English Essay
KH 123
Institutionsandactivismaroundwomenandworkatatimeofchange.docxRecent and substantial 'reforms' have significantly amended the 1996 Workplace Relations Act (Cth) and 'Welfare-to-Work' regimes. These reforms have renewed the focus on gender at work, in the community at large, and among academics. However, the solid scholarship that exists on gender and work done in Australia has been in two separate disciplinary areas--feminist public policy scholarship, and feminist industrial relations scholarship--with little integration to date of the joint insights of this work. The purpose of this article is therefore to ask 'can industrial relations scholars gain new insights into industrial relations by examining the work of feminist public policy scholars'? If so, what are those insights?
The first part of the article examines the role of political and social institutions and groups as they impact on gender and work, using the feminist public policy literature. In doing so, we consider women's policy machinery inside government as well as the machinery for gender activism outside government: particularly in the community sector and unions. (1) This section also canvasses the discursive shifts of the Howard years, in particular the emphasis opposing 'special interests' and on 'governing for the mainstream', which has acted to marginalise women's interests. The second part discusses the issues, arguing first that, despite the difficulties facing the progression of 'women and work' issues, gender has been kept on the agenda in various ways. This section further argues that the public policy literature needs to be cross-fertilised with the work of industrial relations scholars in order to more fully understand the challenges that beset the future of gender activism in Australia, as well as to more fully assess and appreciate the gains of current and past activism.
The article assumes that the 'women and work problem' is still a significant social and economic issue where much remains to be done and past gains are in danger of being lost. Articles by Anna Chapman, David Peetz, Anthony Gray and Pauline Collins and others in this journal issue highlight a range of concerns about the effects of WorkChoices and 'Welfare-to-Work' legislation on women, so we do not canvass those issues here.
Policies on Women and Work: The Role of Political and Social Institutions
The public policy literature on gender and work traces the steady reduction of mechanisms for influencing the issue of women and work over the past 20 years, but particularly in the last 10 years since the ascension of the Howard government. Throughout the bureaucracy, within Parliament, and in the public sphere, there has been progressive defunding, disestablishment of groups, and discursive shifts that marginalise the position of women.
Women's Policy Machinery Inside Government
The institutional context for promoting gender equity in Australia--in work and in other areas of life--has significantly changed over the past 30 years. It has gone full circle: from the fledgling but highly significant efforts in the 1970s, to a pervasive set of policies and units throughout government in the late 1980s, to a situation from 1996 (and indeed prior to that), where the machinery to implement effective gender policy has been substantially restricted, and agendas have narrowed.
The history of this machinery has been well documented by Marian Sawer and others. (2) In 1973, Elizabeth Reid, the first Australian Women's Adviser (to the Prime Minister) was appointed. (3) Simultaneously, a 'hub and spokes' model was developed to promote women's policy, with the 'hub' being the forerunner of what later became the Office of the Status of Women (OSW), located in Office of the Department of the Prime Minister, and the 'spokes' of the wheel in line departments. (4) The OSW did not act on its own, but rather used a range of mechanisms that promoted use of its location and its access to influence, with other activities such as reaching out to traditional women's organisations in the community via the National Women's Advisory Council and its successor, the National Women's Consultative Council (NWCC). These bodies were able to speak with a public voice when bureaucrats did not. Thus they provided a broader political base for the Office and deflected anti-feminist criticism. (5) The OSW achieved many benefits for women, including a huge increase in child care spending, development of the home and community care program, national programs on violence against women and activities that led to Australia ratifying various ILO conventions. (6) In effect, Australia implemented an integrated version of gender mainstreaming, combining the expert-bureaucratic model and the participative-democratic model, as described by Nott. (7) A key element was the 'femocrat', the feminist bureaucrat, often with a background in the community sector and women's activism, who drove many of the changes. (8) Many would argue this model was, for a time in the 1970s and 1980s, at the vanguard of gender policy implementation internationally.
However, starting in the later years of the Keating government and intensifying in 1996 with the re-election of a conservative government, gender units were moved out of the 'hub' and into the 'spokes' (that is, into programme delivery). The OSW's budget was decreased by 40% in 1996. (9) Its location continued to shift from the centre to the margins according to changes in government. A final step in this process was the 2004 move from the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet to the Department of Family and Community Services. The renamed Office for Women (OfW) continues some of its roles, for example by commenting on Cabinet submissions from government departments and making submissions to parliamentary enquiries. A very brief bullet-pointed 'Overview of new initiatives' relating to women is released at each budget, (10) but it is promotional rather than analytical. Support for some areas has been maintained, such as funding for domestic violence programs, but the new emphasis is on the family, without attention to the wider structural explanations of male violence. (11)
Other gender policy machinery in the 'spokes' has been dismantled. The Women's Bureau within the employment portfolio was abolished in 1997, after 34 years of operation. (12) Gender units, such as the Social Security Women's Policy Unit and the Equal Opportunity Bureau, have disappeared. (13) The Women's Unit in the Australian Bureau of Statistics was also abolished. (14) The Federal government has not funded a repeat of the 1990 and 1995 Australian Workplace Industrial Relations Survey (AWIRS), which provided comprehensive baseline data to monitor workplace issues, including issues related to gender such as the prevalence of paid maternity leave.
Human rights legislation and machinery
Likewise, anti-discrimination legislation has been amended, and generally not in ways which advance its coverage. Anti-discrimination legislation has existed at a Federal level in Australia since 1984, with the introduction of the Sex Discrimination Act. It was also recognised that simply outlawing discriminatory treatment was not enough: more systemic attempts to promote equal opportunity were introduced with the Affirmative Action (Equal Opportunity for Women) Act 1986. (15) Both pieces of legislation now protect women less effectively than before, and again there have been budget cutbacks. The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC), the general human rights machinery in the Federal sphere that administers the Sex Discrimination Act, suffered a 40 per cent budget cut in 1996, with a halving of staff in the Sex Discrimination Unit. The Sex Discrimination Commissioner position was left vacant for a year in 1997-98, which led to a hiatus in this high profile activity, (16) although the original intention of abolishing the position was not carried out. There were cuts to the Affirmative Action Agency (AAA) in 1997, (17) with the legislation being amended in 1999 and renamed the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Act. In amending the Act, the Government did not accede to submissions (from WEL and others) regarding further enforcement powers and other issues. (18) Rather, legislative amendments weakened the legislation by introducing 'voluntary accreditation' of companies that had achieved good results, removed the requirement on large companies to report their progress yearly, and weakened the emphasis on senior management support, setting specific targets, allocating resources, or consulting with women and trade unions. (19) Thus the Act, rather than being strengthened, was considerably weakened.
However, HREOC does have and continues to use 'the soft tools' of education and public awareness-raising by debates and the provision of information. (20) Former Sex Discrimination Commissioner Pru Goward (21) for example, has propagated alternative discourses that attempt to shift the terrain of the political debate. Her Women, Men, Work and Family project, launched in 2005, examines the relationship between family responsibilities and paid work. Building on the 2002 report A Time to Value--Proposal for a National Paid Maternity Leave Scheme, the project resulted in the 2005 discussion paper, Striking the Balance, which explores ways of providing families with choices for balancing their responsibilities, and Right to Request, released in 2007, which recommends a Family Responsibilities and Carers' Rights Act to protect workers with family and carer responsibilities from discrimination, and give them the fight to request flexible work arrangements. (22) These initiatives appear to date to have had little impact on public policy. As Smith notes, HREOC's powers are limited by the absence of any agency with enforcement powers, such as the Workplace Relations Act has via the Workplace Ombudsman (formerly the Office of Workplace Services), or occupational health and safety legislation has with its (state-based) WorkCover agencies. (23) In all, Australia's legislative framework for ensuring women's rights are protected is inadequate, particularly for issues such as pay equity that cannot be sensibly addressed by the complaint-based and largely individualised nature of the processes. While some legislation is better than none, legislation by itself will not bring about workforce equality for women, and it has been significantly weakened and faces further possible amendments. (24)
The community sector
Feminist political scientists have demonstrated that for the past 30 years in Australia, 'the women's movement has been influential in redefining citizen relations with the State'. (25) The hub and spokes model, dependent on interaction between units in the Federal bureaucracy and specific policy initiatives such as the women's budget statement, required input from the community sector for the whole machinery not to be top-down and paternalistic. As Sawer notes, 'the best policy outcomes for women have been achieved where there has been a combination of strong pressure from women's organisations outside government' as well as activity from femocrats within government. (26) Hence, earlier government policies encouraged community-based organisations and, indeed, funded them. The National Agenda for Women's Grants Program (NAWGP) provided operational funding, as opposed to project funding, in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This was important because operating nationally focussed community organisations (necessary to lobby in Canberra) is difficult, particularly when trying to run only on member fees and donations.
The tide has now also turned. A shift to delivering measurable outcomes, as opposed to representation of interests, had started under the Keating government but intensified after the election of the Howard government. (27) There was also defunding of peak bodies that were critical of the Howard government, (28) consistent with the government's view that NGOs do not have an important advocacy role in a pluralist democracy. In addition, the purchaser/provider contracts that many community organisations (such as the working women's centres that still exist) have now with government, ties them to specific performance indicators and sets out specific terms under which organisations can comment on government policy, including confidentiality clauses, and advance notice of media activity and proposed publications. The advocacy voice of these organisations on policy issues is therefore considerably muted. Pre-eminent among community sector organisations is the Women's Electoral Lobby (WEL), since its formation in 1972 a highly effective lobbying organisation. (29) Having members both inside and outside Government in the early years was a huge benefit, allowing WEL to lobby for a Women's Adviser and to develop a blueprint that led to the hub and spokes model. WEL was a highly 'successful example of a social movement moving into the political system'. (30) The Federal government however withdrew WEL's modest funding in the year 1999-2000, (31) and it has subsequently not received any. (32) However, it continues to operate, and is regrouping. In the past year it has announced a revamping and wider distribution of its newsletter and new strategies to attract active members. (33) WEL has been active with bodies such as the National Pay Equity Coalition on policy issues, lodging submissions with the Government's Award Review Taskforce, (34) and other inquiries and reviews.
A new development is a network of four National Secretariats of women's organisations, which Of W has funded since 2002 to provide representative advice to government on policy issues and to act as a conduit to exchange information between government and the women's sector. Essentially, this funding replaces the NAWGP funding. These Secretariats are WomenSpeak (auspiced by the Young Women's Christian Association [YWCA]), Security4Women (auspiced by Business and Professional Women [BPW]), the Australian Women's Coalition (auspiced by the National Council of Women of Australia), and the National Rural Women's Coalition (auspiced by the Foundation for Australian Agricultural Women). Two of the coalitions, Seeurity4Women and WomenSpeak, contribute to the debate on women and work, despite the limitations on them regarding open criticism of government policy. A joint project, What Women Want, co-ordinated by the National Foundation for Australian Women (NFAW) (a member of both Security4Women and WomenSpeak), examined the impact of the proposed IR and Welfare-to-Work changes on women. What Women Want put in a submission to a large 2005 Senate Inquiry into the WorkChoices Bill. (35) However, the restrictions on the secretariats commenting on government policy meant that the submission, rather than being a critique of the legislation, was framed simply in terms of a 'workshop report'.
Individual organisations, which may be affiliated with one or more of the secretariats, continue to operate. The National Foundation for Australian Women, like WEL, has maintained a strong media profile with comments on the WorkChoices and Welfare-to-Work changes, and has contributed funding to and is the impetus behind three studies. The first was by the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling (NATSEM) on the financial impact of the changes. Originally, the secretariats had intended to contract the NATSEM research, until advised it was not their role to do research and that any money paid to NATSEM would be removed from their budgets. (36) The second, partly funded by HREOC and conducted in 2006, enabled Women in Social and Economic Research (WISER) researchers at Curtin University of Technology to produce a report on women's pay and gaps in current data and knowledge. A third study, not yet finalised, funded by the NFAW, the YWCA, WEL, the Don Chipp Foundation, Women with Disabilities Australia and the Victorian Women Lawyers at a national level, and state governments in most states, examines the qualitative experiences of over 100 women around Australia who have been affected by the changes. NFAW also coordinated a national series of roundtables on pay equity in capital cities in 2006-2007, resulting in a national report. NFAW is fortunate in having a small amount of independent operational funding, and some energetic lobbyists and strategists. (37) This enables it to maintain an independent voice. There is a range of other groups that contribute to women and work issues, including the National Pay Equity Coalition (NPEC), a small 'invitation only' group formed in 1988 which works across a range of fronts, including preparing brochures, press releases, submissions to parliamentary enquiries, coalition building and activities with other organisations. (38)
The formation of the secretariats has seen some 'shifting ground' in the community sector. For example, BPW traditionally provided opportunities for business and professional women to network, access mentors, 'develop skillsets and participate in forums to discuss issues of concern with likeminded and diverse women'. (39) Its focus has now broadened to wider social justice concerns, and more active engagement with government, with the auspicing of Security4Women. Other groups like the WEL, NPEC and NFAW continue to emphasise legal reforms and state support for women. Multiple and overlapping membership of organisations is common, and anecdotal evidence suggests that some women play key linking roles between the organisations and, significantly, between the women's movement and unions. Overall, the formation of the women's secretariats has altered the 'architecture' of the community sector, and changed the mechanisms by which women's groups can access government. These changes have altered the earlier largely informal and unstructured nature of the Australian women's movement which, as Chappell indicates, was a deliberate choice to eschew the hierarchy and central controls which were part of the problem the movement was trying to combat. (40) A single organisation, or indeed any kind of peak body, was seen as inappropriate due to the many issues that concern women, depending upon factors such as race, class, age, ethnicity, sexuality and religion. (41)
Significantly, the terms of funding contracts limit the 'voice' of advocacy organisations. Many are now confined to service delivery and consultation roles, with advocacy per se being muted except in the case of groups that have been able to access some limited--usually independent--operational funding and/or which have a particularly committed core of activists. Advocacy NGOs believe they are being pressured into silence by governments, particularly the Federal government. (42) Staples has very recently analysed the effects of 'public choice' arguments on the advocacy role of NGOs, which has broad ramifications for the nature of Australia's hitherto pluralist political democracy. (43)
Organisations thus face 'rock and hard place' choices between no funding, or funding with the added strings of not being seen to criticise government policy which their own experience tells them is not beneficial for women. However, research, lobbying and activism continue. This may be a 'defensive phase' in the history of the Australian women's movement (44) but, in a comparative and international context, there is ample recognition that social movements go through 'holding patterns' in which maintaining a core of activists is a key role, and that 'abeyance structures' often form in challenging times, which help the movement survive. (45)
Unions
Unions have for a long time offered the potential for progressing gender equity for women at work. However, their focus on these issues is relatively recent. As noted by Muir and Franzway, 'women have long had to struggle to become members of unions and to gain recognition of their needs and interests in opposition to men's attempts to exclude them'. (46) Demographic shifts and women's activism within unions is changing the union landscape, however. Women's workforce participation is now 56 per cent, compared with men's at 72% and continues to narrow; men's participation has decreased by 6% in 20 years, whereas women's has increased by 24%. (47) In the past, there was a significant difference between union density amongst male workers, compared to female workers: 50 per cent and 39 per cent in 1986, for example; but the difference has narrowed significantly and is now almost negligible. (48) The percent of women in union official positions is also increasing steadily: in South Australia from 12% in 1985 to 36% in 1998, (49) although there is no recent or more comprehensive data. Most peak union bodies now have at least one of the two senior positions (Secretary, President) held by a female. A weakening of the power of the union movement as a whole has enabled a power shift within the movement to occur. The results of these demographic shifts, and of the proactive efforts by women and pro-feminist men unionists, have put 'women and work' and 'work and family issues' on the bargaining and campaigning agendas of the labour movement in the past 20 years. However, union resources are currently 'stretched thin', and the current mood within the union movement, faced as it is with the challenge of the WorkChoices legislation, is defensive rather than offensive, seeking to retain the status quo (or turn it back if and when the ALP is elected) rather than seeking further industrial gains.
Historical factors constrain the unions' approach to gender issues. The union movement, despite its undoubted achievements, remains caught in a dilemma regarding issues of 'sameness' and 'difference'. (50) In earlier historical times, there was an emphasis on 'difference': unions defended the 'family wage', which was predicated on the woman's 'right' to stay at home. Her 'right' to work, although it existed, did not entitle her to the right to equal pay until the 1970s. The problematic nature of a 'difference' discourse for unions leads to an emphasis on "sameness" In the current climate: the same rights to decent wages, reasonable hours and time off to care for children. Thus gender is not 'off the agenda' for unions, but tends to become subsumed under the rhetoric of solidarity, in which the main struggle is against hegemonic discourses about the ability of the 'typical' worker to negotiate favourable terms, as an individual, with the employer.
'Special Interest Pleading' and 'Governing for the Mainstream'
The diminution in institutions, community groups and legislation is partly about structural issues and resources, but underlying this is a shift in discourse--both gender discourses, and family discourses. Under the Howard government (and indeed under the previous ALP leader Mark Latham (51)), feminist agendas have increasingly been characterised as 'elite' and focusing on group interests (for example, middle-class interests) rather than wider public interests, (52) as have the agendas of the labour movement. (53) As Sawer puts it, values associated with feminism (and other movements) are identified in such discourses as 'fashions' or a form of moral vanity rather than having any authentic ethical content. They serve to distinguish the elite from ordinary people and are given the label of 'political correctness'. (54)
'Special interests' have lost their role as 'organisations and movements representing legitimate grievances by marginalised groups'. (55) Some aspects of civil society meet with endorsement; Prime Minister Howard's 2006 Australia Day speech approvingly mentions 'the voluntary sector' as 'the lifeblood of Australian citizenship', but it is clear, in the context of the whole speech, that a voluntary sector ought not to play any effective role in civil society other than a 'caring and sharing' one. (56) Underpinned by public choice theory, these discourses undermine the role of many NGOs, including those in the women's sector.
Central to conservative discourses is the framing of 'family'. Discursive shifts in Australia relate to trends in other countries, including the move to the ascendancy of conservative moral systems and political discourse in the US, documented by Lakoff, among others. (57) Central to the conservative discourse are particular conceptions of 'family values', with coherent systems of rhetoric and politics--often a politics that hurts rather than helps many families. (58) The Prime Minister has reiterated constantly that 'the family' is the 'most important institution in our society' and has called for a 'new compact' to allow families to better align paid work and personal responsibilities. (59) However, Hill argues that the Howard government's policies rest on the assumption of a male breadwinner, with some particular family types being supported more than others. (60) The government has also found the language of 'gender mainstreaming' useful to justify budget cuts and structural changes. (61) The discursive shift is also used to justify the discontinuance of operational funding and curbs on the free speech of advocacy organisations, as described above.
Discussion: Keeping Gender on the Agenda
The foregoing discussion highlights the shifting relationships between the state in its various guises, and the voluntary sector, with respect to progressing issues of gender equity at work. From the political science literature, we have a range of useful insights about how gender activists engage with the state, and how that engagement has changed over time. Chappell, in her study of the role of women activists in shaping government institutions in Canada and Australia, has found that political opportunity structures change, providing openings and/or obstacles for women's groups, which shapes how they engage. The situation is never static for long. Chappell argues that the interaction between institutions is co-constitutive, meaning 'just as feminists' choices have been shaped by their engagement with institutions, so have the latter been shaped by the former'. (62) The stance of the Howard government towards special interest groups has caused large shifts in the political opportunity structure in the past ten years, and a significant change in the architecture of the funded bodies, namely the establishment of the secretariats. By and large, it is a bleak picture, with voices more muted than they otherwise would have been. However, at the same time, individual groups such as the NFAW have maintained their independence and a critical approach to the actions of government while still, engaging with ministers and bureaucrats in order to provide a community sector voice to government. Whether the women's movement has been 'co-opted' does not seem a particularly fruitful line of enquiry. Chappell argues that new strategies represent subversion, in an attempt to advance a new 'logic of appropriateness'. (63) A range of public fora and interventions--particularly from the community sector and academics, and from state governments--on the issue of women and work have occurred since WorkChoices, including the conference from which most of the papers in this special Focus come. Cause and effect is difficult to determine, but one indication of the success of criticisms from the union movement, the women's sector and other elements of civil society has been the introduction (as this issue was going to press) of a 'fairness test' for Australian Workplace Agreements. (64) This is an attempt to address the 'cost cutting' criticism continually levelled against AWAs: they are being used to eliminate penalty and overtime rates and other conditions (see the article by Peetz in this issue).
Raising concerns about 'co-option' obscures the point that both the state and the community sector are heterogeneous, with multiple arenas in which to interact. A Federal government that is in general unsympathetic to women's interests has some bureaucrats and ministers who are more attuned to women's issues. The two-tiered federal nature of the Australian state has a high degree of heterogeneity, especially at present when there are ALP governments in all six states and the two territories and a federal election is imminent. As Beckwith points out, these forms of heterogeneity provide resources for social movements. Rather than co-option, there is a complex of alliance and autonomy that feminist activists navigate with both political parties and different state structures. (65)
A significant research vacuum is that we know much less about how gender activists engage with unions in the current climate, nor about gender activists in unions, than we do about the community/NGO sector. With some excellent but now not-so-recent exceptions, the research on unions and gender activism is sparse, and needs to be remedied. The debate on gender and industrial relations research is a longstanding one. Using a memorable phrase, Forrest critiques the 'malestream' nature of academic industrial relations. (66) Wacjman likewise concludes that 'gender issues remain marginal to much of the current research agenda'. (67) Industrial relations has primarily focused on institutions and structures at the expense of social processes. (68) 'Institutions' has meant an emphasis on trade unions, employer association and certain kinds of state apparatus (such as industrial tribunals and government departments of industrial/ workplace relations) to the neglect of others. 'Social processes' (such as 'family, community, and wider society') have also been neglected. (69) These 'blind spots' in the discipline of industrial relations have largely omitted actors such as social movements. They appear 'peripheral' to the central concerns. Even parts of the bureaucracy such as 'offices for women', and significant agencies such as HREOC and the various state anti-discrimination commissions are absent. As Rosemary Webb so effectively demonstrates in her article in this issue, social and labour historians have been much quicker to recognise that social processes and various institutions and groups are worthy of study and evaluation.
Recent developments in academic industrial relations have attempted to incorporate the role of 'new actors' who fall newly into the purview of industrial relations research. Many (such as the women's movement) are very 'old' actors indeed, although others have included new organisational forms and strategies for labour. (70) A recent special issue of the British Journal of Industrial Relations, (71) and a conference in Sydney late last year, (72) have heightened interest in the issue of 'new actors' in industrial relations. (73) To date, research has mostly been descriptive and exploratory, specifying the types of 'new actors' and how they influence outcomes of certain industrial relations events. Some notable advances--with a strong theoretical basis--such as the work of Osterman (74) and Tattersall (75)--point the way for future scholars. As Heery and Frege point out, a potential gain is to place industrial relations 'into a larger political-economic framework' (76) (we would amend this to 'socio-political-economic framework'). To truly gain benefits from the 'new actors' approach, more industrial relations scholars must take up Heery and Frege's challenge by means of studies that address two key issues. First, we need to identify not only how 'new actors' influence industrial relations issues, but also the types of processes and interactions between various industrial relations actors ('new' and otherwise). Second, we need to discover how we might better understand 'outcomes'--in terms of goal achievements, successes and failures, as well as how interests, relationships and ways of operating by various 'actors' influence each other, and change over time. The literature surveyed in this article--from feminist political scientists on state and community interaction and on discourse analysis, and from feminist scholars on social movements--has much to offer industrial relations scholars.
An underlying issue is that industrial relations researchers have had an overriding focus on class as an explanatory factor. This has shadowed gender as a factor and turned attention from what are described as identity concerns and identity politics, which have been criticised by some industrial relations scholars. (77) However, other literature is sympathetic to this approach, suggesting that identities such as gender and family status interact with class-consciousness and can influence willingness to take workplace or protest action. (78) The 'sameness' approach, mentioned above as a strategy that unions have adopted, holds dangers. Forrest's work demonstrates that women have a 'double minded consciousness, both worker and woman', with gender issues often latent but nevertheless real. (79) The tendency to see class and other identities in a binary way is unnecessary and does not take into account key feminist theorists, (80) who argue that socio-economic injustice (underpinned by the political-economic structure of society) coexists with cultural or symbolic injustice, rooted in social patterns of representation, interpretation and communication ('identity politics'). The remedy for socioeconomic injustice is political-economic restructuring of some sort, referred to as 'redistribution'. The remedy for cultural injustice is some form of cultural or symbolic change, referred to as 'recognition'. Nancy Fraser argues that both forms of injustice are not in practice separable. Therefore, she argues,
we should develop a critical theory of recognition, one that
identifies and defends only those versions of the cultural politics
of difference that can be coherently combined with the social
politics of equality. (81)
Fraser's work provides some intellectual bedrock for arguing that both redistribution issues (a key focus of industrial relations research) and recognition issues (not a key focus in IR, but one brought into relief by a focus on justice for female, Indigenous and migrant workers, amongst others) are essential to understanding persistent inequalities and divisions in the labour market, and the ways in which they are opposed, contested and, at times, altered. The traffic of interdisciplinary cross-fertilisation is not one way, however, as there is a range of feminist industrial relations scholars producing significant research on the material realities of women's lives, and the effects of institutions such as unions and tribunals on these realities.
We also know little about the influence of women's policy machinery in the state governments and territories, although we have some evidence of discontinuities and differences. For instance, the NSW government's abolition of the Department for Women is said to have overshadowed that state's gains in areas such as pay equity. On the other hand, South Australia is recognised as having a renewed commitment to gender analysis strategies and gender equality. (82) Overall, research on the contribution of state government and territory policy machinery on women and work is limited: another significant research vacuum.
Conclusion
The Howard government's social conservatism and neo-liberal philosophy appears to have had a profound impact on gender issues by maintaining a hostile stance to feminist imperatives. The Federal government's mainstreaming strategies, values and discourses have resulted in a lack of advancement and support for women, and indeed outrightly antagonistic and non-progressive legislation. Notions of a traditional gendered workforce shape federal budgets and many government policies. This is evident in the attempt to reinforce traditional family values, although there is some recognition that women work (and indeed with the current labour and skills shortage, need to be encouraged to work). The challenge for those who wish to change the status quo is that it is so deeply entrenched. The 'femocrat' has largely disappeared as a policy force within federal government, although there are many in the bureaucracy who have an appreciation of the gendered effects of policy. The voice of community groups has been weakened but not lost. The Government has undermined the position of unions in the workplace. The WorkChoices and welfare-to-work reforms are markedly 'antiwoman' as they are aimed principally at the low paid. With both sets of legislative changes (particularly WorkChoices) on the media and public radar, and with a Federal election due in late 2007, an attempt to develop a new 'logic of appropriateness' is currently being shaped by women's groups, and is making some headway.
Women's groups are attempting to develop this new 'logic' by continued engagement with the State in a changed context that poses considerable challenges, and by building coalitions between groups and creating new coalitions and structures. As the political opportunity structure shifts, it appears a dual strategy is being maintained by women's groups: continued engagement with the State, but in a changed and more muted form, at the same time as coalition building between women's groups and with the union movement to maintain a 'gender content' when assessing WorkChoices and Welfare-to-Work. The struggle is both material and discursive; highlighting the negative impacts of the two pieces of legislation on such issues as pay and the continuing absence of the right of working women to universal paid maternity leave, but simultaneously challenging the government's construction of the ungendered worker. Thus it appears that the women's movement continues to have an impact on political, institutional and bureaucratic actors, at the same time as the movement has had to reshape itself to deal with a changing political landscape. To explore the ongoing impact of women's groups on gender equity issues, we need more theoretically informed, inter- and multi-disciplinary research on the various ways in which the women's movement interacts with other actors, and about the movement's internal dynamics and processes.
