The worth of a girl
Women have come to expect rougher then usual handling from a sexist judiciary and legal system. The recent outrage over (in)Justice Bollen's comments on what constitutes "sufficient battering" to provoke self-defence raises questions about the legal system's ability to give women a fair deal.
But it is not only in the area of domestic violence and rape that women are discriminated against. Women have fought the law to be regarded as equals at work, at leisure and in the home but the law has usually won. Now yet another young Australian woman has discovered, to her cost, the depth of sexism in the judiciary.
At 16, Angela Footner was learning the ropes of the family plumbing business with the intention of taking over her mother's managerial role sometime in the future. But in 1986 her utility was hit by a truck and she suffered injuries resulting in brain damage and the loss of her right leg. Last year she was awarded $500,000 for future loss of income by judge in the South Australian Supreme Court who ruled that Footner's injuries had made her permanently unemployable.
In April this year, however, the truck driver appealed. In his decision on the appeal Justice Duggan declared that, although the business had expanded considerably it now had to provide for Angela Footner's three brothers (all plumbers) who "may well marry" and it "cannot be said with any degree of confidence that [Ms Footner] would have inherited her mother's role in the company". In the result, Footner received a $150,000 cut in her compensation for loss of future work.
Angela Footner is just one example of the way in which women are systematically discriminated against at work in our society. Not only are we denied the same compensation through the legal system, but our work isn't given the same value in society at large. Women are usually the last hired and the first fired. Women are usually left waiting on the bottom rung of the ladder as men climb over and above us. We are seven years away from the 21st Century and in Australia women still earn only 66.5 cents to the male dollar. When sexism permeates society's attitude to women and work it's no wonder the legal system gets away with it.
With his ruling in the Footner case, Justice Duggan lines up with all the other dinosaurs of the legal system who refuse to recognise a woman's right to equal treatment. In the words of Angela Footner: "They would have made a different decision if I were a man."
By Zanny Begg