Blue Stocking week this year is the week of August 14 so it is timely to consider what it is all about and why gender inequity in education is still a major concern.
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I often hear that gender inequity is a thing of the past and that women just need to get on with it. Unfortunately gender inequity still flourishes and pretending it doesn’t does not make it go away. Nationally, there remains an 18 per cent pay gap (around $283 a week) between men and women, a gap that has remained much the same over the past two decades.
We know that women are just as likely as men to graduate with higher degrees but immediately at graduation, there is a 3.4 per cent pay gap which widens to a 9.3 per cent gap within three years.
What is clear is that gender inequities are so much part of our everyday experience that we accept them as the norm, and thus fail to challenge them.
Women in higher education are more likely to be casual workers than men. At UNE in 2015 there were 88 academic casual women, but within a year that number had increased to 396 (compared to an increase in men from 48 to 219). Casual female professional staff numbers increased from 68 in 2015 to 289 (men increased from 54 to 243). Compare changes in gender ratios in the senior executive levels at UNE: in 2015 the ratio was 70 men:26 women (37 per cent women) and in 2016 it became 37:7 (18.9 per cent women).
Along with inequities in employment, there remain major concerns about gendered violence in the workplace. A recent study identified 64 per cent of women reported they had been bullied, harassed or were targets of violence, 60 per cent reported they felt unsafe, uncomfortable or at risk in the workplace and 19 per cent left their employment.
The consequences of this are many. Women have 2.3 times more mental disorder injuries in the workplace than men, with one in three claims specifically linked to harassment/bullying (for men the ratio is one in five). Women are more likely to be socially isolated and more likely to resign. This leads to lower retention rates, reduced morale and reputational damage for the employer.
This climate of gendered inequity is played out in the student experience. Last year, the Human Rights Commission undertook a study on sexual assault and sexual harassment on university campuses across the country and released their report on August 1 this year.
The survey included over 30,000 students at all Australia’s 39 universities. Half reported they were harassed at least once last year and 6.9 per cent were sexually assaulted. Women were twice as likely to be harassed and three times more likely to be assaulted than men. The majority of these students did not formally report their experience, perhaps because only 4 per cent thought their university was providing adequate reporting protocols and support in cases of sexual assault.
What is clear is that gender inequities are so much part of our everyday experience that we accept them as the norm, and thus fail to challenge them. When that is the case in our higher education sector (the very sector one might expect advanced levels of critical thinking and understandings of social justice), then I suspect we are in trouble as a nation.