The movement from "more traditional" to "less traditional"
orientations will be considered as it has affected women’s position in three important ways: first, their right to participate in society as autonomous individuals rather than exclusively as members of family units; second, their right to determination over their reproductive function; and third, their right to earn a living. In Australia, as elsewhere, extension of women’s rights in each of these three areas has been closely related to the strength of norms concerning the primacy of women’s family roles. The general trend has been in the direction of weakening these norms. Yet within each of these three areas adherence to the more traditional criteria for defining women’s position can still be found within certain institutions and among certain sectors of the population. Nonetheless, the general movement at the level of formal laws and social arrangements to define women on the basis of criteria clustered at the less traditional pole suggests a growing adherence to egalitarianism, at least in the formal sense. Moreover, changing orientations toward women in these three areas reflect the impact of social change on the tasks that women have traditionally performed, which, in turn, has altered expectations about the roles to which they should be primarily committed.
4.3.1 Derived and autonomous social status
In the colonial period of Australian history, women's place was viewed from the perspective of an unusually large imbalance in the sex ratio, a tiny population in a huge continent, and suspicion about the origins and character of the female transports. Together, these conditions placed a premium on the institution of marriage. The relative absence of women in the early period of settlement left an indelible mark on Australian history. Accounts of the impact of this shortage of women on Australian life in terms of the development of "mateship" [McGregor, 1966:46; Bell, 1973] and of certain ways
Australian men and women have of relating to each other [Conway, 1971; Bell, 1974] are necessarily impressionistic. Yet there is ample
evidence [McDonald, 1974:27-58] that, on both local and national
levels, imbalance in the sex ratio played an important part in shaping such government policies as those relating to marriage, assisted
migration, the regional distribution of labour, land grants and land settlement. The non-married women (convict or free) who were brought out to balance the sex ratio and help settle the new country were a constant source of official anxiety. Fear that these women would debase morals in the colonies was exceeded only by concern that — if they remained unmarried — they would become wards of the state and have to be supported by government rations. McDonald [1974:30] writes
that Macquarie and succeeding Governors were so inundated by charges of immorality directed against unions not sanctioned by the English marriage laws that they saw the "regularization of marriage as one of
their most important duties".
Summers [1975] argues that the convict origins of early women settlers and the harsh conditions of life in the colony generated two conflicting images of women that have dominated expectations about women's roles in Australia ever since. On the one hand, women were
seen as "damned whores", evil temptresses who were bent on undermining the social and moral authority of men. On the other, they were seen as "God's police", a term used by Caroline Chisholm in a letter urging the authorities to transport more women to the colonies on the grounds that they would constitute forces for good and guardians of the moral order. A number of writers [Mackenzie, 1962:60; Blainey, 1966;
Dixson, 1976] have commented that the strong emphasis on the primacy of women's family roles may well be a heritage of the early days of settlement when rough frontier life far from the centres or European civilization heightened the perceived need for "good and virtuous women" to uphold the morals of society, and stable family relations to provide security for a people founding a new nation.
The needs for population expansion and social stability perceived by the colonial governors as so vital to the survival of Australian society could hardly have fostered attitudes favouring an autonomous position for women. In fact, the nonmarried woman was regarded not only as a temptation to immoral behaviour, but as a wasted opportunity to populate a vast, empty continent. In the Governor's view, a
woman's primary duty was to marry and merge her interests with those of her husband. A separate social identity for women was considered neither feasible nor desirable. The nonmarried woman was an object of pity, if not scorn, someone who had failed in her commission to find a husband and accordingly was obliged to settle for such second-best alternatives as living with relatives and teaching school [Hendriex, 1973:18-22] or working as a domestic or governess in a "good" family [Anderson, 1920:266-303]. However, though low in social esteem, the nonmarried woman had full legal status as a separate personality. Not so her married counterpart. Until the latter part of the 19th century, the married woman in Australia and elsewhere had no legal rights of her own. She was considered so much an adjunct of her husband as to be virtually incapable of making independent decisions. As Gawdron
[1973:30] has observed her legal status was comparable to that of lunatics and children.
By the 1920s in Australia, many of the legal barriers to a
married woman's participating in society as an independent person had disappeared. All states in Australia permitted women to vote by 1908 and the right to stand for office was realized in various years
between 1894 and 1923 [Milbum, 1976:9]. However, recognition of women as equals in social and economic activities came more slowly. Even after the granting of suffrage, for example, it was still thought proper to require a woman to have the same citizenship as her husband, and to leave to her husband such economic matters as owning property,
incurring debts, and administering jointly-held estates. It was not until The Australian Nationality and Citizenship Act of 1948 that married women acquired equality in the maintenance of citizenship. Before that, a woman automatically lost her citizenship by marrying an
alien. Women in Australia now also have the general capacity to
contract and the right to sue and defend legal suits without their
husband’s consent; and their right to a share of the family estate
entitles them to inherit part of joint property upon the husband's death.
Yet there remain residual rules associated with the earlier dependent status of married women that impede the ability of
Australian women to act autonomously. Within the private law, and in
the case of many social arrangements, women are in effect still treated on the basis of the one-personality principle, i.e., that their status is (and should be) not autonomous but derived from their relationship with a husband [Hogg and Lanteri, 1975:95-115].
Discriminatory lending practices that require a woman, even she has demonstrated her capacity for self-support, to have a male guarantor;
the difficulty in obtaining insurance policies; the secondary member
ship status accorded women in some social and professional clubs; and
employment disabilities associated with marital status in certain occupations are all relics of a time when women lacked a social identity of their own.1
However, in the law and, officially, in most spheres of public life in which they participate — education, employment, politics — status is now conferred on women largely on the basis of their own attributes and achievements rather than on those of the men to whom
they are related by birth or marriage. This change in legal status
has increased the formal opportunities of women to enter a wider range
of positions in public life. Entry requirements vary in the different
states,2 but under South Australia's new Sex Discrimination Act,. 1977,
1 For a discussion of the continued existence of sex-based
inequities in the United States ("supported, perpetuated and often aggravated by the organized might of domestic and foreign legal systems"), see Kanowitz [1975:2].
for example, it is now unlawful for an employer to discriminate on the grounds of sex or marital status (a) in determining who should be offered employment or (b) in the terms on which employment is offered
[Canberra Times, March 3, 1977:19].
Nevertheless, despite the extension of their civil and political rights, women appear in many areas of public life not to make much use of their greater freedom to participate. As noted previously, they are underrepresented at all levels of the political process [Women’s Advisory Body Working Party, 1977:6-7; Taperell, 1977:44], they fail
to apply for positions of high responsibility [Bramley and Ward, 1976: 147], and they are concentrated in low-paying, socially
inconsequential jobs [Power, 1975a:226-227; Riach, 1975:63-93; Broom and Jones, 1976:37-41]. Why?
In the context of the present discussion of the extension of legal rights, an important explanation of the seeming reticence of women to put themselves forward applies to the articulation between various types of rights. If rights in one area of social life are extended without adjustments being made in other areas, these rights may remain effectively beyond the reach of the persons entitled to
them. As Marshall [1965] has observed, access to civil and political rights has, historically, tended to precede the extension of economic and social rights. If change occurs in one setting — the legal, for example — but is resisted in another, such as the economic or social, tension is likely to result. Extension of formal opportunities is not necessarily the most important change involved in equalizing
conditions of existence and opportunity; of equal significance is what Marshall termed [1965:114] the "superstructure of legitimate
expectations", that is the willingness of society to implement the intent of changes in the law by providing measures that give all
members of society access to the rights to which they are entitled. A graphic illustration of this principle is the fact that women’s right to serve on juries (finally extended in New South Wales on a voluntary basis in 1947) was not proclaimed publicly until 1951 on the grounds
Wales was the only state where a woman could be the principal of a co-educational high school.
that separate lavatory accommodation could not be provided [Encel et
at.
, 1947:268]. The consistent reluctance to admit women to jury duty illustrates how traditional stereotypes about female traits (namely, that women are too pure to hear unpleasant evidence, too emotional, or too inclined to be easily swayed) can act as barriers to women'sparticipation on an equal footing with men.
The Family Law A ct_, 1975 illustrates how lack of change in women's economic position can thwart the intent of legal provisions
designed to raise women's status within the family. A landmark in extending legal equality between the sexes, the Act explicitly enunciates the principle of equality between husband and wife in marital obligations and includes as a major provision a no-fault
divorce law based solely on the grounds of separation and
"irretrievable breakdown". Yet, in practice, wives seeking legal marital dissolution under this new law are said to have frequently found that equality with their husbands before the law has been achieved at the loss of what was formerly a measure of economic security. It is claimed that the rights of married women to
maintenance have been eroded because marital obligations of husband and wife are now regarded as equal. One consequence is that the husband is no longer obliged to provide support for his wife. Either spouse — husband or wife — can now claim maintenance. The Court decide cases of conflict on the basis of which party succeeds in convincing them of being unable to support himself/herself [Royal Commission on Human Relationships, 1977, Vol. 4:51-52].
Even if the wife's need for support is allowed, she may still experience serious financial difficulties. As in the operation of all previous Matrimonial Causes Acts, there is inevitably some interval of time between separation from the husband and the receipt of
maintenance or social services. For women who have the custody of small children, earn no income, and are poorly equipped to enter jobs with good pay, acquisition of the necessary financial means may pose an insurmountable hardship. Thus, for economic reasons, some women in need of matrimonial relief may find themselves compelled to remain within the matrimonial home; which would make it difficult not only
"irretrievable breakdown" required by the Act.
It is also said that the property rules of the Act are unfair to women. The rules of "separate property" do not make allowances for the fact that a wife by bearing and rearing children frees her husband for his economic activities, but thereby relinquishes the opportunity to acquire assets herself [Royal Commission on Human Relationships, 1977, Vol. 4:56]. In not having this limitation upon their
opportunity to acquire independent means taken into account, married women may be considered to be doubly penalized by their family
obligations: they are less free to earn a living when married, and they are not compensated for their time or absence from paid employ ment when the marriage is dissolved. Thus, the rules, though equal in
content, apply to a situation in which men's and women's marital obligations are, in fact, unequal. In short, the rules fail to take account of the realities of family life.
This is one of many examples where social expectations associated with men and women's roles within the private sphere have lagged
behind legal definitions of equality in relations between the sexes. If a married woman lacks the financial resources to live separately from her husband, the freedom to obtain a divorce on the ground of separation represents tokenism, a hollow victory. As Hogg and Lanteri
[1975:112] suggest, legislating as if equality existed can have the effect in practice of widening the gap between the opportunities of men and women for attaining a measure of autonomy, self-determination,
and economic security.
4.3.2 Reproductive self-determination
Childbearing is a key variable associated with women's life chances. In Australia as elsewhere, a woman's motherhood status, including the age, spacing, and number of her children, has been a prime criterion defining her ability to enter a variety of social positions. On the capacity to determine the timing and extent of one's involvement in parenthood hinges one's access to a number of other valued social conditions, such as the capacity to plan with some degree of assurance the direction of one's future activities, or the
capacity to support oneself without the constraints of competing commitments that interfere with the ability to earn a living wage. The data on lone parents presented in Chapter 5 show that 63 per cent of the 132,000 lone mothers in the 1970s, as compared with only "a few" of the 28,000 lone fathers, were supporting themselves on government benefits [Royal Commission on Human Relationships, 1977, Vol. 4:83]. While the transition to parenthood involves far-reaching changes in the lives of both sexes [Rossi, 1968:26-45], in today’s society its implications for women’s life patterns and range of choices are more significant and pervasive.
Throughout the history of Australia, official concern for populating the continent has delayed the extension of reproductive self-determination to women and reinforced the expectation that
woman’s primary sphere of influence should be confined to maintaining the home and raising a family. As Finlay [1973/74:759] has observed, despite major social and demographic changes in the years between the first settlement and the period following World War II, the presumed need to augment Australia's numbers has dominated official thinking. During the 1940s, for example, official concern about "insufficient" reproduction led the Federal Government to introduce a national scheme of child endowment and to set up an Interdepartmental Working
Committee to study the declining birth rate [Ware, 1973:8-9]. The reports and resolutions of the National Health and Medical Research Council, investigating the factors underlying the fall in fertility in the early 1940s, reflect the official preoccupation with the
consequence of changing reproductive patterns for the well-being of Australia: e.g., "Memorandum of Some Aspects of the Decline in the Birth-Rate and Future of Population in Australia" [Ware, 1973:9]. Borrie and Cameron [1974:11-14] describe the fears among government officials in the 1940s that the low birth rates of the 1930s would lead to a depression in the supply of new entrants into the work force in the late 1940s.
Over the years, official concern for population growth has
affected women's life chances directly by delaying government support for the development of birth control services to enable women in
by tacitly aligning the government with segments of the populating adhering to the view that women's primary duty is to marry, stay home, and bear children. These segments, represented by Church leaders, such as the Very Reverend Lance Shilton, Anglican Dean of St. Andrew's Cathedral, Sydney, and Christian lay women, such as Frieda Brown of the Family Action Movement (FAM) and the Festival of Light, constitute a substantial minority**3 who define women in the traditional terms described above, namely, that they are "God's police", moral guardians of society whose primary social tasks should be to uphold moral
standards and provide care and moral support for others, chiefly
within the private sphere of their own families. This view of women's place leads to a political platform that is against women's working outside the home, against State provision of child care facilities, against the dissemination of birth control information and services to non-married women, and against the liberalization of access to
abortion [Diksonvil, 1974:50-55]. The lobbying of such groups against birth control, combined with the essentially pro-natalist stance of Australian governments, has meant that access to birth control in Australia has lagged behind that in many other western countries [see Wood
et dl.
, 1974:36-46; Ripper, 1977:2], not only in the delay inliberalization of access to abortion4 [Elliott, 1977:33; Siedlecky, 1977:31], but also in the existence of measures limiting the
distribution of contraceptives, such as import duties on contraceptive devices, bans on the advertising of contraceptive devices (which apply in most States today), the prohibition of publications relating to birth control matters, and the imposition of a "luxury" tax on