Good evening and thank you for the invitation to join you here tonight. It’s marvellous to be in a room of warriors of battles past and present.
I’m delighted to have the opportunity to speak about issues that are incredibly important to me, and I think, to most Australian women.
One of the many joys of winning Bennelong has been entering public life at a time of record participation by women across all branches of government, in our legislative assemblies, in the executive and the judiciary.
There are four women in the federal cabinet.
Around 40 women in federal parliament.
Two women on the High Court.
And soon our first female Governor General.
Now here’s the first shameless bit of name dropping this evening.
I was lunching just a few weeks ago with Quentin Bryce and Anna Bligh. I love saying that. I’ll say it again.
I was at lunch with a Premier called Anna and a Governor called Quentin, and they were both wearing Sarah Jessica Parker high heels.
Anna strikes me as a very capable state leader. She’s come to the job better prepared than just about anyone. And she was not brought in to pick up the pieces of a failing government.
Quite the contrary.
Peter Beattie spotted Anna’s talent early and gave her a succession of challenging jobs beginning with Education, then Families, Finance, Infrastructure and Treasury.
As a native of Queensland I look at that state now and see the full flowering of the Fitzgerald reforms and a place that is developing Californian style economic chutzpah. I recommend Julianne Shultz’s excellent essay in the Griffith Review on how all this happened.
I have my own recollections on how Queensland went from the deep provincialism of thirty years ago to being, arguably, our most innovative state.
And many of those recollections revolve around the status of women.
Which brings me back to lunch - still my favourite activity.
Anna, Quentin and myself are all of an age to remember a very different Queensland, indeed, a very different Australia.
When I left school in 1970, there were only two women in the Federal Parliament.
Women had had the vote since federation, but it was 1943 before the first two women, Dorothy Tangney and Enid Lyons went to Canberra.
It did not start a trend.
When I took up my cadetship on This Day Tonight in Brisbane I was the first female to do so in that office.
At some point in my early apprenticeship days I met and interviewed a young law tutor on the lovely grounds of the St Lucia University of Queensland campus. Her name was Quentin Bryce.
She didn’t look like a feminist - jeans and boots being de rigeur to prove your credentials in those days - but Quentin certainly talked like one.
As I recall she talked of the need for sex discrimination legislation, and for affordable child care for young mothers.
In other states these were not radical ideas, but in Queensland in the mid 70’s it was close to the sort of stuff that would get you locked up for a night or two in the watch-house.
As to the idea that there should be a bit of power-sharing with the blokes in the states unicameral parliament, well the idea was considered totally insane.
We were constantly told, through the challenging pages of the Courier Mail that such representation was not needed, as the Premier of the day, the enlightened Joh Bjelke Petersen had all the advice he needed - from his wife Flo, and from one of the state’s great moralizers, a woman by the name of Rona Joyner, a woman who for years, kept sex education out of Queensland public schools.
So with this background, you’ll allow that over the space of a very pleasant hour or so, Anna, Quentin and I enjoyed the moment - and talked for a while of the remarkable social transformation in women’s workforce participation in the last quarter century.
Now before this starts to sound insufferably smug, let me get to my point and my focus for the evening.
While it’s important to celebrate the changes, we need to look at what has not changed in women’s lives.
And when we do, we see a much more complex picture.
My title this evening - What Happens After You Marry Mr. Big? - is deliberately taken from one of the hit chick flicks of the moment, Sex And The City.
This may shock many of you, but the TV series of the same name has been one of my favourite diversions for years.
The clothes, the Manhattan backdrop, the bawdy language are sometimes just what a girl needs at the end of a hard day’s slog in the Australian workforce jungle.
If you’ve seen the movie, you’ll know that Carrie finally gets her man. And of course that’s when the credits roll.
Mama Mia, another big cinema hit, is also about getting your fella. In this case it’s the fifty something Meryl Streep, not her on stage daughter, who finally ties the knot with a slightly shop-worn Pierce Brosnan.
It’s all really updated Jane Austen.
Mating is the ultimate goal, and various impediments and misunderstandings have to be overcome before the happy day arrives.
In Australia these days, young women are marrying Mr Big a bit later - the statistics say it’s around the age of 30. And 76% of modern couples live together before eventually marrying.
But whatever the arrangement, you and Mr Big are one.
What happens then?
If you’ve been smart, you will have followed the rules laid out in an article penned by the New York Times’ Maureen Dowd recently.
Never marry a man who has no friends. It’s an indication he’ll probably be incapable of the intimacy marriage demands.
Steer clear of a man who lets you run his life and never makes demands counter to yours. It’s good to have a doormat in the home, but not if it’s your husband.
And, this is a good one, don’t marry a problem character thinking you will change him. People are the same after marriage as they were before.
You should also ask yourself whether he has a sense of humour, how he handles money and finally, you should take a good, hard, unsentimental look at his family – those relationships will tell you a lot about him and his attitude to women.
To all this I would add my own advice.
Forget hitching up with Heathcliff - mate with a grown-up who knows how to look after himself. I’ve always said I knew I was on safe ground with my Bob when I discovered he had fresh towels in the bathroom and the fridge had a supply of milk that had not passed the use-by date.
Not very romantic but eighteen years down the track, these things affect the texture of one’s days.
So you’ve followed some basic rules. What then?
Well let’s have a look around the world at what life is like for Mr and Mrs Big and how congenial it is, or isn’t, when it comes to having lots of little Bigs.
In another recent New York Times article – No Babies, Russell Shorto looked at the vexed question of why fertility rates are so low in countries traditionally regarded as pro family - Italy, Spain and Greece - yet a country like America, that provides little state support for families, has one of the highest fertility rates in the developed world.
In Europe, according to Shorto, there’s a critical distinction between what’s happening in the north and the south.
The Scandinavian countries have the most vigorous social-welfare systems and the highest fertility rates.
In the south, in countries like Italy, society prefers women to stay at home after they have children and government policy supports those social mores.
The divide therefore is startling. In the north, “the more children a family has, the wealthier it is likely to be, whereas in southern Europe having children is a financial sinkhole, which drags a family toward poverty”.
And what of the United States? It is, as Shorto describes it, “a sparkling exception” with a fertility rate of 2.1, one of the highest rates in the developed world.
But America doesn’t offer anything like the comprehensive social welfare systems of Northern Europe. So what’s driving its booming fertility rate?
Many observers suggest it might be its flexible labour market and the lack of social stigma attached to mothers working. Mothers can take time out to have children and raise them, moving in and out of the workforce with relative ease.
So here’s the interesting conclusion. “Working mothers are having more babies than stay at home mothers.”
What lies at the heart of Shorto’s analysis of the fertility problem strikes a chord with women the world over - gender equality and flexibility.
The message is clear: societies must be either generous, or flexible, if they want to promote fertility.
In Norway today, the debate is not about how to increase fertility rates, it’s about whether to make paternity leave compulsory.
The issue is about ensuring men and women have equal rights and opportunities. Get that right, and the fertility conundrum will probably resolve itself.
As for Australia, I suspect we are somewhere between the experience in Northern Europe and America on the one hand, and the baby bust countries of southern Europe.
We’re told that the population’s replacement rate is 2.1 babies per woman. In 2006, Australia’s total fertility rate was 1.81, the highest since 1996. Higher than the “family friendly” nations of southern Europe (1.3), on par with the Scandinavian countries (1.8), but lower than the fine example set by the Americans!
So how does our system fare in terms of providing gender equality and workforce flexibility?
Say the Bigs are a typical Australian couple and they’re thinking about having their first child. Their experiences would no doubt provide a yardstick by which we can measure progress in these fundamental areas.
Obviously the decision to bring little Bigs into the world is a complex one that forces couples to consider a range of factors: their age, their financial status, the state of their careers, whether they will need child care and for how long.
Whatever the process, little Big arrives.
So here you are. You’re a working professional, you’ve just had your first little Big. What’s it like?
In their book “the F word, How we Learned to Swear by Feminism”, Jane Caro and Catherine Fox tell us “there is a stunned look on the face of the first-time mother…..the shock of the transition [from childless woman to mother] is blindsiding.”
I think I know what they mean.
Many mothers have spoken to me about the isolation of full-time parenting, particularly in those early months, the lack of familial support, and their ability – or inability - to deal with other people’s expectations of how a woman should care for her child.
And where is Mr Big in all of this? Studies tell us he might do around 20 to 30 per cent of the housework – work that is generally unpaid and otherwise done by you.
Of course the Government has a role in your life too.
It will pay you a $5,000 baby bonus after the birth of little Big, and other family payments if you’re eligible. Eligibility depends on a range of factors, including family income. And when you’re ready to return to paid work the government provides subsidies to assist with the cost of child care – if you can find the type of care you want, for the times and in an area that you need.
But despite this myriad of financial support, Australia remains one of only two OECD countries to have no national system of paid maternity leave.
At present, whether a woman receives any paid maternity leave depends entirely her employer and her employment arrangements, arrangements she probably negotiated for herself.
Caro and Fox sum the situation up well: “It is motherhood that is really expensive for women. And that is because the hardest work you do in your life is not only unpaid and often taken for granted but it carries a workplace and career penalty.”
So, at some point in this scenario, you will probably make the decision to return to paid employment. And whatever your experiences prior to going on maternity leave, it’s unlikely things in the professional sphere will be the same upon your return.
And this is where it gets tricky. The rules work against the professional woman.
Some time ago, I met with a group of young women in my electorate.
They were smart, savvy and well informed.
Several of them had married, or were on the verge of marrying. They all had careers and some had had their first child and returned to work.
What they told me was this.
From the minute you have your first baby, Australia looks at you differently. If women go back to work after the birth of a child, it’s likely to be on a part-time basis and that immediately puts them on the “B” track.
That means these highly qualified women won’t be doing work that enhances their skills and secures their financial future. And that annoys them, as it should.
For whatever reasons, part-time and flexible work arrangements are not always taken seriously by employers, colleagues or the community.
If you can’t work five days a week and more at call, and if you have to accommodate other people’s needs, including your children’s, well, you’re just not up to it. You probably can’t meet the demands of the job. Old attitudes die hard. And slowly.
Traditional workplace structures – and attitudes - tend to limit flexibility and therefore the choices women have about the type of work they’ll do and how they’ll manage their professional and personal responsibilities.
It’s unfathomable to me in this day and age, when technology is so advanced and such an integral part of our lives, that employers aren’t embracing the flexibility it offers and using it to attract and retain some very good employees.
There are some smart employers doing this. We just need more of them.
It’s clear that we need institutional change. We need to redesign the system, because part-time work is a reality in contemporary Australia, and it’s here to stay.
By 2006, part-time workers accounted for 28 per cent of all employed people, and 71 per cent of part-time workers were women.
What about pay?
Whether you go back to work full-time or part-time, one thing is guaranteed, you won’t be paid as well as your male colleagues.
According to The Australian’s George Megalogenis – the 1900’s was the decade when Australia de-bloked the economy. 1991 was the first year in which more women under the age of 30 held tertiary degrees than men in the same age bracket. By 2010, he projects that women with degrees will dominate every year to age 65.
So women are well qualified.
But they’re often paid anywhere from 10 to 40 per cent less than men to do the same job. As recently as this week in fact the Sex Discrimination Commissioner reported that women working full-time earn 16 % less than men.
There are around 4.8 million working women in Australia, and their educational achievements have never been higher. Yet whether you are behind the counter of a cafeteria, or in the executive suite, if you are female, your pay packet won’t be as big as the bloke’s next door.
However, change is a ‘comin’!
I know that the Rudd Government is committed to creating a balanced, fair and flexible workplace relations system for all Australians, and we are serious about achieving better pay outcomes for working women throughout their life.
To this end, the Government wants to better understand what’s causing the persistent gender pay gap.
On 27 June, the Government asked the House of Representative Standing Committee on Employment and Workplace Relations to inquire into pay equity and associated issues relating to women’s workforce participation, and report on the causes of disadvantage.
The Committee has been asked to look at issues such as the adequacy of current arrangements to ensure fair access to training and promotion for women who have taken maternity leave and returned to work part-time and sought flexible work hours.
A report worth waiting for.
And the Government also wants to know how it can improve support for parents of newborn children.
To find out, we’ve asked the Productivity Commission to inquire into paid parental support and report by the end of February next year. Hearings have been underway for some months and an interim report is expected in September this year.
The Government will consider the Productivity Commission’s recommendations before making any policy commitments.
But we know there’s an expectation in the community that something must be done. Indeed, Liz Broderick sets it out clearly in her Listening Tour report. The community thinks this is a long overdue reform. There’s a view that paid maternity leave should be a basic right.
We also know there’s little value in facilitating flexible working arrangements and removing barriers to workplace participation if parents can’t secure appropriate care for their children when they’re working.
As part of the 2008/09 Budget, the Government is investing $2.4 billion to improve the quality of child care and early childhood education throughout Australia.
And let me tell you, in this area, there are many initiatives underway.
We’re working to improve quality standards, create an early years learning framework, build new early learning and care centres, increase the rate and frequency of the child care tax rebate, support the development of the early childhood workforce. This is just some of the work we’re tackling now.
The early years will undergo significant change in this country and I’m convinced the outcomes will be better for children and their parents.
Governments can do all this – but, but ….
What happens if Mr Big falls for Ms Little in marketing and takes off?
I’m sure many of you have read Ian McEwan’s marvellous novel, Atonement, or perhaps seen the movie.
In it, Cecilia, the elder of the sisters, is introduced to a young man for the first time. Her thoughts?
“Cecilia wondered, as she sometimes did when she met a man for the first time, if this was the one she was going to marry, and whether it was this particular moment she would remember for the rest of her life – with gratitude, or profound and particular regret.”
I’m sure she’s not the only woman who’s ever entertained such thoughts!
Some of the saddest stories you hear as a local MP are from women whose lives have been dramatically altered by a couple of words, when the Mr Big in their life says “this is not working for me any more”.
In Australia, close to one third of marriages end in divorce.
The median age of divorce for women is around 41 years. In 2006, 51,375 divorces were granted.
What affect does divorce have on the lives and fortunes of Mr and Mrs Big?
The evidence tells us that women suffer the most, certainly in a financial sense, as a result of marital breakdown. The Institute of Family Studies however, tells us that within five years of divorce Mr Big is back on his feet financially.
Over the course of the marriage, women’s employment opportunities are affected because it’s usually the mother who takes time out of the workforce to raise the children. On top of that, women’s earnings are generally lower, and retirement benefits will inevitably be less than their partners.
Is it any wonder then that women, in their middle years, find themselves agonising about their limited retirement savings following years of interrupted work and a marriage break up?
Consider the facts. According to the Australian Institute of Superannuation Trustees:
- Time out of the workforce to raise children comes at a significant cost – a six year career break costs the average wage earner over $77,000 in lost retirement savings.
- The average super payout for women is $75k, compared with $155k for men.
- Most women rely on the Aged Pension in their retirement.
So what am I saying?
That women in 2008 are still NOT savvy enough about their economic future.
That the best advice you can give your daughters is that they should pay as much attention to sound financial planning as they do to the haute couture wedding dress.
In my maiden speech to the Parliament in February I said that I thought Australia, a country that has never been easy for women, is still too hard.
Despite progress on many fronts, when we consider the wider economic and social picture for women, it is not what it should be.
The big important issues of gender equity and flexibility - be it in the home or the workforce - still have a way to go until women have real choice in the decisions they make about caring for their children and other family members, the type of work they’ll do and when and how they’ll do it, and how they’ll juggle all these responsibilities in a way that’s manageable and works for them.
I have a particular Utopia in mind.
By the time our new Governor General is enjoying her second term - by this time as head of an Australian Republic - she’s still be graciously hosting community groups at a brilliantly re-designed award-winning eco-friendly Yarralumla.
Her gorgeous grand-daughters - by this time there will be at least ten of them - will know that their inheritance is a considerable one. That in a few short years, Australia has turned into a paradise for working women.
That through the marvels of genetic re-engineering, the Mr Bigs in their life will have learnt how to match socks and water plants before they die.
By the next decade, Australian men will be known the world over as Casanovas in the bedroom and Stephanie Alexanders in the kitchen.
As for Mrs Big. Well, she’ll have a bulging bank account, a deliriously satisfying flexible professional life, and a brood of children - all of whom will praise Kevin Rudd every day for the rigorous national curriculum standards that set the benchmark for school performance in the 21st century.
You think this is a dream?
Well, that’s what they said a year ago when I challenged John Howard in the seat of Bennelong.
It’s time to dream again.
Thank you.