"Forget about the glass ceiling and all those other feminist icons purporting to hold back the advancement of women as leaders", advises Geoffrey Maslen in the November 17 Bulletin magazine. "Women already dominate uni campuses — soon they will form the majority in the professions."
While Maslen makes much of the increase in women in enrolled and graduating from non-traditional areas like engineering, his star example, a newly graduated mining engineer, admits: "Women can achieve the same goals as men, you just have to work harder than the guys". In her course at the University of NSW, women were outnumbered five to one.
Maslen's information was drawn from a study for the Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee by Ian Dobson, Raj Sharma and Anthony Haydon. They said, "Enrolments in bachelor courses by women have now reached about 55%, with women being statistically over-represented in several disciplines, so the access battle would seem to be won".
After finding that men succeeded less well than women in most university courses, Dobson, Sharma and Haydon recommend that universities "may wish to develop strategies for enhancing the performance of male students and for bridging the currently large gender gap in performance".
This ignores the other finding of their study, that the over-representation Maslen refers to is precisely in traditionally female-dominated fields. Before women go to university, while they are at university and after they leave, their aspirations and opportunities are shaped by the dominant ideology of a "suitable" career for a woman.
Maslen's own research found that women made up 80% of teaching graduates under 25 years old and 91% of nursing graduates. National Union of Students figures show that women make up only 27% of computer science graduates.
As well, women are grossly under-represented among academics. At a conference on education law last year, Chris Puplick, president of the Anti-Discrimination Board, said, "Women make up more than 50% nationally of undergraduate university students, about one-third of academic staff but only 17% of senior decision makers or academic positions of senior lecturer or above".
What happens to women after they graduate?
Maslen states that far more women of child-bearing age are remaining in the work force, but Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show that this is primarily in part-time work — the only real option for many working mothers.
Some women say that it gives them greater flexibility, but others say that affordable child-care would give more options, including full-time work.
Maslen cites women's academic and employment success in law, but in an accompanying article, Anabel Dean writes that NSW Law Society figures show that among lawyers, women have a harder time that men when faced with juggling vocational and family responsibilities.
In medicine, says Dean, "Women comprise 32% of GPs, 14% of specialists (but only 3% of these are involved in surgery), and 43% of trainee doctors".
Women's careers are often badly affected by parenthood, with lost opportunities for promotion, and the resultant loss of earnings. With quality child-care becoming increasingly inaccessible, even for professionals, more women are being forced to take the break from work for several years at a time, jeopardising their re-entry opportunities.
Even if some women are doing better in some professions, does this mean the "access battle has been won"?
Most women are not professionals, and many are paid much less than men doing work of equal value (the traditionally male-dominated car-related trades versus traditional "female" trades such as hairdressing, for example).
Women with more money can overcome some barriers to career advancement. They are at least able to free themselves from domestic labour by hiring a (usually woman) cleaner, or exercising their reproductive rights by having an (increasingly expensive) abortion, for example. But working-class women — the majority of women — generally lead a harder, more restrictive life.
A few more women in the boardroom or in parliament does not mean there is equality of the sexes.
Furthermore, even if women had achieved true equality in campus life, the Coalition government's goal of full up-front fees at all universities, and its campaign to make child-care more expensive and less accessible, will have a detrimental impact on women's educational access and achievements for years to come.
By Margaret Allum