Category: Workforce Discrimination

After Matt Canavan’s bizarre manosphere comments, he should check his own algorithm | SMH

When asked this week about the dangers of “manosphere” content being served up online to our boys, Nationals leader Matt Canavan started off well.

“We’ve got to have a deep hard look at why young boys are attracted to this stuff online,” he said. “It is terrible. It is toxic.”

But then he veered off into a verbal internet rabbit-hole. He wound up sounding like he’d been trawling the comments sections of the very social media accounts being scrutinised.

“But the reason … a big reason,” he continued, “is they’re sick and tired of getting lectures on how bad men are at school … They’re sick and tired of the feminisation of our curriculum and the lack of direction and leadership they’re given. Maybe we should look at getting more male teachers.”

Perhaps Canavan needs to check his own social media algorithm.

[A] fundamental principle of the manosphere is that society has been “feminised” to the point where it is hostile to men, and that gender equality has come at the expense of men’s rights.

In the manosphere, women and feminism are to blame for the problems of men and boys. And the concept of personal responsibility, once seen as a cornerstone of masculine identity, is traded away for a victim agenda where men complain they are passed over and demonised for the crime of being male.

“Young boys need structure, discipline and rules,” Canavan said. “It’s gone away from our school system. Problems are not solved by talking, boys need boundaries.”

Here, Canavan risked saying something sensible – because research suggests he is right on this point. There was even a Senate inquiry into classroom disruption in 2024.

A study published this week, by the Centre for Independent Studies, shows that misbehaviour in Australian classrooms is at “crisis” levels.

The centre’s director of education research, Blaise Joseph, surveyed a nationally representative cohort of 400 teachers about the extent of misbehaviour they face. He found that on average, teachers lost nine minutes in every 30 to student misbehaviour, which was defined as anything that disrupted learning, no matter how low level.

Female teachers were more likely to lose teaching time to student disruption, and they were twice as likely to report that it was having a significant impact on their wellbeing and health.

While it was not possible to make a direct link, Joseph said that “there is lots of anecdotal evidence in recent years that female teachers are especially bearing the brunt of some misogynistic conduct from students”.

Source: After Matt Canavan’s bizarre manosphere comments, he should check his own algorithm

‘We are not in a safe place’: women reveal being abused while producing the food Australians eat | The Conversation

New research interviewing women involved with the federal government’s Pacific Labour Mobility Scheme shows why it needs urgent reform to stop worker exploitation.

Migrants who enter Australia through the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) scheme, produce much of the fresh food Australians buy from the supermarket.

There are more than 32,000 migrant workers currently in Australia linked to the scheme.

Under the scheme, migrant workers are tied to their employer, meaning their legal right to stay in the country depends on whether their boss is happy with them.

This serious power imbalance can undermine the safety and wellbeing of migrants.

There’s been reporting that migrant workers employed in food systems are systematically exploited, but they often don’t feel safe to report mistreatment.

While migrant men and women linked to the scheme face exploitation, women also experience serious violations of their sexual and reproductive rights.

Source: ‘We are not in a safe place’: women reveal being abused while producing the food Australians eat

Does the force fear feminists? | Unherd | Julie Bindel

In February, Detective Constable Rachel Fletcher helped secure the conviction of the predatory pedophile Ross Jackson, who was jailed for 23 years for a catalog of child sexual abuse offenses. What no one outside court that day knew was that Fletcher had already been removed from public-facing duties as she was herself under investigation for gross misconduct. Northumbria police had nevertheless asked her to return to the case — “through gritted teeth”, in her telling — because without her the prosecution risked collapsing.

Six months later, she was sacked. “I’m now on the barred list alongside Wayne Couzens and multiple rapist David Carrick,” she tells me.

Her crimes, though, were of a rather different order: remarks deemed sexist and transphobic. Colleagues alleged that she repeatedly referred to men in derogatory terms, regularly stating “I hate men”, “fucking men”, and on one occasion, “all rapists are men”. She also faced complaints for comments about transgender people. The allegations were upheld, and the career of a detective who spent 24 years investigating violence against women and children was summarily terminated.

Source: Does the force fear feminists?

After a decade leading the ACTU, what is the legacy of Sally McManus and Michele O’Neil? | The Conversation

Announcing their departures, Australian Council of Trade Union (ACTU) Secretary Sally McManus said she will step down first, at the end of August. President Michele O’Neil will stay on for a few months longer to help with the transition to a “new generation”.

Starting in 2017 and 2018 respectively, McManus and O’Neil were the longest serving ACTU leaders in more than half a century, and the first all-female leadership team. They worked closely with the Albanese government since its election in 2022 to bring in a suite of workplace law changes, from the right to disconnect from work to criminalising wage theft.

For most of the ACTU’s 99-year history, Australian men were more likely to be union members.

But in 2012 – just a few years before McManus and O’Neil took over – that changed. As of 2024, there were more women union members (around 853,000) than men (around 726,000). The Australian Nursing and Midwifery federation is the country’s biggest union today, representing around 356,000 nurses, midwives and care workers.

The single biggest challenge to McManus and O’Neil’s leadership over the years came from a powerful male-dominated union, the Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees Union (CFMEU). In 2024, after mounting allegations of criminals infiltrating the union, the ACTU suspended the CFMEU’s membership.

The ACTU leaders faced criticism from both supporters and opponents of the CFMEU over that decision – and whether they should have acted sooner. It’s hard to say from the outside whether that’s true.

But that decision did come at a personal cost, with McManus revealing in 2024 she’d had to change her routine and live in different places due to security concerns.

In 2016, before McManus or O’Neil had taken over the ACTU leadership, 15.7% of Australian workers were union members, down from 21.7% just a decade earlier.

By 2024 – the last official count we have – 13.1% of workers were union members. That was a slight rise compared to 2022, when it hit a record low 12.5%.

A lot of the ACTU’s work under McManus and O’Neil has been on bringing in legislation to establish workplace rights, then getting those rights enforced, such as by the Fair Work Commission, the Fair Work Ombudsman or the courts.

The ACTU has helped push for a number of changes to improve the position of women in the workplace. These changes have helped to close the gender pay gap and to bring new workplace rights to women workers, such as the right to request flexible work and dispute fixed-term contracts.

McManus and O’Neil can retire knowing that they did a good job through a difficult decade – but there is still more to be done by their successors.

Source: After a decade leading the ACTU, what is the legacy of Sally McManus and Michele O’Neil?

Female graduates are earning less than their male peers. What might be causing the gap? | The Conversation

The survey, run by the Australian National University’s Social Research Centre, looks at the job outcomes and starting salaries of fresh graduates four to six months after finishing their studies.

Results showed newly minted female undergraduates are starting their professional careers on a median full-time annual salary of $75,300, compared with their male colleagues on $79,000.

That’s a 4.7% gap, even before the impacts of family formation and caregiving have kicked in.

On top of this, women even start on lower salaries than their male counterparts in some female-concentrated industries such as nursing and teaching.

The gender pay gap among new university graduates is narrower than Australia’s workforce-wide gender pay gap of 11.5%. However, the workforce-wide gap has generally been shrinking over the past ten years. In contrast, the gender gap in graduates’ starting salaries shows no overall improvement, averaging 3.9% over the past decade.

This disparity can’t be blamed on women working part-time, as these comparisons are based on full-time salaries.

So can it be explained by gender differences in subject choices, with women choosing fields of study that lead to lower-paying professions?

It’s a fair question, given 2021 research shows hourly wage rates in female-concentrated occupations are 9.9% lower than in male-concentrated ones.

But the data suggest that, no, subject choice can’t completely explain the gap either.

Some within-field gaps reach as high as 8.6%, such as architecture and built environment. Law and paralegal studies recorded a gap of 7.2%, followed by science and mathematics with 6.8%.

The fields where women start on a higher financial footing than their male peers are generally lower-paid to begin with, such as communications and creative arts.

Psychology is the exception where women begin their careers on a median salary that exceeds men’s and is not among the lowest-paid.

All employers in Australia with 100 or more staff are legally required to report their gender pay gaps to WGEA. The agency encourages organisations to conduct a like-for-like analysis to look for differentials between staff at comparative levels.

This can include a comparison of the pay and project opportunities of men and women starting out at graduate level. This would help ensure newly graduated women step into the workforce on an equal footing to their male peers.

Source: Female graduates are earning less than their male peers. What might be causing the gap?

Tackling medical misogyny in Australian healthcare | SMH

The federal government has not yet released the findings of the audit that was completed last year of more than 8000 curriculums at 123 institutions responsible for educating every accredited healthcare and allied health practitioner. The Health Department said the report was undergoing quality assurance checks, which have taken longer than expected to complete.

But Professor Bronwyn Graham, who led the audit, said the key issue was that too often students were not being told that the course content – presented as gender-neutral – was based on evidence developed using males.

“Male subjects, male presentations, risk factors and responses”, said Graham, director of the Centre for Sex and Gender Equity in Health and Medicine. “The assumption that students take away is this is just what we do for all patients.”

As a result, women’s pain is much more likely to be dismissed or denied, while men are more likely to be believed, Graham said.

Doctor and medical philosophy researcher Lea Merone has similar concerns. Her 2024 analysis of six textbooks recommended by Australian medical schools found all implied women and men had the same symptoms for the analysed diseases.

To fix the curriculums, Australia’s gold standard clinical guidelines – which cover everything from anaesthesia to lung cancer – needed updating, Graham said.

Meanwhile, work was finally under way to develop pelvic pain management guidelines, redressing a glaring oversight considering chronic pelvic pain affects up to one in four Australian women.

The decades-old mnemonics doctors and nurses were once taught to remember the 12 cranial nerves

Doctors:“Oh Oh Oh To Touch And Feel Virgin Girl’s Vagina And Hymen”

Nurses:“Oh Oh Oh To Touch And Feel Very Good Velvet, Ah Heaven”

Source: Tackling medical misogyny in Australian healthcare

Closing the gender leadership gap in law – Law Society Journal

Over the past two decades, the legal profession has undergone significant feminisation. In 2014, women entered the profession in greater numbers than men for the first time, and by 2018, women constituted the majority of practitioners nationally. Women now consistently outnumber men in the legal profession in all states and territories across Australia.

Yet despite this dramatic shift, the gender balance at partnership tables and in the higher echelons of the profession tells a very different story – one that shows true equality is yet to be achieved.

A new report published by the International Bar Association reveals that while women account for 58 per cent of Australian lawyers, their representation drops to 45 per cent in senior positions. In large law firms, just 42 per cent of partners are women. At the bar, the leadership gap is most pronounced, with women comprising less than one-third of barristers nationally and just 16 per cent of senior counsel.

Although the proportion of women in senior positions has risen over time, this shift is not reflective of the overall number of women in law. Without meaningful structural changes, the legal profession risks entrenching these gender disparities and undermining the depth of its talent pool.

Source: Closing the gender leadership gap in law – Law Society Journal

Why is it misogynistic to call a woman a ‘witch’? | The Conversation

Over recent weeks, the slogan “ditch the witch” has been featured alongside AI-generated photos of Victorian premier Jacinta Allan. She’s depicted in a dusty and distressed witch’s hat, a fake wart on her chin, on billboards and trucks around Melbourne in the lead up to the state election this November.

Instead of critiquing her policies or governance, the campaign attacked her gender. The brothel owner who partly funded the campaign says the slogan is not sexist.

It’s not the first time the phrase has been used that way. In 2011, then-opposition leader Tony Abbott stood before protest placards that read “ditch the witch”, targeted on that occasion toward our first woman prime minister, Julia Gillard.

In fact, there is a long sexist history of labelling women in power as witches.

So, why is it misogynistic to call a powerful woman a “witch”?

Tony Abbott (left) attends an anti carbon tax rally in 2011, standing near a placard that says 'ditch the witch'.
In 2011, then-opposition leader Tony Abbott stood before anti-Gillard placards that read ‘ditch the witch’. AAP Image/Alan Porritt

Witchy women weren’t always bad.

In early European medieval stories, for instance, the magical woman Morgan Le Fay is described as a healer and scientist. Then, starting around the 12th century she is recast as a vindictive, evil character.

From the early 15th century on, it became a very derisive way to refer to women. Texts like German friar Heinrich Kramer’s misogynistic witch-hunting manual Malleus Maleficarum (1486), among others, were highly influential in shaping the negative image of the witch.

Threatening the patriarchy by displaying ambition or failing to conform to societal gender norms – such as the expectation to be “beautiful”, to bear children and to be a “good wife” – began to be taken as evidence of witchcraft. Think of the infamous Salem witch trials of the 1690s in America, where Bridget Bishop, an elderly, poor and argumentative widow and midwife – all of which were taken as evidence of her being a witch – was the first to be executed.

Many women were violently killed as a result.

Witch-hunts have since shifted from the literal to the metaphorical.

Contemporary witch-hunts demonise women who hold positions of power or possess similar traits to the women deemed witches centuries ago.

Feminist scholars note how frequently women who rise in male-dominated institutions are marked as “bad women” who can potentially threaten the patriarchy, making them targets for misogyny.

From the 20th century, witches have been embraced and reclaimed by some feminists who deconstructed the negative stereotypes. They have reinterpreted the witch as a feminist icon of women’s resistance.

Source: Why is it misogynistic to call a woman a ‘witch’?

Highly sensitive Australian court data accessed by foreign entity based in India – ABC News

Highly sensitive Australian court files have been accessed offshore in breach of the privacy act and Commonwealth contractual obligations, an ABC investigation has revealed, raising concerns of a national security risk.

Workers raised concerns with managers at VIQ Solutions — the company responsible for the data breach — months ago and were told they were “not relevant” and were directed to stop spreading “rumours” about the issue.

The transcription of court cases in most jurisdictions in Australia is done by VIQ Solutions, which is based in Canada and employs transcribers in Australia.

An ABC investigation found VIQ Solutions subcontracted work to e24 Technologies — a company based in Chennai, India that specialises in automated voice-to-text technology — in breach of its Commonwealth contract, and without notifying the courts.

Internal VIQ documents, sighted by the ABC, showed thousands of court files were accessed by staff at e24 Technologies with Indian email addresses.

VIQ staff based in Australia told the ABC that e24 staff were accessing court files outside of Australian business hours and completing transcripts at a speed that was not possible for a human. They claimed the transcripts completed by e24 contained significant errors, which then fell to VIQ staff to correct.

“Incredibly sensitive evidence from organisations like ASIO, the Australian Federal Police, is given in private court because it could be addressing links to international criminal organisations, potential foreign interference in the country,” he said.

He said this information in the wrong hands could do “incredible damage”.

The ABC understands that since July last year, at least a dozen senior VIQ staff were either made redundant or quit, along with staff who belonged to the Quality and Assurance team.

Senator Shoebridge said the revelations that Australian court data had been accessed offshore without the knowledge of the court were grounds for an independent audit and the urgent termination of the contract with VIQ.

“I have had multiple whistleblowers, not one, not two, multiple whistleblowers contacting my office and each time we raise this in public, we get more whistleblowers coming forward and showing very credible evidence.

Source: Highly sensitive Australian court data accessed by foreign entity based in India – ABC News

Australia’s aged care crisis is coming for every woman | Women’s Agenda

Australia needs a new aged care home to open every three days. We’re not even close. And when the beds run out, daughters will.

This week, Health Minister Mark Butler stood at the National Press Club to announce a landmark NDIS reset. Tucked inside it, almost as an afterthought, was a $3 billion aged care investment and a pledge to support 5,000 extra beds a year. It sounds like action. Here’s the problem: we need 10,000. Every year. For the next twenty years.

We are not building our way out of this. And when the system buckles, as it already is, the weight will fall, as it always does, on women.

Hospitals have people waiting up to 200 days for a residential bed that doesn’t exist. Occupancy across the sector has surged. And we have been talking about the baby boomers arriving as though they are still on their way. The first one turns 80 this year. They’re here.

Most of the people living in aged care are women. Most of the workforce caring for them are women.

When there aren’t enough beds, those women don’t get a break. They become the system. Unpaid female labour, nationalised by default.

Age 58 is the peak age for unpaid caregiving in Australia. It is also the peak of most senior careers. When the collision hits, something has to give. It is rarely the job that absorbs the impact.

Sixty-six percent of working carers reduce their hours. Thirty-eight percent step out of paid work temporarily or permanently. Forty-five percent report missing promotions or career opportunities because of caring responsibilities. These numbers exist right now, before the bed shortage reaches crisis point. Before the baby boomers arrive in volume. Before the system runs out of room entirely.

Source: Australia’s aged care crisis is coming for every woman