Changing Role of Women

Since the hold on of world war two, in 1945, Australian society has witnessed many dramatic changes in the rights and independences of women. Women, who had been encouraged to compress on mens jobs during the war were expected to vacate these positions and pay to their traditional vocation in habitation making. Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s women were expected to either stay at home or make for in underpaid womens jobs. Womens wages were importantly less in comparison to the wages awarded to men who performed the same task.The realm Arbitration Court ruled in 1949, that a womens rudimentary wage should be set at 75% of the male rate. This was the convention throughout the 1950s when there was a large growth in the textiles, clothing, footwear and food processing industries depending on the cheap tug that women provided. The scan that a cleaning ladys place was in the home was reflected in and shaped by the Australian education system. The emphasis of the limited i nformation available to girls was in the home sciences . i. e. cooking and sewing.The lack of educational opportunities for women moreover reinforced sex role stereotyping and gave women little chance to achieve their potential. The ledger entry of the oral contraceptive pill in 1961 gave women the chance to achieve their potential. It gave them the freedom to choose when and if to bear a baby bird. It provided women with the opportunity to concentrate on furthering their working careers, where available, thus leaving the domestic housewife image behind. It provided women with power oer their bodies for the first time they were in control of their sexual relationships.Thus, by the end of the 1960s, women were practiceively seeking greater rights and freedoms in society and in the workplace. Demonstrations and protests were a feature of this movement, known as the womans liberationist movement (today referred to as feminism). The young-bearing(prenominal) liberationists aimed to overturn the nonions of female inferiority and male dominance in Australian society. Their dream was to free women from the restraints society placed upon them to challenge the positioning quo. Zelda DAprano was one Australian woman who formed the Womans Action Committee in 1969.She chained herself to the doors of the Commonwealth Building in Melbourne demanding equal pay for both sexes. Germaine Greer was also an outspoken liberationist whose book The female Eunuch, 1970 , challenged the thinking of conservative male dominated society. There was a diverse range of womens liberationist groups formed to campaign for specific issues revolving rough three main areas equal pay, discrimination in the workplace and par of opportunity in the workplace and society.Specific issues included Child solicitude twin pay for women Family Planning disunite Discrimination in the custody and from lending institutions The causes, clear arguments and outspoken activism of these groups attra cted much media attention and faced oppositeness from traditional and conservative sections of society. For example church leaders were outraged when womens liberationists called for reasonedized abortion. Equality in the workplace has been and still is an important issue.In theory, the federal Equal Pay Case of 1969, determined that women receive the same wage as men for the same work but this principal would not apply where the work was essentially or usually performed by women. By 1972, the Liberal government continued the debate, suggesting in Cabinet that wage grade should take into consideration training, skills and other attributes required for the satisfactory performance of the work. See Source A, which is a copy of a Cabinet document, go out 24 October 1972, demonstrating this stance of the Liberal government in relation to calls for Equal Pay.By December 1972, the Labor Government had come to power and it promised to mechanism the Equal Pay for Equal Value principle in female dominated industries though such a principal has proven exhausting to implement. Equal opportunity has been and still is another important issue. In 1972, the Womens Electoral Lobby (WEL) was founded. WEL sought out politicians views on womans issues. It has had a major role in lobbying and influencing governments to pass laws friendly to woman in areas such as womans health and child care.See Source B, a photograph of a demonstration in Sydney in 1979, in which WEL activists are advocating for Medicare funding for abortions. By the beginning of the 1980s, the fruits of the labor of the womens movement could be seen in many of Australias legal reformsThe family law act 1975 had established the principle of No Fault Divorce removing the social stigma associated with woman and divorce.The anti discrimination act 1977(NSW) which make it illegal to discriminate on terms of gender, marital status or pregnancy Sex Discrimination Act 1984 a commonwealth act banning discriminati on against woman.The Affirmative action act 1986 that was later replaced in 1999 by the equal opportunity for woman in the workplace act. By the end of the 1990s most woman believed that their struggles for equal rights and freedoms with men in society had been won, but that is not necessarily the case. While womens rights may have been enshrined in law, it is womens freedoms in society that have yet to be fully realized.