by Anne Summers
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Other
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18
It cannot be assumed, however, that a paid job will necessarily elevate a woman from poverty or alleviate her dependent status. Many single, childless women who live outside families have difficulty in supporting themselves due to a combination of low wages and high rents. For married women to be economically independent, the money they earn from their job must be sufficient to support themselves – and their children if they have any – independently of their husband’s income. This does not mean that in practice the husband’s and wife’s incomes will not be pooled in most families, but unless a woman is able to support herself on her own earnings, the possibility of her leaving an unsatisfactory marriage or de facto relationship and being able to survive materially does not exist; and although she may have some money of her own to spend as she likes, her economic bondage has not been completely undermined.
In the past the refusal of the Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration to award women an equal minimum wage with men has meant that hordes of women working in unskilled jobs earn meagre incomes that would be insufficient to support themselves. The 1974 National Wage decision awarded women an equal minimum wage to be phased in over two years and this will mean an uplifting of women’s wages. The possibility of women receiving a living wage now exists, but we will have to wait to see whether this will be the consequence of the award. It is quite likely that more women than men will never rise above the stated minimum because men are more likely to have loadings and margins added to their pay and they are also more likely to supplement their incomes with overtime. Often they do this to raise their family income and were women receiving living wages it would not be necessary.
At present, and in the past, the wages the majority of working women receive have not been adequate for self-support let alone to support children as well. In February 1975, the prescribed average minimum weekly wage, excluding overtime, paid to adult females in industry was $92.31 whereas the comparable wage for men was $104.23.43 These are average earnings for the whole of Australia and provide only a rough indication of the actual earnings of many women in particular jobs under varying state awards. Many women would earn more than $92.31, but more women would earn less. For instance at 30 June 1974 in New South Wales, the state where the cost of living is highest, an adult female working in a biscuit-making factory received $72 per week, while a furniture machinist got only $62 and most jobs in the textile industry paid wages of between $63 and $67.44
Although most adult female jobs pay minimum wages of over $70 a week, there are dozens of different jobs that pay less. The woman who earns this amount would, after tax has been deducted, receive about the same amount as a widow or single mother with two children and, as has already been argued, this is barely sufficient to support three people, particularly in Melbourne and Sydney. (When assessing the real value of women’s wages we have to take into account whether they are sufficient to maintain herself and her children, since in practice women retain responsibility for their children if a marriage breaks up. In theory the woman’s wages should be supplemented with maintenance payments from her husband, but a woman cannot guarantee that these payments will be forthcoming. If we are discussing the economic possibilities of women becoming independent, our calculations must be based on her guaranteed income for this is the minimum amount with which she will have to try to manage.)
Thus being in paid employment does not of itself guarantee escape from poverty nor can it ensure economic independence. For the woman deprived of educational and occupational skills and forced to take a low-paying factory or service job, the ‘reward’ is 40 hours of virtual slavery, for her labour will not allow her a sufficient income to survive independently of the economic support of some other agency.
The full extent of poverty among women has never been investigated. Those studies that have examined poverty in Australia have, directly or indirectly, indicated that it does exist on a massive scale among certain groups of women. But what has to be acknowledged is that the institutionalised arrangements, which exist ostensibly to alleviate it, do in fact perpetuate it by ensuring that women will remain as supplicants to the state welfare system and will be forced to live on or close to the poverty line. The present economic and cultural system decrees that a woman must obtain a male protector/provider to avoid the probability of destitution. In practice this means that women are classified by whether or not they are worthy of such protection and support and the usual criteria applied are those of sexual attractiveness and maternal status.
Mothers are automatically seen as deserving protection while non-mothers are seen as suspect. Mothers who do not have husbands – for whatever reason – are in a halfway category. Their maternal status is praised, their inability to attract or to keep a man is regarded as cause for suspicion and they are awarded sufficient money to ward off starvation but not enough for them to enjoy economic security. Unless all women, whether they are mothers or not, married or single, are accorded both in theory and practice the right to economic independence – and not depressed wages, allowances for child-raising or trifling rewards for having survived to the age of 60 – then poverty will continue to be a normal condition, or a constantly threatening possibility, in the lives of vast numbers of Australian women.45
*The figures used in this chapter are the latest available to June 1975. Where statistical material relating to earlier years is used, this is because these figures have not been updated by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. It can be expected that most of the actual figures relating to incomes and pensions will be out of date by the time this work is published, but unless major structural changes are made to the Australian economy – and this does not seem likely – then the argument made in this chapter remains valid.
*The term ‘single-parent family’ is now being used more frequently, partly in recognition of the fact that many men are ‘single parents’.
*In his policy speech before the 1974 elections, the Minister for Social Security announced that he intended to amend this to provide for single mothers to start receiving the pension from the date of birth of the child.
CHAPTER SIX
The family of woman
A young woman becoming a wife should think of her new state not as one that is to make her happy but as one in which she is to make her husband happy. Her own happiness will be a by-product of that determination, and will be assured in no other way … The good wife realizes that in becoming a wife she contracts to forget self and put her husband’s happiness above her own wishes and desires … In the marriage contract she handed over the right to her body for the actions of marriage; she does not try to take that back again. She contracted to make a home for her husband in whatever place his work might call him; she does not proclaim any spurious independence in that regard … In dress she tries to please, even in the privacy of the home; in speech she encourages, comforts and shares her husband’s interests; in her household tasks she tries to be perfect that he may think of no place as more pleasant than his home.
Catholic Weekly, 26 February 1953
The extreme differentiation of the sexes in Australia frequently puts the female child, like her mother before her, in the position of moral censor. This even reflects itself in child play where it is invariably the little sister who runs and ‘tells’ about the misdemeanours of her brothers, whose main feeling is not of guilt but the pragmatic hope that they can ‘get away with it’.
Ronald Conway, The Great Australian Stupor, 1971
Australian culture ignores women except in its taken-for-granted assumption that they are all safely enshrined within families as wives and mothers. And unless women have male protectors and providers in the form of a husband or some other man who is legally obliged to support them and their children, they will be very lucky to escape at least periodic, if not perpetual poverty. These two factors alone provide compelling reason for women to want to
marry and to secure for themselves both the status and the economic security that is necessary to survive physically and psychologically in a country like Australia. Women’s cultural impotence and their economic dependence are a twin-pronged manacle that forces them into families and ensures that, while they remain within them, they conform to quite rigidly defined roles. Conformity to these roles is the main insurance most women have against exclusion, poverty and neglect.
It could similarly be said that men, too, are forced into marriage – if only to accommodate women’s urgent need for a partner. It is probably indisputable that most men want to marry – although the persistence of the cultural stereotype of the gay bachelor not only suggests that there is a high-status alternative to marriage for men, but also that many men feel that they have been coerced into marriage and that in marrying they have surrendered some of their freedom. And it is true that many women resort to desperate and distasteful measures in order to ensure that they will marry: many do attempt to literally ensnare a mate. There are a variety of measures that a skilled seductress can employ, although the simplest and probably most commonly used method is to become pregnant. The man, faced with the inevitability of supporting a child for the next 16 years, might just as well marry the woman – and thereby be able to claim the child as his legitimate progeny – and accumulate the benefits of marriage. For most people it does not really matter whom one marries, especially in the case of men for whom the idea of romantic love is less important than the assurances of the domestic services automatically guaranteed by the marriage contract.
Just over 20 per cent of all brides are pregnant at the time of marriage, although this figure increases markedly the younger the bride: two out of three brides aged under 17, and one-quarter of brides aged 19 are pregnant when they marry.1 Not all such marriages entail the coercion suggested by the phrase ‘shotgun’ marriage, but a pregnancy can be one means of dragging an otherwise reluctant man to a marriage ceremony. Any measure used by a woman to secure a marriage vow from a less than willing man inevitably degrades the woman who has forsaken her pride and her independence in her quest to find a provider. But Australian women have never been encouraged to have high self-esteem or permitted to be truly independent. Their sheer need to have a husband, legal or de facto, is merely one indication of this, and explains why some women feel compelled to get one – at whatever cost to their pride.
For men, the need is not so great. Whereas the status of marriage is valuable for a man, it is vital for women, and the cultural importance attached to it in Australia (and some other European countries) is reflected in the titular forms applied to men and women. All men are addressed as Mr regardless of their marital status, whereas there is a clear and rigidly enforced distinction between Miss and Mrs. In some European countries all mature women are accorded the same title. For example, in France all adult women are addressed as Madame, but in Australia the adult single woman is still burdened with the girlish appellation, Miss. Married women themselves often proudly perpetuate this status distinction: the young bride’s loud insistence on being called Mrs – to ensure that everyone acknowledges her newly acquired status – is an illustration of the importance attached to this title, one that is as important as being able to flash a gold-ringed left hand. There has been mighty resistance – much of it from women themselves – to feminists’ efforts to have the status-neutral term Ms replace Miss and Mrs. (Not all the resistance has been from married women: those early feminists who fought for the right to remain single and still have status in Australian society determinedly cling to Miss, and although we can admire their pride and valour, their efforts have done little to erode the still existent status distinction that accompanies these two forms of address for women.)
It is generally assumed that men are married but rarely is this status relevant to their occupation or recreational activities. A few occupations, usually senior executive positions in national or multinational corporations where the job includes social as well as business activities, insist that men are married – and often interview the wives of prospective employees. But this is comparatively rare. Men have automatic status – as men. They retain their names and their class in marriage (which is why middle-class parents oppose their daughters marrying working-class men while working-class parents will often welcome their daughter marrying a middle-class man) whereas it is customary – although not legally obligatory – for women to assume their husband’s family name upon marriage.
Nor do men need marriage for financial security; indeed they will generally be better off if they remain single. Men’s salaries are the same regardless of their marital status and although married men can be taxed at a slightly lower rate and can claim deductions for dependent spouse and children, these compensations are not significant enough to offset the financial responsibility entailed in supporting a family. The desire to retain all of his income for his own disposal may in fact deter a man from marrying at least until his middle twenties, so that he can enjoy the lifestyle that his higher income confers before grudgingly ‘settling down’. By contrast, even women who have paid jobs can be in poverty, as Chapter Fivepointed out. The Australian economy perpetuates a wage structure that is geared to family needs and is based on sexist assumptions about these needs: it assumes that men are breadwinners and has always paid men more, even when they have done exactly the same work as women. The 1974 National Wage Case determined that an equal minimum wage for women be introduced by mid-1975. The effects of this judgement have yet to be felt, but one possible outcome is that, now that female labour is no longer cheaper, employers may prefer to hire men. Equal pay might well result in unemployment for women, thus indicating that basic sexist assumptions and prejudices are a long way from having been undermined.
Men need marriage in other respects: the domestic and sexual services provided by their wives give a degree of security and continuity to their lives, which they lack as single men. They also gain the emotional security of a close relationship with another person, as well as the feelings of pride and even aggrandisement associated with fathering and supporting children. Families provide an entire little world in which the man is the legally acknowledged boss; and this can be a powerful compensation for the man who has a menial or boring job, especially one where he is continually forced to obey other people’s orders. At home he is king and his dependent wife and children accord him love, honour and obedience. Or, at least, that is how it is supposed to be. In the ideal family. Within this ideal, men’s and women’s needs are supposed to dovetail: the ‘natural’ differences are supposed to complement each other in a perfectly conceived symmetry of needs and fulfilment. This grand design is sanctified by religion, endorsed by the State, taught as obligatory in the schools and clumsily emulated by the majority of people.
But like any ideal, it has been so mythologised and romanticised that its actual purposes have been obscured. According to the romantic myths, marriage and family enable the fusion of male and female, a fusion whose accomplishment and aim are the reproduction of the human race. What the myths do not elucidate are other aspects of that fusion. Women gain in status and acquire economic security while the man’s reward for conferring these is an increase in his personal power: he is able to perpetuate himself and his name by producing children, and his financial support of his wife enables him to exact whatever he wishes from her. The rather cruder realities of this barter are disguised by the myths of marriage that are only able to extol marriage and family in this romantic way because they ignore the elements of power involved in male/female relationships. They assume, or pretend, that this fusion is based on equality of needs and they gloss over the power of the husband and the dependency of the wife and the far from romantic consequences attendant upon such an unequal union.
Marriage for most women is not a matter of choice but a desperate necessity – their only means of survival. This absence of choice is also disguised by the romantic myths of marriage, myths that are so persua
sively propagated that each generation of gullible girls grows up believing that the best thing they can do with their lives is devote them to marriage and motherhood, and that following this vocation will bestow its own rewards of satisfaction and happiness.
The power of these myths is so great that they can obliterate from the consciousness of a young girl’s mind the cautionary warnings that could be served by her own observations of marriage that run contrary to the myths. She may be aware of, and even have witnessed, husbands beating or raping their wives, husbands depriving their families of sufficient money for food and other necessities, husbands deserting their families. She will almost certainly know of marital relationships where bitterness, resentment and mutual hostility have replaced affection. She will know of families that are more like battlegrounds than the tender unions of love and respect described by the myths. Yet seldom does such knowledge impinge sufficiently upon a girl’s consciousness to make her resolve to avoid marriage: the myths successfully convince her that such instances are rare, that they are the fault of the individuals concerned – rather than of the structure of the unequal union – and, most importantly to an impressionable and anxious mind: that it can never happen to her. And so girls go on to repeat the experiences of their mothers or of other women whose disastrous or miserable marriages they have witnessed.
Even where a girl manages to avoid succumbing to the romantic myths, her alternatives are few for, as already pointed out, women in Australia have never been encouraged to acquire the necessary prerequisites for an independent existence. Without the transitory consolation of such romantic expectations, a girl can only confront the starkness of her situation: there is an absence of real choice for women and it is this that makes women’s need for marriage and family so different from men’s.