- by Bev Hall
- The Guardian
- Issue #2107
Looking back over sixty years, women have made some progress, but we still have a long way to go. My activities in the women’s movement began in earnest in 1975, the International Year for Women. This led many of my generation into activities with WEL (Women’s Electoral Lobby), UAW (Union of Australian Women), and WILPF (Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom), along with joining women’s groups in the ALP and the trade union movement.
Many contentious issues were experienced by women in the sixties and seventies. The education system was geared to train female students to become good housewives and mothers. The courses female students were encouraged to follow in those years were commercial studies to become typists, or domestic studies such as cooking and sewing. In a 50 years celebration of my old high school, all of us former female students had to see if the ‘practice flat’ was still there. That was a pretend flat so we could learn how to look after a home. It had become a computer room. In year 9 we had to study ‘Baby Welfare’ for a term to prepare us to become good mothers. We were not aware then that if you had a baby out of wedlock, that baby would be taken from you and put up for adoption. This continued until 1972 and is still the case for many Aboriginal women.
My ambition was to become an agricultural scientist. I spent my pocket money on agricultural magazines from age 13, thinking if I studied these It would help me to enter agricultural courses. When I applied, I was told I couldn’t carry a bag of wheat! Female students weren’t accepted until 6 years after I was married. The first female students in this course, achieved higher marks than the male students. After completing studies to become a primary school teacher, I was in the first group who didn’t have to resign on marriage. Many of us were told that education was a waste of time as we would only marry and have children. If you educate a woman, you educate a family. Under 21, women still had to have their father’s permission to marry. In those years females were expected to stay home and look after the house and the family.
In the 1990s I was horrified to learn that single females had great difficulty to gain loans, but if they had a husband then it was much easier. Working for many years in early childhood education as a director, my income was also considered too low to qualify to borrow money. Childcare centre staff, were in an even worse situation. Childcare salaries have been for past 50 years the lowest in the workforce, and many of us in the 1980s formed an organisation NACBACS (National Association for Community Based Children’s Services) to fight for better wages and conditions.
Traditionally female workforces have always been low paid and with poorer conditions. We saw how the nursing profession improved when more males were involved but we decided that we wanted to demonstrate that we could achieve better conditions on our own as women.
Some of the issues such as the right to abortion, being able to borrow money as women and support for childcare are only beginning to be tackled in recent years. Equal pay is still not available in many areas of work. Early childhood education is seen as child minding, not needing educated and skilled staff. The first five years of a child’s life is the most crucial in their development, so the staff should be well qualified, respected, and recognised for the highly important work they are carrying out. The experiences of children in those first five years will impact them for life. As women hold up half the sky they need to be represented in all areas and in leadership positions.
