Notes: Friday, August 13, 2010

Coalition health (abortion) policy: 'Guaranteed' continuation of Medicare funding for abortion, no other abortion law changes either

The last four paragraphs of the on-line version of an article by Ms Sue Dunlevy which appeared on page eight of yesterday's Sydney Daily Telegraph:

[The Hon. Peter] Dutton [M.P., Opposition health spokesman] gave a "guarantee" he would not move to ban Medicare funding of abortions if he became health minister after the election.

Mr Dutton and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott both voted in 2005 to ban the abortion pill RU486 and some women's groups are concerned about their conservative attitudes .

"We don't propose any change in relation to the abortion laws," he said.

"I can provide an assurance today we don't have any plans and I think Tony has been very clear about that." Dutton said.
[http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/election/gp-visit-to-cost-more/story-fn5zm695-1225904144025]

"Safe drinking is not a right"

Interesting opinion piece dealing with rights:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/safe-drinking-is-not-a-right/story-e6frg6ux-1225904115060

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of Sts. Hippolytus and Cassian, Martyrs, A.D. 2010

Ms Dunlevy on disparities in earnings by gender

http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/suedunlevy/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/time_for_women_to_be_treated_as_equals/

About this time last year Ms Sue Dunlevy, a columnist for the Sydney Daily Telegraph, was raging against disparities between men’s and women’s earnings (I use the more precise term “earnings” rather than Ms Dunlevy’s preferred term “wages” since, as far as I know, there is not a single industry in Australia in which men and women doing equal work don’t receive an equal wage), and it seems that Ms Dunlevy has maintained the rage, or at least the rage has returned in time for the annual “Equal Pay Day” which happens about this time each year, marking the end of the extra period of time women need to work in order to earn as much as men do, on average, during the financial year, which ends on June 30. Ms Dunlevy begins her article thus:

IF you needed another reason to hate bankers and insurers, this is it. The pay gap between men and women in those professions is 28 per cent - the highest in the nation and it’s still growing.

But unlike Ms Dunlevy I wish to be clear from the outset: women in this industry, as in most industries, earn less on average than their male counterparts because they work fewer hours on average than men do. A news report in The Sydney Morning Herald acknowledged this on Saturday (albeit tucked away two-thirds of the way into the article):

David Bell, chief executive of the Australian Bankers Association, said 61 per cent of staff in the finance industry were women, and the gender difference in earnings was ''a product of hours worked and skills''.

"The data shows that 26 per cent of females in the finance industry work part time compared with 4 per cent for males," he said.
[http://www.smh.com.au/national/women-pay-dearly-as-earnings-gap-widens-20090828-f2iy.html]

Nowhere in her opinion piece does Ms Dunlevy acknowledge this.

Shortly after her opening barrage on the banking and insurance industries, Ms Dunlevy moves onto another target:

The Fair Pay Commissioner Professor Ian Harper deserves to be at least a joint recipient of the 2009 pay inequality shame award.

His decision to deny workers on the minimum wage a pay rise this year is a huge setback for women workers.

That’s because more women than men rely on the minimum wage. The ACTU says almost a third of women earn less than the federal minimum wage and more than a quarter of women working in the private sector have their pay determined by awards, which are dependent on minimum wage decisions.

That compares to 16 per cent of men.

But what does Ms Dunlevy expect from Prof. Harper? Does she expect him to take into account the preponderance of woman in the ranks of the lowest paid when he sets the minimum wage? Because that would be outright sexism, wouldn’t it?

Ms Dunlevy goes on to examine the causes of the rise in earnings inequality. She gives one of them as follows:

Then there is the problem that female employment is concentrated in the services sector in childcare, nursing, teaching, jobs which are undervalued by our society and paid less.

Explain to me why a female hairdressing apprentice earns $80 a week less than a builder’s apprentice, even though they have similar skill sets.

Well, let’s see: because the difference between a good haircut and a bad haircut is, as they say, two weeks, whereas the difference between a well-constructed building and a badly-constructed building can be the difference between life and death? Because one can survive without a haircut, but one can’t survive without adequate shelter? Because the exertion and risk involved in trimming people’s hair in air-conditioned salons is considerably less than that which is involved in lugging heavy equipment around a hazardous building site? I liked some of the responses at Ms Dunlevy’s blog:

… I know a couple of apprentices in the building industry. I’m sure they will be happy to have a go at your hair. Frankly I don’t want the girl down at thelocal salon building my house for me either. […]
Sahara of Sydney (Reply)

Fri 21 Aug 09 (06:41am)

… Try this one: The Annual Compendium of Workers’ Compensation Statistics 2006-2007 report tells us that of 236 workplace fatalities, 50, or just over 21% of workplace fatalities occurred in the construction industry.

Secondly, construction workers do a great deal of their work exposed to the heat, cold and wind of the elements in an environment that is dirty and unpleasant. A stark contrast to the conditions enjoyed in the majority of the service sector.

I find it fascinating that feminists consider the danger and discomfort associated with working in the construction industry to have no value whatsoever. …
scott gilbert of Petersham (Reply)

Sat 22 Aug 09 (12:08am)

And as one of my commenters pointed out in the combox at a post of mine on this topic this time last year, Ms Dunlevy’s choice of a comparison between hairdressing apprentices and builders’ apprentices is arbitrary: mechanics’ apprentices, for instance, do earn about the same wage as an hairdressing apprentice.

Ms Dunlevy concludes with the following attempt at humour:

Meanwhile, there could be a way to turn this situation around. While we’re waiting for the end of pay inequality, women should use it to their advantage.

Think of things this way. If women are worth 28 per cent less than men, I’m off to the bank to demand a 28 per cent gender discount on my mortgage and insurance rates because of my sex. It seems only fair, doesn’t it?

But the failure of one market (which I’ll grant for the sake of letting Ms Dunlevy try out her intended punchline) doesn’t necessarily imply the failure of another market, so it’s a pretty lame joke.

Stay tuned for next year’s installment in Ms Dunlevy’s gender pay war, I suppose.

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Stephen, King, Confessor, A.D. 2009

Ms Dunlevy on a sinister Catholic conspiracy (!) to suppress women’s wages

http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,27574,25583107-5006009,00.html

I didn’t blog on this curious story last week because I thought that CathNews might post it, but since it hasn’t, here are some excerpts from an on-line version of the article by the Sydney Daily Telegraph’s Ms Sue Dunlevy:

Blokey unions blamed for women's poor pay

[The article’s Thursday, June 4, 2009 print-edition heading and subheading were “Union blokes block equality” and “Catholic views blamed over pay”, respectively]

MALE trade union leaders - many of whom are Catholic - are holding back female wages because of their conservative views on the role of women.

But the article provides no data on the respective religious affiliations of trade union leaders, so I question whether “many” male trade union leaders are Catholic. (And, as you’ll see, the contention that any trade union leaders are suppressing women’s wages relative to men is pretty poorly-founded.)

A submission to the House of Representatives pay equity inquiry claimed male trade union leaders believed in the primacy of the male wage earner and ignored women's claims for equal pay. The views are blamed for a 17 per cent pay gap between men and women.

Blamed by whom, you ask?

"Some trades unions, administered by mainly male officers, traded off women's claims for equal pay or maternity leave for wage increases when it came to the crunch in award negotiations," said the Women into Politics group [in its submission to Federal Parliament’s pay equity inquiry], which took particular aim at the NSW Teachers Federation.

But the reference to the N.S.W. Teachers Federation is odd, since it hardly has a reputation for Catholic sympathies or male chauvinism; indeed, it turns out that the objection was based on attitudes from over half a century ago! Later on, Ms Dunlevy says that

SDA national secretary Joe de Bruyn, who controls a powerful voting bloc at ALP conferences, is a Catholic who opposes abortion, stem-cell research and lesbians getting access to IVF. In 2002, he opposed a policy to increase a quota that put women in 30 per cent of winnable seats in the ALP.

But more than half the SDA's members are women and Mr de Bruyn rejected Ms [Joan] Bielski's view [that “even today some unions such as (the Shop Distributive and Allied Employees) are still paternalistic”].

"That obviously is nonsense, people in the retail industry get equal pay," he said.

Well, that pretty well refutes the notion that the S.D.A, of which I am a financial member, is guilty of some kind of wage injustice towards women, so it seems that Ms Bielski doesn’t really have a leg to stand on. And hence neither does Ms Dunlevy. What an odd little piece of journalism.

But upon reading the Women into Politics pay equity inquiry submission for myself, the plot thickened, as they say. The submission is available here, and in its six pages there is no mention of Catholics (and I used the word find function in order to make sure). Was this angle suggested by Ms Bielski, then, or is it the product of Ms Dunlevy’s own pre-occupations?

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Columba, Abbot, A.D. 2009

More on paid maternity leave

http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/suedunlevy/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/are_children_about_economics_or_love/

Rather less pleasing, though, was Ms Sue Dunlevy’s piece in the same paper last Friday. The article’s headline was ‘Are children about love or economics?’, yet Ms Dunlevy reported on paid maternity leave without seeming to recognise that it is her and those of her ilk who fail to realize that if children are about love then there should be no need for such paid leave. Furthermore, she failed to explain how new mothers can be considered to be owed, in justice, pay for discharging their maternal duties. I would love to see someone explain how, in Ms Elizabeth Broderick’s words, paid maternity leave can be considered a ‘basic human right’. The closest Ms Dunlevy comes to such an explanation is in the following parts:

Unions NSW says women need at least six months off work so they can breastfeed their baby to World Health Organisation standards.

Agreed. But why should the taxpayer pay for this? Covering this time off is the husband’s duty.

And the NSW Commissioner for Children and Young People Gillian Calvert says a parent should be paid to stay at home with the child for the first two years or the baby’s brain won’t develop properly.

I agree that the mother should stay home with her child for (at least) the first two years. But there is a step missing in the logical sequence from ‘mothers should have time off’ to ‘taxpayers should pay mothers to take this time off’.

fathers as well as mothers need paid leave to make a contribution to their child’s upbringing.

Again, I agree that mothers should be with their children. That taxpayers should pay for this has not been demonstrated. As for fathers, they contribute to their children’s upbringing by working a reasonable number of hours per week.

[Families Minister Ms Jenny Macklin] sees it as a way of honouring children, of giving back to parents some time to do the things that really matter in life _ [sic] bond with their children.

Please Ms Macklin, explain to me why it is other taxpayers who should pay for this.

Economists might consider such practices economically sinful but every parent knows the rewards of building a strong relationship with a child takes longer than 14 weeks and is much more valuable to society than the tax a parent would be paying if he/she was at work.

Agreed. But the same step in the same logical sequence is still missing.

And at the risk of giving the impression that I have a one-track mind, I could not help but transpose into the context of abortion some of the statements in the report:

If we settle for a minimalist scheme we’ll be short selling our daughters and our granddaughters.

Killing 50 000 of them in utero each year does much worse than this.

[Families Minister Ms Jenny Macklin] sees it as a way of honouring children

An even better way of ‘honouring children’ would be to shut down the abortion industry.

Reginaldvs Cantvar

‘Illogical lunacy’

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,24248306-5007133,00.html

I suppose I should have predicted that Ms Sue Dunlevy would write what amounts to a rebuttal of Wednesday’s unsurprising survey findings. This woman belongs to what I have called the pearl-necklace-wearing wing of feminism, whose members live in the parallel universe of the upper echelons of business, law, civil service and the media and are completely isolated from working mothers in nightfill or on checkouts. With the following statement, that

lower female wages force many families to assume the traditional roles of having a male breadwinner and female carer rather than equally sharing the burden of paid and unpaid work.

Ms Dunlevy agues that the preference of most working mothers to stay home is a result of the relatively low earnings of women relative to men. But in fact this is a reversal of the true causality and it ignores the fact that in Australia today, to the best of my knowledge, there is no occupation with a lower hourly rate or annual salary for women relative to men. Given this, it is strange to hear it said that

the pay rates of a female-dominated area like hairdressing and a male area like the building trades highlight the pay divide.

No, they do not. This is just a classic case of comparing apples with oranges; the proper comparison would be the hourly rate in either industry for a woman and for a man. But this would only illustrate the pay equity of the sexes.

This article was also the subject of a brief, sarcastic editorial entitled ‘Illogical lunacy’:
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,24247309-5001030,00.html

But the only illogic here is in Ms Dunlevy’s arguments.

Reginaldvs Cantvar