Labor’s Economic Rationalism: Women Under the Hawke and Keating Governments (1983–1996)

Abstract

This chapter focuses on Australian government policy but also provides relevant international examples. It discusses gender equality policy during the period of the Hawke and Keating governments. It highlights internationally innovative policy developments such as the introduction of Women’s Budget Statements, later exported to the world in the form of gender responsive budgeting. However, it argues that the governments’ internationally innovative attempts to meld neoliberalism and social democracy—a project which influenced Tony Blair’s “New Labour”—had less positive effects on women such as public sector cutbacks and a marketisation of services. Furthermore, some of the neoliberal framing influences on industrial relations policy were to contribute to the gender pay gap for decades to come. Nonetheless, it will be suggested that the Blair (1997–2007) government’s “Third Way” placed less of a focus on being socially inclusive than the Hawke and Keating governments’ policies. However, Australian supporters of gender equality were to face a much greater challenge with the defeat of Labor and the election of the socially conservative, neoliberal Howard government that was influenced by both Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.

Introduction

The previous chapter analysed how the Whitlam Labor government introduced internationally innovative gender equality policies as a reforming social democratic government, albeit with limitations, particularly as Keynesian economics, with its support for public expenditures, waned. The Hawke and Keating governments were to be internationally innovative in a different way, as Australian social democracy became increasingly influenced by neoliberal ideology. The result was that a watered down, more socially inclusive form of neoliberal-influenced policy framing. It opened up some opportunities for women but also resulted in free market-influenced policies and forms of budget restraint that impacted very negatively on women. Nonetheless, it will be argued here that Labor’s was a very different form of neoliberal policy framing from that experienced in other Anglosphere countries such as Thatcher’s UK or Reagan’s US. The government’s policy framing was also more progressive than Tony Blair’s New Labour despite influencing it. Australian Labor saw itself as showing the way for other social democratic governments, with Prime Minister Keating arguing that Australia was “in the vanguard of social and democratic progress… once more”.¹ Keating was also to claim that: “For many years, Australia has been an international pacesetter on status of women issues”.²

Nonetheless, Labor’s achievements were taking place in the context of international advancements. Australia ratified the International Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 1983 and was elected to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women from 1993–1996; Australian experts contributed to developing the draft International Declaration on Violence Against Women in 1991–1992 and Australia was also actively involved in the OECD Working Party on the role of women in the economy.³ The government ratified The International Labour Organisation Convention no. 156, Workers with Family Responsibilities in 1990.⁴ Keating proudly proclaimed in 1995 that: “The recently released United Nations Development Program report on women points to Australia as having one of the best records, ranking number six out of 130 countries on a range of criteria including women’s share of income and participation in education”.⁵

So what were the Hawke and Keating governments’ achievements in regard to women and what are the criticisms that can also be made of their policies and policy framing?

Economic and Social Background

Hawke came into office emphasising that: “Labor has a comprehensive women’s affairs policy, developed in recognition of the fact that Australian women do not yet experience total equality with men, or enjoy full participation in all aspects of our society”.⁶ However, as Sara Dowse has noted, while the new political economy was already influencing women’s affairs under Whitlam and Fraser, the neoliberal influence was far from uniform.⁷ Unfortunately, for gender equality, the influence of neoliberalism was to increase under Hawke and Keating. Unlike in many other countries internationally, neoliberalism in Australia (and New Zealand) was largely implemented initially by Labor/Labour governments.⁸ Hawke, and his Treasurer and successor as Prime Minister, Paul Keating, supported a programme of major public sector cuts, deregulation, corporatisation and privatisation, with Keating extolling the virtues of “free markets”, although the measures did not go as far as those introduced by conservative governments overseas.⁹

Margaret Thatcher herself endorsed Keating’s embrace of economic orthodoxy.¹⁰ However, the Thatcher government’s belief in small government, individualism, self-reliance, budget cuts and opposition to unions and social movements was to result in the stalling of Britain’s gender equality measures’ previous momentum (with the partial exception of some employment measures required by European Community decisions).¹¹ Meanwhile in the US, the neoliberal Reagan era was also characterised by an embrace of social conservatism and a hostility to many feminist equality agendas, along with market-friendly policies, a weakening of unions and attacks on welfare programmes, particularly for groups such as single mothers.¹² Unlike Anglophone governments such as Thatcher’s or Reagan’s that combined neoliberal ideological influences with socially conservative ideological influences, the Australian Labor government was forging a version of neoliberalism influenced by a socially inclusive form of social democratic ideology. This framing allowed the government to justify some government policies/interventions on behalf of gender equality which a more restrictive form of neoliberalism would have opposed.

Furthermore, Australian Labor introduced its policies in consultation with the union movement rather than attacking unions. Accords negotiated with the unions were based on achieving wage restraint (and later real wage cuts) in return for providing a “social wage” of government benefits and services. Those benefits and services were means tested for eligibility to those on lower incomes, thereby facilitating budget cuts to benefits and services previously available to higher paid workers and the middle class. Government members later admitted that this advantaged business via paying lower wages and resulted in higher profits.¹³ While neoliberal-influenced governments overseas critiqued so-called special interest groups, including unions and progressive social movements organising around race and gender, Hawke and Keating affirmed the role of such groups. Keating criticised Opposition leader Howard’s opposition to consulting with “special interests”. Keating argued that such groups, including the Women’s Electoral Lobby (WEL), “represent almost every sector of the community” and affirmed that: “The Labor Government deals with interest groups, accords them status, learns from them, and acts in partnership with them” when bringing in social reforms.¹⁴ Indeed, the Hawke and Keating governments funded the WEL national office, with funding peaking at $60,000 in 1993–1994.¹⁵ Ministers responsible for the women’s portfolio such as Susan Ryan, Wendy Fatin and Rosemary Crowley had previously been active members of WEL. Thatcher and Reagan were also loath to acknowledge women’s social disadvantage, preferring to focus on individual choice.¹⁶ Yet, Labor’s social democratic heritage meant that it was ready to recognise social disadvantaged groups and prepared to use government action to improve their position.

It was therefore a far less socially conservative and more socially inclusive form of neoliberalism than that experienced under Thatcher or Reagan. Indeed, it was also to prove more socially inclusive than that under the British Blair Labour government, elected a year after Australian Labor lost office and owing a number of policy debts to its Australian Labor predecessor.¹⁷ The Hawke and Keating governments tended to emphasise issues of social diversity and inequality rather more than Blair, who often privileged an undifferentiated community.¹⁸ Despite commitments to women’s equality, the Blair government’s framework “failed to fully comprehend the complex ways in which the neoliberal economic model itself creates and sustains gender inequality”.¹⁹ As we shall see, Australian Labor was to encounter some similar economic framing issues, even if not to the same extent as the Blair government.

Gender Equality and Labor’s Economic Rationalism

For Keating “social justice and economic efficiency are not only generally compatible but generally complementary”.²⁰ For example, Labor believed that increasing women’s economic participation would benefit both business and labour, given that “in order to become internationally competitive, the Australian economy needs to utilise fully the abilities and skills of its total labour force, women and men”.²¹ Australian Labor was prepared to use legislative means in ways that its conservative predecessor, the Fraser government, had not been in order to bring about such positive economic outcomes. The government’s sex discrimination and affirmative action bills were important steps in this regard.

Sex Discrimination and Affirmative Action Legislation

The Sex Discrimination Bill was intended to fulfil Australia’s obligations under the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women as well as implementing the government’s own strongly stated belief:

that discrimination based on sex, marital status and pregnancy and discrimination involving sexual harassment cannot be tolerated in our society; and that in public life-work, education, accommodation, the provision of goods, facilities and services, the disposal of land, and the administration of Commonwealth laws and programs-any such discrimination should be unlawful and there should be a means of redressing discrimination where it occurs.²²

Having an international agreement facilitated using the federal government’s Constitutional external affairs power. Indeed, most federal anti-discrimination legislation in Australia has had to use this power given the lack of a bill of rights in the Australian Constitution.²³ However, sex discrimination legislation was a first step, requiring an individual to make a complaint. The government subsequently introduced affirmative action legislation that would require employers (albeit those with over 100 employees) to be more proactive in ensuring that there was not discrimination against women, once again arguing that this was in the employer’s interest too²⁴:

The Government is determined that women should be able to enter and compete in the labour market on an equal footing with men and that outdated prejudices or conventions should not prevent them from fully participating. Neither individual employers nor the nation can afford to waste the valuable contributions which women can, and do, make to our economy.²⁵

Wendy Fatin, a future Minister Assisting the Prime Minister on Women, went somewhat further, claiming that the bill would challenge “organisational rules and regulations which were designed to accommodate to white Anglo-Saxon male expectations, lifestyles and career patterns”, while facilitating women’s choice.²⁶

However, WEL was amongst the feminist groups complaining that, while there were reporting mechanisms in place, the legislation did not have strong teeth in terms of sanctions.²⁷ It was not until 1992 that then Prime Minister Keating was to introduce some of the sanctions that WEL had called for, namely that there would be no government assistance provided or government contracts awarded to companies that failed to comply with the Act. However, the government refused to extend the legislation to cover employers with fewer than 100 employees or to give the Affirmative Action Agency investigative teeth.²⁸ Despite its arguments that its legislation would be economically beneficial, there were limits as to how far the Labor governments were prepared to intervene in the market, particularly given the risk of antagonising employers. Consequently, criminal sanctions or firm quotas were also omitted amongst other deficiencies. Nonetheless, the government did take action in the public sector. From 1992, government departments had to report the appointment rate of women to committees and boards and women’s appointments to the Senior Executive Service of the public service increased from 4.4% in 1984 to 13.3% in 1991.²⁹

Furthermore, despite the government’s legislative aims, there were also issues with other government policies in regard to women’s employment, including attitudes towards part-time work and industrial relations.

Women and Employment: Part-Time Work and Caring Responsibilities

Government documents had initially expressed concern that so many women were working part-time.³⁰ Yet, by the period of the Keating government in the early 1990s, when Australia was facing a recession, government documents were encouraging women to take up part-time work to supplement the family income and even to support unemployed male wage earners.³¹ However, one Keating-era document did see the development of permanent part-time work as preferable to casual employment.³² Keating facilitated what Andrew Scott has termed “a one and a half breadwinner model which assumes a family structure of a male full-time worker and a female part-time worker”.³³

The focus on part-time work suggested that childcare and other domestic responsibilities were still mainly women’s responsibility. Keating argued that the “double shift” of women both working and having domestic responsibilities “is not one that governments can arbitrate” although “there are things the Government can do to help women cope with their different roles”.³⁴ Noticeably, Keating did not urge men to take up more domestic and caring responsibilities in such statements. This is despite Wendy Fatin, the then Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Status of Women, having advocated making “it easier for men and women to successfully combine their jobs and their family responsibilities”.³⁵ The 1993 National Agenda for Women, which Keating provided an opening message for, noted that women carried out about 70% of unpaid domestic labour in the home and that the percentage remained constant at an average 36 hours per week even when they had paid jobs. The agenda stated that women not only wanted their unpaid work valued more but the load shared “more fairly” with women wanting “the trend towards fathers taking and welcoming a shared role in family life” to be “accelerated”.³⁶ However, rather than addressing such disparities, Keating advocated improving carer’s leave provisions in industrial relations, assuming this worthwhile measure would largely be addressing the needs of women.³⁷ He also suggested that the then new information and communication technologies could be used to increase opportunities for women to work at home, facilitating combining work and family responsibilities, and revealed that he had asked the National Information Services Council to advise regarding this.³⁸ Indeed, the government hoped that the new technologies could be used to provide new areas of women’s employment, despite the detrimental impacts of technology that will be discussed below.

Technology and Women Workers

Carmen Lawrence, the Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Status of Women, boasted to the UN Fourth World Conference of Women in 1995 that Australia was “the first country in the world to develop national strategy on women and the new information technologies”.³⁹ Small Business Minister Chris Schacht later announced that a Task Force on Women and Communications Technologies was “developing strategies to ensure that women have equal access to, and are involved in the development of infrastructure, hardware, software and content”.⁴⁰ As usual, there was a strong economic justification with Schacht arguing that “women are essential not only to the development of products, but as discerning consumers who can set profits soaring”.⁴¹

Yet, Hawke had noted in 1983 that technology was having a particularly negative impact on women’s employment.⁴² In particular, New Information Technology was impacting office jobs, such as typing.⁴³ In May 1985, a Women’s Bureau, government commissioned report also drew attention to the detrimental impact of technological change on women working in telecommunications and textiles and clothing as well as issues in broader industries, including the lack of recognition of women’s skills.⁴⁴ The report’s recommendations included suggesting that the government establish an appropriate advisory body for unions with women more involved in decision-making.⁴⁵ Ten years later, the Women in Science Engineering and Technology Advisory Group produced a 1995 discussion paper entitled Women in Science, Engineering and Technology (SET).⁴⁶ The Advisory Group noted a “repeated pattern” of “a range of behaviour by the men and boys who predominate in both the educational and employment settings of SET which had a consistently negative impact upon the girls and women wishing to enter, contribute to and progress through higher levels of SET education, training and employment”.⁴⁷ The Advisory Group’s description of this pattern, which they deemed “gender harassment”, and the failure to acknowledge that it is men engaging in it, is worth quoting at length:

Common elements in this behaviour by men and boys is that it expresses a strong sense of masculine ownership of the whole area of SET, as an area of knowledge, as an area of study, as an area of research and as an area of employment. A second common characteristic of the behaviour is that it consistently emphasises solidarity and shared identity, values and interests between men and boys in such a way that it excludes, alienates, marginalises and isolates the girls and women who are, by definition, the outsiders. Thus women are referred to as being excluded, isolated and alienated but men are rarely acknowledged or described as actually doing anything which achieves this outcome. What we are left with is a mysterious and disembodied negative force.⁴⁸

The discussion paper made a number of recommendations, including improvements to work conditions and selection and evaluation criteria in the higher education sector and government science agencies; improvements to technical and further education training; better gathering of statistical data; re-entry scholarships and top up and bridging courses for women who had been out of the workforce; a valuing of the benefits diversity can bring to the workplace; mentorship schemes; a greater focus on SET in reporting to the Affirmative Action Agency; equal representation of women on selection panels; the establishment of a Women in Science Engineering and Technology Unit.⁴⁹ The report also recommended exploring the possibility of affirmative action criteria for SET industry contract tenders.⁵⁰ It also suggested a major education and awareness campaign designed to address impediments and gender harassment.⁵¹ Unfortunately none of these measures were implemented before the government lost office and, as we shall see later, they were not to be progressed under the new Coalition government, given its attitudes not just to issues of gender equality but also its opposition to what was seen as too much government intervention in the economy and the affairs of business.

While Labor’s economic policy framing had facilitated some reasonably positive developments in regard to women and employment, there were also some relatively negative developments, particularly in regard to women and industrial relations.

Women and Industrial Relations

At the same time as the government claimed to be supporting equity in the workforce, it was introducing neoliberal-influenced changes to industrial relations that would increase enterprise bargaining at the level of individual businesses and reduce the role of the Industrial Relations Commission, Australia’s independent regulatory body, in setting wages and conditions as part of broad industrial award conditions. It was an approach designed to make industrial relations more market friendly and encourage international competitiveness by encouraging more direct bargaining between employers and employees.

Yet, Keating acknowledged the concerns of key women’s organisations.⁵² WEL argued that women often lacked the industrial strength to negotiate good agreements and also often worked in human services industries where it would be hard to prove productivity increases.⁵³ Feminists proved to be totally correct in their concerns that enterprise bargaining would disadvantage more vulnerable and less industrially strong sections of the workforce such as industries where women predominated.⁵⁴ As early as 1995, research was showing the gender pay gap rising and women being disadvantaged in negotiations over “flexibility” (that had been intended to benefit the balance of work and family caring responsibilities).⁵⁵ Indeed, as we shall see in Chapter 7, the Albanese government has had to try to address some of the long-term consequences of the disparities in women’s wages that resulted. Facing feminist concerns, Keating promised to establish additional Working Women’s Centres, initially in four states that did not at that time have one, to assist with issues such as enterprise bargaining and access to training.⁵⁶ However, while helpful in providing advice, there was little such centres could do to counter balance the structural power of employers in workplaces.

Indeed, the position of many women workers was even weaker because it was already apparent that the Whitlam government’s attempts to ensure the better recognition of the value of women’s work in female-dominated professions was not working adequately. In 1985, the Arbitration Commission (that preceded the Industrial Relations Commission) had rejected a nurses’ case based on comparable worth that sought to challenge the historical undervaluing of nursing work compared with equivalently skilled male dominated jobs, although some success in increasing female nurses’ pay was later achieved utilising discrepancies with a former higher male rate. Admittedly, flat rate increases for low-income earners had provided significant pay increases for some low-paid female workers.⁵⁷ However, the Accord process was also holding back equal pay, given that the Arbitration Commission did not proceed with comparable worth partly because it would challenge existing wage relativities, which had been generally frozen under the Accord.⁵⁸

Sexual Harassment in the Workplace

As we have seen, most issues affecting women had to be justified and framed in economic terms as well as social justice ones. This included sexual harassment in the workplace, which Wendy Fatin stated “can lead to absenteeism, low morale, a poor work environment and a consequent reduction in productivity”.⁵⁹ Such framing did not raise issues such as issues of male entitlement over women’s bodies, the perceived need by some men to assert their masculinity in the workplace or power differentials between men and women. Nonetheless, it did demonstrate the ways in which the government’s inclusive economic framing could also be used to raise some issues of great concern to women and to justify governments’ addressing them. There were also other ways in which the government’s economic frameworks could be used to justify providing services to women.

Providing Services for Women

The government’s economic framework did provide a justification for funding government programmes for lower income earners, especially ones associated with encouraging women’s workforce participation from childcare to training courses. Once again, the extent of support for providing government services marked a difference with Reagan’s and Thatcher’s governments. However, as we shall see, there were also tremendous costs as other services got cut back.

As mentioned in Chapter 1, from 1984, the Hawke government introduced a Women’s Budget Program (later called Women’s Budget Statements) that instructed departments “to provide a detailed account of the impact of their activities on women for a document circulated by the Prime Minister on Budget night”.⁶⁰ As we shall see later, these budget documents did not adequately document the impact of neoliberal-influenced government policies on women, but they did indicate that improving the position of women was one of the government’s economic aims. Indeed, the OECD has cited this Australian initiative as the pioneer of gender responsive budgeting internationally.⁶¹ The Hawke government also gave the Office of the Status of Women the right to comment on Cabinet submissions (although the two-page “impact on women statements” on cabinet submissions was later replaced with a one-page document entitled “sensitivity/criticism”).⁶²

Consequently, the government was able to claim a number of achievements in regard to providing services for women. To give just some examples, in 1990, the government had established the National Committee on Violence Against Women (NCVAW) with a three-year budget of 1.35 million to examine legal, policy and programme issues and to undertake community education work.⁶³ The federal government had joined with state governments to establish 263 women’s refuges/shelters and fund other domestic violence services.⁶⁴ The government also claimed increases in traineeships for women, with women constituting 69% of participants in the 9129 traineeship available through the Australian Traineeship scheme, although overall women received 42% of Department of Education, Employment and Training labour market programme places.⁶⁵ In 1990, the government also established the Women’s Employment, Education and Training Advisory Group (WEETAG).⁶⁶ In 1992, the government launched a National Employment and Training Plan for Young Australians that included provisions to encourage young women into training.⁶⁷ Other assistance for young women included a Youth Social Justice Strategy with funding for young women suffering financial hardship and for those fleeing violence or sexual abuse.⁶⁸ The government also substantially increased family allowance and family allowance supplement payments and ensured that the payment went to the primary caregivers, which was usually the mother.⁶⁹ The government’s national agenda acknowledged that women, particularly in single parent families or older women, were a disproportionate number of those who lacked appropriate housing or were facing financial hardship in paying for it and a state/federal Women’s Housing issues Working Party reported to responsible ministers.⁷⁰ The government had substantially increased public housing.⁷¹ Government policies had contributed to an increase in women covered by superannuation, from 36.5% in 1988 to 65.5% in 1991,⁷² although it was not mentioned that some of the increase in superannuation had come in lieu of wage rises under the Accords and women’s specific superannuation problems were not mentioned.⁷³

Childcare

The government also increased the number of federally funded childcare places from 46,000 in 1983 to 193,000 by 1990.⁷⁴ Spending on childcare increased from $65 million in to just under $440 million in 1992.⁷⁵ Rosemary Crowley, the then Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Status of Women, emphasised the significance of childcare initiatives being announced in the prime ministers’ “major economic statement” for the 1993 election so that: “For the first time ever, child care was included among mainstream economic issues – not tagged a ‘women’s issue’ or a ‘welfare issue’ but treated as a serious mainstream economic issue”.⁷⁶ Nonetheless, the announcement was far from the original women’s movement demand of free 24 hour childcare for all (including women who were not employed) raised during the Whitlam years. Furthermore, as Brennan points out, during the Whitlam years, childcare funding by governments had been confined to not-for-profit providers, with government subsidies tied to the number of qualified staff (who were being paid award wages). In 1991, the Labor government embraced marketisation, extending government-subsidised fee assistance to those using private, for-profit services, also without tying it to levels of training or wage levels.⁷⁷ One result was that from 1991 to 1996 the provision of for-profit childcare rose by 233% from 36,700 to 122,462 places while the provision of not-for-profit places went from 39,567 to 45,601 places.⁷⁸ In Brennan’s words: “The decision to extend public subsidies to users of private, for-profit care rather than to expand the supply of non-profit care took place in the context of a broader shift towards the ‘marketisation’ of human services including health, education, aged care and employment services”.⁷⁹ It also represented a shift in economic framing from Whitlam’s conception of “positive equality” which assumed that workers needed government and community-based services precisely because they could not use their income to purchase adequate services in the market, to a neoliberal model in which private capital plundered state resources via governments’ subsidising market provision. Furthermore, the funding model restrained government expenditure per childcare place and involved a significant rise in the costs that parents, including low-income parents, were expected to pay.⁸⁰

Services for Indigenous Women and Women from a Non-English Speaking Background

The Hawke and Keating governments also developed a more inclusive neoliberal framing when it came to issues of race and ethnicity that had some positive implications for migrant women from a Non-English Speaking Background (NESB as women from non-Anglo-Celtic backgrounds were characterised then) and also for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women. While socially conservative neoliberals such as Margaret Thatcher in the UK saw cultural difference as potentially threatening, Keating saw it as economically advantageous.⁸¹ Keating argued that “multiculturalism also makes good economic sense” because “industry is better able to develop and locate export markets because our entrepreneurs, managers and workers bring to the task invaluable knowledge, understanding and skills from their various countries of origin”.⁸² Similarly Robert Tickner, while Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, argued that there would be “a rapid growth in Indigenous business and economic development opportunities” given that the Labor government’s emphasis on reconciling Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians had contributed to a greater appreciation of Indigenous culture with benefits for the arts industry and tourism, while the government’s land rights legislation would encourage negotiation over mining leases.⁸³ Such comments indicated a broader friendly, rather than hostile, context within which it was possible to facilitate policies that benefited women from a range of backgrounds.⁸⁴

For example, in 1989, the government established a combined federal and state governments’ Council on Non-English Speaking Background Women’s Issues which, amongst other measures, developed a Women’s Health Strategy for NESB women.⁸⁵ The government tried to ensure that NESB women had suitable language access to knowledge of government benefits and services, including resources for women experiencing domestic violence. There was also an acknowledgement that the skills NESB women had acquired prior to coming to Australia needed to be better recognised.⁸⁶

The government had also set up the Aboriginal Women’s Task Force to consult with Aboriginal women regarding their needs. The resulting report was “the first of its kind for government”.⁸⁷ The report identified issues of lack of information, self-determination, housing, education, health, care of children and employment, legal aid, land rights and broader, interrelated, cultural issues as being of particular importance for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women. The report emphasised that both men and women had responsibility for caring for children in traditional society and that the role of women had been highly respected.⁸⁸ The report documented contemporary Indigenous disadvantage, noting that 22.1% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women were unemployed compared with 6.8% of “all Australian” women, that only 3.4% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women had post-school qualifications compared with 17.1% of “all Australian” women, and that they consistently earned far less than “all Australian women”.⁸⁹ The report also emphasised that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women had important custodial roles in regard to caring for land and that it was crucial they be consulted as well as men—an issue that we saw previously was also raised during the Whitlam period.⁹⁰

Nonetheless, Peggy Brock has raised issues about whether Indigenous women were adequately taken into account in the government’s 1993 land rights legislation.⁹¹ The 1986–1987 Women’s Budget Program admitted that while women played an “important part” in consultations: “The programs developed in response to this advice are of major benefit to Aboriginal women and their children although very few are specifically directed to Aboriginal women”.⁹² The specific measure mentioned was accommodation provision for supporting mothers and children in hostels dedicated to that purpose.⁹³ Subsequent reports mentioned additional funding for workshops on domestic violence, and that the Aboriginal Employment Development policy encouraged employment opportunities for Aboriginal women. It was hoped that the development of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), which would both advise on and run some policy programmes, would further the position of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women.⁹⁴ Yet, Megan Davis notes that not only were Aboriginal women underrepresented in ATSIC, it also demonstrably failed to address many of their needs.⁹⁵ Similarly Aileen Moreton-Robinson has suggested that ATSIC’s male-dominated bureaucracy was more akin to white Australian culture than to traditional Aboriginal political structures in which women had played a far more significant role. Women’s neglected needs included employment policy where gender disadvantage tended to be masked by a focus on racial disadvantage that could end up perpetuating gender inequality.⁹⁶ Furthermore, Robert Tickner, Minister for Indigenous Australians from 1990 to 1996, made remarkably few mentions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women in his book on Indigenous policy issues.⁹⁷ Nonetheless, as already stated, the Hawke and Keating government’s treatment of race was markedly different from other forms of Anglophone neoliberalism, not only from Thatcher’s in Britain but also from Ronald Reagan’s in the US. To give just one US comparison, Keating acknowledged the negative legacies of colonialism, including the children who had been stolen from Aboriginal mothers, by contrast Reagan had a history of demonising so-called African American single mother “welfare queens”, whom, it was claimed, were ripping off American taxpayers.⁹⁸

Detrimental Impacts of Governments’ Economic Framing

Despite the record of government service provision noted above, the government’s neoliberal-influenced support for budgetary restraint and public sector cuts meant that funding for women’s services frequently had to be fought for. In his 1991 Budget Speech, Keating boasted that “Commonwealth spending is now at its lowest level as a proportion of GDP since 1974, and in three years will be down to the level of the 1950s”.⁹⁹ It was a far cry from the days when Whitlam had supported an expansion of the public sector as part of his aim of supporting “positive equality” discussed in Chapter 2. Furthermore, as Marian Sawer has pointed out, despite claims to the contrary, the government’s class-based focus on tripartite consultations between government, business and labour often ended up excluding or downplaying the need to consult with women’s organisations. Women’s organisations were often excluded from economic decision-making.¹⁰⁰ Extraordinarily, WEL complained that the Affirmative Action legislation consultation process had involved business and unions but not women’s organisations.¹⁰¹

Commentators at the time pointed out the sometimes disastrous implications of the Hawke and Keating governments’ broader economic policy settings on women. For example, Rhonda Sharp and Ray Broomhill provided a detailed analysis of why the economic benefits of market-friendly policies, including deregulation, would not “trickle down” to ordinary Australians and especially women. Women particularly suffered from budgetary restraint that restricted welfare measures. Despite the:

apparent basic sympathy of the government towards improving women’s position… the results of its policies have provided only limited benefits for women, in fact, some policies have actually worsened women’s economic position, particularly for young women, low and middle income earners and those in poverty…. The influence of neo-liberal economic theory can be perceived in a wide range of specific policies introduced by Labor that have been negative in their effects on the majority of women.¹⁰²

Sawer has noted that, despite the Women’s Budget Program, key government departments were reluctant to acknowledge that their broader economic settings had implications for women. For example, Treasury suggested that it would be difficult to assess the impact on particular groups of its macro-economic measures to reduce government expenditure as a proportion of GDP. Sawer describes this as “a remarkable claim given that policies of reducing public expenditure as a proportion of GDP (promoted by Treasury) have a well-known effect on women, who are disproportionately dependent on public expenditure for employment, services and income support”.¹⁰³ Costa and Sharp have also noted the repeated failure to address the impact of macro-economic issues.¹⁰⁴ In addition, Sawer has documented multiple cuts to services that impacted detrimentally on women. These included cuts to public service staffing that impacted on the implementation of complaints procedures for the Sex Discrimination Act and the Public Service Reform Act; means testing of family allowances; cessation of widows’ pensions and supporting parents’ benefits once a child turned 16.¹⁰⁵ As was to be the case years later with the Gillard government’s further reduction of the age limit, these changes were justified on the basis that they would encourage women out of welfare dependence but were introduced without adequate training packages or ensuring availability of appropriate jobs with good pay and conditions and that could be combined with caring responsibilities.

In this environment, measures benefiting women often had to be hard fought for by feminist ministers, backbenchers and femocrats and sometimes faced defeat. As Troy Bramston has noted of Susan Ryan:

Meetings of the Hawke cabinet were robust. Ryan was no shrinking violet and could be a tough and wily political operator. She supported the major economic reforms and pursued education and women’s issues strongly. But when she asked for more money, she was routinely dismissed by finance minister Peter Walsh as “an unreconstructed Whitlamite”.¹⁰⁶

Many femocrats were also expressing their concern at the constraints the dominant economic frameworks were imposing on them.¹⁰⁷

The Politics of Masculinity

The economic model framing often implied that outdated prejudices were holding back a modernising of an Australian economy which would benefit from increased women’s participation and this arguably contributed to a lack of consideration of gendered power relations.¹⁰⁸ Domestic violence was one of the few issues where feminist analyses of men’s power were still clearly articulated. For example, the Office of the Status of Women argued that: “Men’s violence against women is about power and control. Many men think they own women and that they have the right to control or dominate us by using violence”.¹⁰⁹ Politicians tended not to make such blunt statements. When launching the government’s education campaign against domestic violence, then Minister Rosemary Crowley emphasised the key message that “real men do not bash or rape women”, an argument that appealed strategically to a traditional view of men as protectors of women, as well as to a softer, gentler form of masculinity.¹¹⁰ That argument was used later by social conservative prime ministers such as Tony Abbott. Meanwhile, Keating, while decrying the extent to which women surveyed feared violence and advocating measures ranging from coordinated responses to education campaigns, often avoided mentioning that it was largely men who were involved in violence against women.¹¹¹

Insights like those of the Women in Science Engineering and Technology Advisory Group, mentioned earlier, that identified broader issues of masculine identity and behaviour by some men against women were even more few and far between. As we have seen, Keating had also failed to raise issues about men sharing more domestic labour and caring responsibilities. Australian feminists at the time had been well aware that some other countries internationally were taking a more proactive stance. For example, in 1992 a report arising from an international colloquium on Work/Care involving academics, activists and femocrats argued that there was “a pressing need right now to ‘shift the ground’ from the current concentration on women as the problem to men’s behaviour”.¹¹² In particular, many men needed to change their attitude to household labour. It was acknowledged that other governments had done more to encourage such behavioural change, including the Swedish government’s emphasis on generous paid parental leave for both partners, the provision of the opportunity to work a six-hour day with no loss of benefits until a child turned eight and the provision of 16 fully paid days to care for sick family members (although the report did note that women rather than men were more likely to take up these options, especially given lower female pay, and that Norway was considering some leave just for men at that time).¹¹³ The report also advocated more radical measures such as a Basic Income, less gendered public sphere conceptions of workplace linear time and a shift from the “rationality of the market” to the “rationality of care”.¹¹⁴

The latter suggestions were ones which fell far outside the scope of Hawke and Keating’s economic rationalism, indeed, as we shall see, even the Albanese government, which is less economic rationalist and values care more, has tended to reconstruct issues in terms of workers in the care economy. Australia was not to have a national paid parental leave scheme until the Rudd/Gillard years.¹¹⁵ Crucially, advocating the reconstruction of masculinity outside of market rationalities was also a step too far. Indeed, in so far as Keating did try to reconstruct masculinity, it tended to be at least partly market based. For example, Keating argued that some popular culture images of Australian masculine identity, such as “yobs” who put “shrimps on the barbecue”, needed to be replaced with more sophisticated images that would facilitate Australia succeeding in the global economy (including the scientific and cultural economy), as well as in international tourism.¹¹⁶ Despite arguing that Australia’s world leading women’s policies should be part of Australia’s international image, Keating did not suggest broader changes to the image of Australian males.¹¹⁷ He claimed that Mervat Tallaway, the chair of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, had stated that Australia was a model internationally in regard to its policies for women, with no other country performing better and perhaps only being equalled by the Scandinavian countries, but without mentioning some of the Scandinavian policies in regard to the sharing of parenting and caring responsibilities that have been mentioned earlier.¹¹⁸

Furthermore, Keating’s own alpha maleness was frequently on display when he belittled the masculinity of his opponents, as when he said of a speech by Opposition leader John Hewson that it: “was the limpest performance I have ever seen … It was like being flogged with a warm lettuce. It was like being mauled by a dead sheep”.¹¹⁹ Keating depicted himself as the strong leader who would make tough decisions that would transform the Australian economy to make it internationally competitive. Although some MPs suggested that the parliamentary culture was changing in regard to masculinity with former Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Status of Women Margaret Reynolds claiming that: “Women are now seeing that that male culture is lessening in impact. It is changing, it is adapting”.¹²⁰ Those changes included the ALP adopting a quota in 1994 that aimed to achieve 35% of women MPs by 2002. However, Reynolds admitted the change was less apparent with respect to Question Time which remained highly aggressive.¹²¹ Significantly, in terms of issues that were to arise prominently during the Morrison period, she also argued that the cultural change and processes put in place meant that prominent women MPs were no longer receiving the type of complaints about sexual harassment they had received previously.¹²²

However, the cultural change was especially partial when it came to challenging heteronormative conceptions of masculinity and femininity.

Same-Sex Issues

One category of women was to be relatively neglected by Labor, namely women in same-sex relationships. Labor had not yet fully progressed from seeing same-sex relationships as a morality issue to seeing them as an equality issue. This is not to suggest that Labor made no progress. Complaints of discrimination on the basis of sexual preferences could be made to the Human Rights Commission and would have been covered under the government’s proposed (but unsuccessful) Human Rights Bill with the consent of the Attorney General.¹²³ Gays and lesbians were allowed to serve in the military. Limited rights for same-sex partners to migrate were introduced in the “interdependency” provisions in the immigration laws.¹²⁴ There was particular progress made in terms of gay men and the AIDS pandemic. Australia introduced innovative policies that included the gay male community in influencing health policy rather than being demonised.¹²⁵ However, Labor backtracked quickly on initial suggestions that same-sex relationships could be included in definitions of the family.¹²⁶ Keating bemusedly dismissed a suggestion of an equivalent to paid maternity leave for same-sex families with children.¹²⁷ When asked about recognising same-sex relationships, Keating responded: “I have my own personal and social views on this issue, but this is not a matter for government policy. We do not make laws governing these things in Australia”.¹²⁸ In other words, same-sex relationships were seen as a private matter in a way totally different from heterosexual relationships, given that numerous pieces of government legislation recognised those relationships, both married and de facto.¹²⁹

In short, the conceptions of gender equality being used were still overwhelmingly heteronormative. Nonetheless, there were some attempts to address issues of same-sex rights and the discourse was not as actively homophobic as, for example, Margaret Thatcher’s in Britain.¹³⁰ Once again, Labor’s policies were more inclusive than many of its Anglophone counterparts, but not quite as inclusive as they could have been.

Conclusion

The experience of the Hawke and Keating governments therefore had some positive outcomes for women. Nonetheless, there were also significant problems with the way in which the neoliberal-influenced framing of government economic policy, and gender equality policy within that broader framing, was impacting on women.

Despite criticisms feminists made of Hawke and Keating government policy, feminists at the time rightly identified that the growth of social conservatism within the Liberal Party would pose a far greater threat to women. Indeed, they feared that just as the UK was coming out of a period of conservative rule with detrimental impacts for women, Australia was about to go into one.¹³¹ Despite support by Liberal moderates, key conservative Liberals had already opposed the government’s sex discrimination and affirmative action legislation amongst other measures.¹³² Feminists within the Liberal Party, such as Dame Beryl Beaurepaire who had done so much to protect, and sometimes advance, women’s policy under the Fraser government, were increasingly concerned. After the 1993 Liberal election loss, under John Hewson’s leadership, Beaurepaire had argued that “the Liberal Party has got to change and not expect the women to be doing the tea and cakes stuff and have them in the policy-making areas more”.¹³³ Beaurepaire suggested that women were now having less input into policy, not just than during the Fraser years but also than during the Conservative Menzies years and stated that she knew a number of women who had deserted supporting the Liberal Party because they believed “Labor has done more for women and accepted the changing role of women more”.¹³⁴ Keating had in fact given “an extra special note of thanks to the women of Australia who voted for us believing in the policies of this government” in his 1993 election victory speech.¹³⁵ However, far from taking Beaurepaire’s advice, the Liberal Party was to embrace more socially conservative views on women under the future leadership of John Howard, with major implications for policy framing.

Many potential Labor policies were stymied as a result. For example, the year after Labor’s 1996 defeat by Howard, Democrat Senator Natasha Stott Despoja asked what had happened to the WISET group’s discussion paper Women in Science, Engineering and Technology. Senator Parer, the Minister representing the Minister for Science and Technology, responded that while the paper had included useful information regarding the issues facing women, “the paper’s recommendations are more relevant to the outlook of the previous government”, and that the current government’s aim was “to create a broad, positive environment in which all Australians have the maximum opportunity to achieve their potential”.¹³⁶ Parer’s comments signalled a different framing of gender equality issues and the measures that should be taken to address them, and it is to a discussion of that framing that the discussion will now proceed.