Story, Drawing and Photograph by Sandshoe

Let’s have a bit of a look at the status of women in Australia.

As of the 2008 Census 50.3% of the population was female.  In all states except West Australia and the Northern Territory there were more women than men. Home in on the single and ageing population, as if the 54.5% of Australia’s singles who were counted as females does not have a passle of work enough to accomplish to maintain that household…over the age of 65 there were 2.4 women for every single person male household.

Women will experience more resentment than they do now not less and neglect as they age. (I didn’t say men are or aren’t/don’t… whatever! This article, putting it simply, is not about men!)

My instinct rang an alert in regard of a statistic referencing education…that while women marginally outnumbered men at all qualification levels, they did not for Certificates III or IV and Post-Graduate qualifications. The difference between the numbers of women and men attaining Certificates III or IV is so large in favour of the male gender I beg that discrimination is the reason.

The deficit in this particular for women is significant, importantly because of National Training Authority imposed and legislated standards, considering the status of women’s employment in positions that exclude applicants who have not attained Certificates III or IV.  Educators at certain levels must have those.

Discrimination ought to turn victims into beggars. Instead I posit …and don’t waste time in your head on the sidelines, anybody, giving yourself dry rot that you store up and remember for years about the way I write or words I employ …  Australian women are captives of a host of cultural reasons why they will neither beg or expect men to organise to compensate women for the insidious position women occupy, however well-educated otherwise women are.

Women are among the worst offenders who harangue and bully women…who cheat, lie, steal and thieve from women (so we understand this isn’t intended to place you at the centre of the evil empire, men).

The permutations and combinations that make up men who identify as male and women who identify themselves comfortably as female is so complex, too, can we possibly pole vault the rubbish about what women and men are best suited for at any one moment or other? Equally get over citing ourselves as not like everyone else in this important regard?

I feel very sorry, but we are locked in it (together) with all its consequences.

Females are so few who undertake Engineering compared with men it is no surprise to me female engineers are paid more than men (as are female earth sciences graduates … and, curiously, social work graduates where there is no deficit in the numbers compared with men). Yet twice as many women as men completed Society and Culture courses and three times as many completed Health and Education courses. Some might suggest the under-representation of women in Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s Cabinet looks distinctly discriminatory viewed alongside this insight.

Surely the principle is easily understood that a government needs a hefty complement of participants who understand the fiscal and education system in the context of society and culture. Who it works for is essential knowledge. Speaking from the collective viewpoint called social, societal or society depending on which language tool someone uses to present or talk about this stuff,  not  for our wives, daughters and our sisters is as good as remaindered knowledge for all the insight that is shone on what this is doing to our present and future. Particularly regarding how this affects social discourse.

85% of male graduates from Bachelor degree courses and 85% of female graduates were employed at the time of the survey…however women with post graduate qualifications were most likely to be only available for part time or casual work and not seeking full-time employment. One reason will continue to be the abominable behaviour a woman may be subject to in any societal environment in which men are promoted over women on the sole basis of prejudice against women. The discrepancy is considerable however comparing male and female ordinary graduates and more significant again comparing Graduate Diploma and Certificate Level graduands. The second of those statistics is disturbing viewed in the light as it is that the overall number of women accomplishing Certificate III/IV courses is so far behind the sheer numbers of  men.

Apprenticeship and traineeship numbers tell a story of blatant prejudice (I am not saying who is demonstrating prejudice in this reference or either in what direction!)

Women made up 33% of  apprentices and trainees in 2007 (telling it like it factually was). More than 61% of all apprentices and trainees were male in trades persons and related workers occupations and 16.5% were women. Women made up more than twice the number of men in Intermediate clerical, sales and service groups. Women made up just over 13% of Intermediate production and transport workers in 2007.

The concept of discrimination based on gender (this is me talking now and not a statistician; neither the statistician) will not mean a thing to anybody who hasn’t got the swing. The size of the differences between these categories is a wrecking ball. A society in which an economic landscape is differentiated so distinctly by differences in gender has a workplace communication problem. The problem in domestic environments goes without saying when we know next to nothing about the others’ work places.

No?

Funny are the naysayers. They cause me to remember being singled out for consultation that because I was “a doctor’s wife” I would know such-and-such about a medical condition. Even my reputation won for being a femme who holds strong viewpoints backed by some knowledge was discriminated against ie took on the chin a lesser status purely on the basis of my marriage and gender. Forget about my qualifications and status in society and culture. Do a mob if they thought about it honestly suppose that a non-medical man (say, a plumber) married to a female medical practitioner would be swept up at a party and manipulated ostensibly to account for their specific knowledge about medical practice?

No because our societal consequences do not run on songlines of knowledge and appreciation of human need and comfort, but on what societal tendency is in vogue or entrenched. We accept until we are challenged…and even after…things we believe on the basis of nothing but systemic manipulation and discrimination according to race, colour, culture, status and creed. Add gender.

People like to get a leg over others and get as much as others if not more of the social pie.

There is not enough of everybody (speaking statistically) employed in enough of the same or similar environments to practically disseminate information and educate each other regards what’s going on. No society needs the discrimination and penury women are subject to, but it sure as hell does not need the emotional and cultural deprivation Australia is suffering as result of the absence of a common language and roadmap based on an understanding of gender, of how to choose the tools needed for each common task and allocate basic resources.

Leaving it to hit and miss or ‘Strike!’ from the sidelines and side-lined is an abysmal method of governance. If it is not clear and if we cannot take for granted there are many shades of love and many descriptive differences between men and women … and proscriptive…and that we have to understand this language (Gender) and accept dialogue about it and its fallacies, we cannot heal the consequences of this loss and waste of the talent of both men and women that is affecting our country and economy so badly. Ask women if you have not already ….who try to tell you and you and you … how it makes them feel. Refer to your brothers, husbands and sons who are turned on to issues of gender discrimination and its saddest consequences. Think about how you feel challenged.

Who am I addressing? All of us. Does anyone honestly think I am proposing myself at a centre of a universe after the breadth of experience I have clearly had? Sitting on a sideline, come out and reveal yourself as gender challenged, but willing to concede the waste of time you and you and you apportion argument about it; argument particularly that it doesn’t happen in our place of residence, workplace and affect our very own children who are now independent and having their children.

Look at the government we’ve got.  The satirical line of The Year Of Three sung by The Axis of Awesome at the end of the Australian Broadcasting Commission’s programme last night, Q & A, lays it on as thick as a layer of nothing but spreadable butter in reference to gender and the current Prime Minister: [he] put a whole woman in his Cabinet and lots of other splendid shit. SEE LINK: http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s3878650.htm

I may write some more if anybody shows interest that I do in reference to gender. How I came to this week was in light of current circumstance and looking out some .pdf files I saved down a while back. I cannot see from where I derived them individually . Nevertheless their contents are displayed on this website as follows:

http://www.dss.gov.au/our-responsibilities/women/publications-articles/general/women-in-australia/women-in-australia-2009?HTML