Many assume that job discrimination is a manifestation of employer chauvinism. This article considers how discrimination can result from employer efforts to maintain flexibility of control in staffing policies. It then recounts the social, demographic and industrial factors which led one State education authority to change a regulation which discriminated against female employees. The article concludes by observing some of the consequences of this change in situations of teacher undersupply and oversupply.
References
1.
CainG. C.The challenge of segmented labour market theories to orthodox theory: a survey. Journal of Economic Literature, 1976, XIV, 4, 1215–1257.
2.
ThurowL. C.Education and economic inequality. Public Interest, No. 28, 1972, 66–81.
3.
A screening device is a procedure followed by an employer to select those job applicants who possess certain identifiable external characteristics, e.g. educational qualifications, age, sex, which he believes may be associated with desirable worker attributes.
4.
SpenceM.Job Market Signaling. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1973, 87, 355–374.
5.
ThurowL., op. tit., 73.
6.
Labour force attachment of married females in 1975 was 49.1 per cent compared with 38.3 per cent in 1968.
7.
Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics, Canberra, Australia. Labour Force Experience During 1968, Ref. No. 6.26, 1969, p. 5.
8.
BurkhardtG. A.Characteristics of teacher turnover in primary and secondary schools. In DaviesA. T.DukeC.The Retention of Teachers. Canberra: Australian National University, 1971, 15, 19.
9.
A recent Queensland study showed that more than 70 per cent of respondent teachers felt marriage was a sufficient reason for exemption from transfer of female teachers, while less than 30 per cent believed marriage was a sufficient reason for exemption of male teachers. See TaintonB. E.TurnerT. J.Transfer Systems: The Opinions of Queensland Teachers. Brisbane: Research Branch Department of Education Queensland, June, 1976, from Tables 2.33 and 2.34, 40, 41.
10.
Quoted in PurvisJ.School teaching as a professional career. In British Journal of Sociology, 1973, 24, 49.
11.
Generally speaking, teachers on supply do not enjoy the same superannuation rights, promotional or inservice training opportunities, or such other benefits as accouchement leave and long service leave.
12.
Vacancies occur unexpectedly throughout the year, particularly in the first month or so, when enrolments exceed expectations, or when teachers intending to resign have taught enough days into term to secure their holiday pay. It is often administratively awkward and educationally unsound to transfer quickly a teacher from another school to fill the vacancy. It is usually preferable to invite to the vacancies, temporary teachers who were not appointed at the commencement of the school year.
13.
Married female teachers were given full rights to permanent status in N.S.W. in 1947, Victoria in 1968, Queensland in 1969, South Australia in 1972, and in Western Australia in 1968.
14.
W.A. Teachers' Journal, 1968, 58, 7, 16.
15.
Government Gazette of Western Australia, No. 103, 12/11/1968, p. 3339.
16.
Resignations for reasons of “other work” rose from 0.15 per cent in 1966 to 2.5 per cent in 1969.
17.
Tertiary Education in Western Australia Report of the Committee appointed by the Premier of Western Australia under the Chairmanship of Sir Lawrence Jackson, Perth, September 1967. Nedlands, Western Australia: University of Western Australia Press, 1967, 15.
18.
It was not until the recession of 1971–2 had set in that recruitment rates rose to near the projected levels.
19.
Wood estimated for all States in 1967 that the loss of women teachers represented approximately 15 per cent of the female teaching force, of men approximately 5 per cent and the overall loss about 10 per cent of the total teaching force in government primary and secondary schools. Wood, W. Educational Manpower in Australian Schools. Australian National Advisory Committee for UNESCO. National Seminar on Educational Planning. Group B Background Papers “Aspects of Present Practice”. Canberra, 1968, Paper No. 6, p. 19.
20.
The effect of this in lowering the aggregate female resignation rate in 1966 was masked by an increase in resignations for other work, principally for transfer of some mistresses to the newly independent W.A. Institute of Technology. (Annual Report of the Education Department of W.A., 1967, 7.).
21.
In January 1968, the first step toward eliminating male-female teacher salary differentials was taken. This could have made some contribution also to the reduction of female resignations.
22.
Between 1968 and 1972, about 1,500 married women were granted permanent status in the primary division alone. (West Australian, 7 November 1972, 9.).
23.
At the same time as he changed Regulation 85, the Director-General introduced a new Regulation 188A which permitted accouchement leave to be granted for periods of up to 12 months.
24.
Education Circular, 72, Permanent appointments for married women. Education Department, Western Australia, 1970, 33–34.
25.
West Australian, 7 November 1972, 9.
26.
This is a specific instance of Margaret Power's observation that “legislative change or crises such as a shortage of male labour may operate with a ratchet effect: they induce a change in the system which cannot be fully countered or reversed”. In Hecate, 1, 2, July 1975, 33.
27.
See Western Teacher, 16 November 1972, 16, 21 June, 4 and 5 July 1973, 2.
28.
HelmerJ.The impossibility of long-term planning. National Bank Monthly Summary. April 1975, 5–8.
29.
In its Survey of Needs of Education for the Period 1970–1975, July 1969, p. 28, the W.A. Education Department reported “indications are that the available supply of temporary teachers has almost been exhausted”.
