The equality principle and the sexual division of labour

Australia has one of the highest degrees of sex segregation in the workforce of any advanced OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) country (OECD, 1980).¹ Predominantly female occupations are characterised by poor conditions and low pay (Power, 1975; Kramar, 1983; Working Women's Charter, 1984). Despite the currency of the rhetoric of sexual equality, however, such phenomena, which are characteristic of the sexual division of labour, have been successfully immunised against formal challenge.Although sex-segregated occupations are not expressly excluded from Australian anti-discrimination legislation, the complaint-based model does contain insuperable hurdles for most women in respect to both substance and procedure. Affirmative action measures, as presently conceived, are also unable to deal with this manifestation of structural discrimination.The fact that seemingly egalitarian measures are designed to effect minimal change is further illustrated when we look to wage-setting. Although the concept of equal pay for work of equal value has been accepted in Australia, it has had little practical effect on predominantly female occupations in the male-dominated arbitration arena.As the ideology of patriarchy operates in multifarious ways to prevent focus on the fundamental inequalities in women's working conditions, law reform, perforce, demonstrates its limited capacity for change. However, rather than jettison anti-discrimination and equal pay measures altogether, such mechanisms can be used to publicise the issues and to encourage women to assert themselves collectively.     

Institutional obstacles to equality between the sexes

After briefly mentioning the basic characteristics of the constitutional and legislative framework in which the people participate, I try to show how the legal system in Switzerland is biased in favour of men.Although since June 1981 the Constitution has guaranteed equal rights to men and women, women suffer significant discrimination. That discrimination is unchallengeable in court and difficult to overcome through legislative change, since the Swiss parliament is 90 per cent male. The institutional balance of power (between parliament, government, the courts and the people) means that women are excluded from the implementation of equality although they have a legal right to it. The refusal of the Federal Court to control the constitutionality of federal laws (which contain the worst discrimination) coupled with a restrictive interpretation of equality where it concerns women, makes it clear that our right to equality will remain ‘paper rights’ only for years to come.The constitutional amendment on equality of rights between women and men shows the myth of neutrality and objectivity of the legal system, and the necessity of referring to the notion of women as a group, and no longer as isolated individuals as classical constitutional jurisprudence teaches, for that is the only way to show the sex-based discrimination hurting women as women, and not as individuals at random.In our fight for equality we are faced with the dispersion of women in various groups according to class, religion, language, region, profession and so on and this means we cannot rely on a uniform conception of equality and of the means of achieving it, but must develop a new meaning of equality, going further than the dichotomy of ‘public man, private woman’, and fighting against male privilege, to achieve a better democracy.     

Social work,the family and women's equality in post-war Australia

Social work as a profession supported the conservative norms of the post-war era in Australia regarding family life and women's roles, which emphasised the family responsibilities of women rather than their ongoing struggle for equality in public life and employment. The suggested reasons for the conservatism of social work include its emergence as a female caring profession, its struggle for credibility, the content of its training curriculum, the socio-economic characteristics of its members, the kinds of family-related employment in which they were engaged, and particularly the influence of the successful male minority within its membership. Women social workers were more loyal to the values and perceived interests of their profession than to the equality of their sex.     

Book Review: Work,children and gender equality

The motivating concern behind this article is that women, in the diversity of their ages, life situations, cultural traditions of gender and actual sexual connections to men, are still marginalized by prevailing approaches to HIV and AIDS. Safe sexual practices for women, within social contexts and actual sexual relations with men, are not being approached in ways that engage women's (or their male partners') active involvement. Conventional heterosexual distinctions between women's and men's sexuality disables prevention processes. Categories and perspectives which prevail in ''interpreting'' the HIV/ AIDS epidemic, inhibitions and assumptions framing sexual safety information, and cultural narratives of gendered love/desire/sex, converge into two highly problematic outcomes: a dissociation of heterosexually-defined men who have sex with women from central responsibility for HIV prevention, and marginalization of women who have sex with men from concern about women's sexual safety.     

Mother,maiden and the marriage of death: Women writers and an ancient myth

Writing Women's Communities: The Politics and Poetics of Contemporary Multi‐Genre Anthologies, by Cynthia G. Franklin. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997.

For Women and the Nation: Funmilayo Ransome‐Kuti, by Cheryl Johnson‐Odim and Nina Emma Mba. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997.

Dangerous Territories: Struggles for Difference and Equality in Education, edited by Leslie G. Roman and Linda Eyre. New York: Routledge, 1997.

Gender And Material Culture: The Archaeology Of Religious Women, by Roberta Gilchrist. New York: Routledge, 1997.

Minding The Body: Women And Literature In The Middle Ages, 800–1500, by Monica Brzezinski Potkay and Regula Meyer Evitt. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1997.

Consuming Subjects: Women, Shopping, and Business in the Eighteenth Century, by Elizabedi Kowaleski‐Wallace. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.

Recreational Terror: Women and the Pleasures of Horror Film Viewing, by Isabel Cristina Pinedo. Albany: SUNY Press, 1997.

From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers, by Marina Warner. New York: The Noonday Press, Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1996.

English Sexualities, 1700–1800, by Tun Hitchcock. New York: Routledge, 1997.     

Narratives of progress: cooking and gender equality among Swedish men

Feminist food studies have repeatedly identified a dichotomy of ‘masculine’ self-oriented cooking as leisure and ‘feminine’ other and care-oriented foodwork (meal planning, grocery shopping, cooking and cleaning up after meals). However, recent research suggests that there is a great deal of variety and contradiction in men’s accounts of their cooking practices. For example, men may find cooking a tedious and stressful responsibility and foodwork a fatherly duty. This article draws on interviews with 31 Swedish men from 22 to 88 years of age, and explores stories about cooking and foodwork as part of their everyday lives and their life transitions and how these relate to broader notions of food and gender equality. The data illuminating the men’s stories can be synthesised into two narratives of progress: a narrative of progress in gender equality in Sweden, where men’s participation in household labour has become taken for granted, and a narrative of culinary progress among Swedish men in general and among some of the interviewed men themselves. We agree with previous scholars who have argued for a reconsideration of the simplistic picture of men’s cooking as only being for the self and for leisure. We further show how the men express foodwork as a self-evident responsibility, regardless of whether the men find it fun or not, and that a desirable masculinity is represented by a man whose cooking skills have progressed beyond the survival level and who is more gender equal than what are perceived to be less-progressive men from previous generations and foreign cultural backgrounds.     

A world apart. Swedish and Australian gender equality policy

This article focuses on the process of gender-equality policy in Sweden and Australia, from 1960 to 1990. It is suggested that the comparative gender analysis must be more susceptible for civil rights issues. A second argument is that the in-depth achievements of the Swedish gender equality policy and the relative weaknesses in other respects are better understood if Swedish gender policy is analysed from an institutional perspective. Finally, the analysis provides an institutional explanation of why it is problematic to establish and maintain policies that do not build on the dominant political tradition of the welfare state in question.     

A pregnant pause: federalism, equality and the maternity and parental leave debate in Canada

In Reference re E.I. the Supreme Court of Canada was asked to assess the constitutionality of the federally administered maternity and parental leave benefit regime. This social programme has been a key site of feminist struggle in Canada, with attention focused in recent years on whether the benefit, as delivered, was an equality-enhancing regime. This note examines the way in which the questions posed to the Supreme Court of Canada were framed in a manner that obscured the essential equality dimensions of the issue before the Court. It is argued, however, that, notwithstanding the relatively formal division of powers answer that the Court was called upon to give, the decision is a promisingly substantive reflection on the debate over the most effective means to recognize the care-giving labour of Canadian parents through the delivery of this benefit.     

Talking about gender equality: Swedish women's discourses on the home front

Housework is a useful arena for a study of the manufacturing of everyday femininity and masculinity. This article focuses on discourses and practices concerning housework and its equal or unequal distribution between husband and wife. It analyses how gender equality ideologies are met with or assimilated into everyday speech and understandings among Swedish women. Interview accounts from two women of different ages and class positions are analysed in detail, using a discursive approach of analysis. Their ways of relating to available discourses on gender equality and femininity are contrasted, and related to the feminist project of fifty‐fifty sharing of housework and traditional discourses of separate spheres for women and men.     

教育、社会分层与社会流动--以外来流动人口及其子女为例

教育与社会分层和社会流动有密切的联系。外来流动人口子女是城市未来稳定的重要力量和城市未来重要的人力资源来源。从边缘人角色的转变以及社会流动向上渠道的疏通等角度分析 ,外来流动人口子女受教育权力应受到重视。