By Kerry Meiers
In 1990, 41% of students in Victorian TAFE colleges were women. They studied predominantly in traditionally female dominated fields: art and design, paramedical, social and community services and personal services. In contrast, men studied in fields such as building, engineering and industrial services.
Currently, 90% of all TAFE students study part time, with 40% of these being women. Being a part-time student is of particular concern to women. Student services are typically influenced by full-time students (who occupy the most contact hours on campus), who are mainly men. This will often mean that student services are primarily focused on men.
Women at TAFE provide an interesting profile: an average age of 30, having little or no income, being a full-time parent and a part-time student. Many have no formal education. Ten per cent of women in TAFE come from non-English speaking backgrounds.
For women already in the TAFE system, the following areas need to be addressed and improved with real input from female students: student support services; appropriate and adequate child-care; a more conducive environment where women are safe from sexual harassment. We need avenues where our grievances are heard and taken seriously, and where women can participate equally in the decision making at all levels.
At Moorabbin College of TAFE in Victoria, recently a few women have formed a women's collective. Our main objective up to now has been to make women students aware that we are around and meet weekly.
Moorabbin College of TAFE is a fairly conservative college; we have no student union and no independent equal opportunity officer. Our college newspaper has traditionally been apolitical and usually filled with recreational activities — until we started writing articles on women's issues and the importance of forming a women's collective on campus.
Lately the newspaper has been very politically focused on feminism from a male TAFE students perspective. For example, the last edition of our student paper had the most blatantly sexist article, which was actually a reprint from the Herald Sun. This was written by a woman from TAFE who was voicing her incredibly negative opinion of the NOWSA [National Organisation of Women Students in Australia] conference in 1993, followed by a reply from the NOWSA collective. Next to this article was one by me asking any interested women to come to NOWSA in 1994.
This is a good example that women in TAFE colleges are often working at the grassroots level to fight quite open sexism. Women at TAFE colleges quite often don't know where their politics are coming from. They are fighting such entrenched inequalities that they haven't had time to find out what sort of feminist they are or indeed if they want to be known as a feminist at all.
Women make up over 100,000 students in TAFE colleges. Some TAFE colleges are extremely advanced in the facilities they have for women, like the RMIT TAFE College, which has its own "women's room".
As women students, we are often actively encouraged to alienate ourselves from each other. We need to group together to learn from each other, so that we don't have to fight the same battles another group has already won, but to use their knowledge and support.
As individuals we are diverse and different but unity at the grassroots level is our strength. The opportunity NOWSA can give us to meet and discuss issues is invaluable in gaining what is rightfully ours. NOWSA should actively encourage TAFE women to attend the annual conference by using peak TAFE bodies to supply information about it. With more TAFE women involved, NOWSA can truly become inclusive for all women students.
[Kerry Meiers is one of the organisers of the women's collective at Moorabbin TAFE College in Victoria. This is the edited text of a speech given to the NOWSA conference in Sydney in July.]