policies, but the very idea of affirmative action as a legitimate demand and necessary step on the path to workplace justice and equality.
By Lisa Macdonald