Forum discusses Howard's attacks on women

By Kamala Emanuel

NEWCASTLE — A panel consisting of a high school activist, a doctor working in reproductive health and a trade unionist who attended last year's Beijing Conference on Women addressed a forum on the impact on women of Howard's cuts, held here on August 25.

Cheryl Walsh, a year 12 student, outlined the impact of cuts to Austudy on high school students, as well as the disincentive to further education and training that education cuts, increases to HECS and decreases to apprentices' wages would produce. She noted that these would disproportionately affect women, who are already more likely than men to have difficulty repaying their HECS debts because of lower average incomes.

Dr Kamala Emanuel noted that attacks on reproductive choice (with the restrictions placed on the use of RU486 and threatened removal of the Medicare rebate for abortion), combined with elimination of funding for community-based child-care, should be understood as part of the government's agenda to return women to compulsory motherhood and unpaid labour in the home.

Janet McLean from the NSW Teachers Federation described the impact on women of education cuts and the industrial relations legislation. She said that cuts to apprentices' wages would exacerbate the sex segregation of the work force, as women, already having difficulty entering non-traditional areas, would have even less incentive to enter trades. Removing equal opportunity provisions to the arena of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission would act as a further barrier to women's equal participation.

Forum participants focused on strategies for fighting back, recognising the need to counter the ideological barrage justifying the changes in economic "rationalist" terms, and to let other women know about the changes, as a first step toward rebuilding a campaigning women's movement.

From GLW issue 246