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1. Because we are still told that what we look like is more
important than what we think.
From a very young age, women are taught to judge their own worth
by whether they measure up to the supermodels promoted by the
multi-billion-dollar cosmetics and fashion industries. These
industries profit from undermining the confidence and self-esteem
of women. More and more advertisements are using women's bodies
to sell products.
Anorexia nervosa affects 1 to 5% of women. Bulimia affects a
similar number, but among tertiary students it's as many as one
in six. More than 90% of cases are adolescent girls or young
women.
The women's movement since the 1970s has done a lot to expose the
corporations that profit from sexism. It has asserted that women
can, through collective action and struggle, be strong and
confident in themselves, and free from the misery and
obsessiveness of the endless pursuit of capitalist society's
definition of beauty.
2. Because access to abortion is under attack.
Access to safe, legal abortion is part of women's fundamental
right to have control over our own bodies. Yet abortion remains
on the Criminal Code in all states, and everywhere the
anti-choice crusaders are on the offensive.
In Western Australia last year, two doctors were charged with
performing an abortion, sparking a strong public campaign to
defend abortion rights. The laws were modified, but restrictions
remain and evidence has begun to accumulate in the six months
since the legislation was introduced that fewer women under 16
years of age are accessing abortions.
In May this year, the ACT government will introduce new
restrictions on women's access to abortion, spearheaded by
right-wing MP Paul Osborne. Women will be forced to view
photographs of foetuses at successive stages of development to
help them decide whether they still want an abortion. Women who
do choose abortion are often subjected to harassment and
intimidation by the so-called Right to Life, who picket abortion
clinics.
It's time to re-ignite a strong public campaign to defend and
extend women's right to access abortion, free from state
restrictions and moral coercion.
3. Because women continue to face sexist violence every day.
Sexual violence and sexual harassment is endemic in today's
society. One in three women are likely to be raped at some time
during their lives. One in four women will be sexually assaulted
before they reach 18 years of age.
As women's economic choices are eroded by high unemployment, low
wages and cuts to government-funded childcare, they find it more
difficult to escape physical and sexual violence in the home.
Meanwhile, funding for rape crisis centres and women's refuges,
already minimal, is under threat as governments cut spending on
social services.
4. Because women still do two-thirds of the world's work, most of
it unpaid.
While more than 50% of women are now part of the paid workforce
in Australia, their income is seen as a secondary income
supplement the family breadwinner's wage. This idea is used to
justify women's lower wages.
The majority of women in work today are doing the same sorts of
jobs that their grandmothers did. More than half of women workers
are employed as clerks and sales people.
Female gardeners used to have a different wage rate from male
gardeners doing exactly then same job the argument was that the
man had a family to support. Such blatant inequality was
abolished through the equal pay campaigns of the 1970s.
Yet women still earn a mere 70% of the average male wage. This is
because of the massive sex-segregation of the workforce. Men are
concentrated in very different jobs from women. Women's jobs
(nurses, clerks, domestic cleaners, shop assistants, teachers and
childcare workers, etc.) generally have lower wage rates than
men's jobs (mechanics, fire-fighters, miners, managers, etc.)
without the discrepancies being obvious.
5. Because together, we can change history.
A hundred years ago, women had no formal right to go to
university, no right to take up a whole range of jobs; and they
couldn't vote because they weren't considered capable of making
such important decisions.
The women's rights movement at the turn of the century organised
mass strikes for better pay and working conditions, and for the
right to vote. They pioneered the first massive changes in
women's position in society and forged a lasting change in social
consciousness about the role women should be able to play in
society.
The upsurge in feminist campaigning in the '70s took those
changes even further. It's only now that that mass movement has
substantially declined and that governments representatives of a
society which still benefits economically from women's
subordinate status have increasing confidence to roll back the
gains of feminist struggle, and get away with it.
We should draw confidence from the struggles of the past century,
the enormous achievements of millions of women, and the need to
escalate the struggle for women's liberation into the next
millennium
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