Women Policy

Principles

The Greens NSW are committed to:

1. The protection of women's rights to equal pay, respect, opportunity and responsibility in society;

2. Opportunities for full participation by women in all areas of life - government, business, economic, community, social and domestic;

3. Increased and equitable participation by women in all decision-making processes;

4. Legislation to reform the workplace to remove sources of direct, indirect and systemic discrimination against women;

5. Correcting the current complaint-based, anti-discrimination legislation that places the onus on victims of discrimination to bring about reform, often at a high personal and financial cost;

6. The right of women to make informed choices in all aspects of their lives, including lifestyle, sexual identity, health, whether to bear children, their reproductive processes, education and career choices;

7. Repealing discriminatory laws against women. Women and men should be able to choose whether they participate in areas of paid work and/or domestic responsibility through a Guaranteed Adequate Income;

8. Equal access by women to all forms of education, training and work;

9. Affirmative action to redress loss of equality of opportunity in access to continuing education and in the workplace following child-bearing and ensuring equal opportunities for all workers with family responsibilities; and

10. Ensuring that our policies do not discriminate against women.

Detail

Political and Public Participation

The Greens NSW will work towards:

11. Ensuring that any reform is consistent with Australia's commitment to the UN Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW);

12. Ensuring equal representation of women in decision-making processes at all levels of local parties and State and National confederations and other public bodies;

13. Developing programs and strategies to provide women with the skills to be effective candidates and members of parliament and to actively promote women to stand as candidates for election to federal, state, local government and other public bodies; and

14. Ensuring that all public boards and committees have a statutory requirement for equitable representation of women and men.

Women and Violence

15. All women have a right to safety at home, on the street and in the workplace but violence against women is not a “women’s” problem. Breaking the cycle of domestic violence is a societal problem and the provision of shelter and refuge for women should be considered only as a short-term solution.

16. Any act of violence should be condemned publicly and privately as unacceptable. The Greens NSW long-term objective is to create an environment of non-violence, and to provide care and protection for victims in the interim.

17. The Greens NSW will work towards:

• 17.1 Establishing a national inquiry into all forms of sexual assault, including assault within marriage and relationships, and implementation of uniform sexual assault laws;
• 17.2 Providing education to both boys and girls from early primary school level on non-violent conflict resolution;
• 17.3 Reviewing all relevant laws which have bearing on violence against women, treatment of victims and perpetrators;
• 17.4 Addressing the health effects, both physical and emotional, of violence against women, through adequately funded, appropriate health and education programs;
• 17.5 Using culturally appropriate publicity and educational campaigns to bring about a change in the way violence is viewed in our society including strategies to educate men that violence against women is a crime;
• 17.6 Expanding crisis service for women, with and without children, by providing refuge and services to victims of rape, abortion, incest, female circumcision and domestic violence;
• 17.7 Making special provision for geographically remote communities, and providing services that are culturally appropriate for indigenous Australian women and women from ethnically and socially diverse backgrounds; and
• 17.8 Ensuring women's access to safe and secure accommodation through a comprehensive housing policy and the provision of adequate emergency housing.

Women and Pornography

18. The Greens NSW oppose the production, performance, and display of pornographic material where it discriminates against women and children by presenting them as suitable objects for violence or sexual exploitation, and valorising forms of power and pleasure achieved by disempowering and injuring women and children.

19. The Greens NSW will work towards:

• 19.1 Promoting the use of legal complaints procedures and processes;
• 19.2 Extending classification systems to include video games, live performances and other leisure technologies such as the internet and cable TV; and
• 19.3 Encouraging critical examination of the role that the entertainment industry and the media play in the portrayal of women and children as victims of violent and sexual exploitation.

Women and Health

The Greens NSW will work towards:

20. Increased joint Commonwealth/State funding of community based Women's Health Centres;

21. Ensuring research and development funds are allocated equitably to male and female researchers into male and female health problems;

22.  Ensuring changes to the education of health providers with regard to women's health issues;

23. Improving women's access to information regarding their health in order that appropriate personal decisions can be made;

24. Repealing all laws which restrict the right of women to choose abortion and which restrict access to services;

25. Ensuring access to legal, affordable, humane and safe abortion for all women, and provision of counselling pre- and post-termination;

26. Providing strategies for more women medical practitioners to enter those specialisations where women are currently under represented;

27. Supporting increased provision of midwifery services;

28. Ensuring that legislation prohibiting female genital mutilation is enforced;

29. Introducing legislation which makes forced sterilisation illegal;

30. Ensuring access to safe contraception on demand for all women, and information on options available; and

31. Ensuring all women have real choice of where and how to give birth and information on available options.

Women and the Workforce

The Greens NSW will work towards:

32. Ensuring that apprenticeships and training programs have positive discrimination towards women to ensure that opportunities are not denied to women because of inaccurate evaluation of women's ability;

33. Ensuring equal opportunities for workers with family responsibilities;

34. Ensuring the provision of adequate child care facilities in the workplace;

35. Encouraging appropriate flexible and secure working conditions to enable workers with family responsibilities (e.g. parents minding young children, and adult children minding ageing parents) to participate in the workforce, and avail themselves of opportunities equally with those who do not have those responsibilities;

36. Providing centres for continuing education and training for workers, including training and promotion opportunities for part-time and temporary workers;

37. Giving the provision of maternity and paternity leave equal status in order to encourage the sharing of the parenting roles and equality of gender in the workplace;

38. To the above end, provision of parental leave on full pay and entitlements for a period of up to twelve months;

39. Taking steps to facilitate re-entry, without loss of occupational status, of people who leave the workforce for parental leave or family responsibilities leave;

40. Providing incentives for women in small businesses, particularly through local employment initiatives;

41. Undertaking programs to raise awareness on issues of gender equity in the workplace and in education;

42. Giving priority to the needs of indigenous Australian women for education and employment opportunities;

43. Ensuring award restructuring includes the specific aim of upgrading and broadening the low-paid, low-status positions that have traditionally been work for a majority of women, particularly migrant women;

44. Ensuring that women are adequately and equally represented in the enterprise bargaining process, particularly in the traditional work areas such as the service industry, where there is low union representation, including where necessary sequestering of employer funds to provide adequate resources for women in enterprise bargaining; and

45. Ensuring that women have access to adequate retirement income.

Women and Education

46. The Greens NSW seek to ensure educational experience and outcomes for girls and women that enable full and equal participation in all aspects of economic and social life.

47. The Greens NSW will work towards:

• 47.1 Maintaining relatively equal education outcomes for women and men;
• 47.2 Providing adequate funding for the support structures and the support personnel necessary to implement policy;
• 47.3 The elimination of gender-based harassment in school and educational institutions and supporting the establishment of Equal Opportunity offices to assess and consult about the effectiveness of programs and policies to achieve this;
• 47.4 Ensuring that teacher training for new and continuing teachers critically examines the patterns of sex role stereotyping that occurs in our society;
• 47.5 Maintaining curricula and programs to overcome the attitudes inherent in our society that result in different expectations for girls and boys, including maintaining girls' participation in areas of maths, science, technology and trades;
• 47.6 Ensuring that leadership roles within all school systems are shared equally between female and male students;
• 47.7 Fostering and developing state programs to maintain girls' and women's participation in school, TAFE and university education, especially in science and technology disciplines;
• 47.8    Maintaining the application of affirmative action to increase the number of women in senior, policy and decision-making positions in educational systems, including universities;

• 47.9 Enhancing bridging courses for women to facilitate their entry into the formal education arena;
• 47.10 Developing strategies to offset any disadvantage to women caused by the impact of fees on women's participation in tertiary education, including TAFE and post-secondary students;
• 47.11 Expanding women's participation in science and technology education and training through improving access to appropriate courses in TAFE, university and adult education;
• 47.12 Supporting the right of school students to wear unisex clothing;
• 47.13 Increasing women's access to training and education in the use and understanding of computers and computer technology; and
• 47.14 Promoting policies to achieve a higher retention rate of women at higher degree levels in universities.

Women and the Law

The Greens NSW will work towards:

• 47.15 Remedying existing discrimination by ensuring a higher representation of women on legislative and judicial bodies;
• 47.16 Applying affirmative action to ensure that more women hold senior level positions within the Public Service departments responsible for policy, administration and enforcement of the law;
• 47.17 Applying affirmative action to ensure that more women hold senior faculty positions within Schools of Law;
• 47.18 Examining ways women could be encouraged to enter private practice and the bar;
• 47.19 Encouraging women to enter all areas of the legal profession (there is a current predominance of women in family and criminal law);
• 47.20 Reviewing all laws which have a bearing on violence against women;
• 47.21 Developing further options for the protection of victims, and for the naming of perpetrators;
• 47.22 Addressing the myth of 'victim-blaming' by promoting change in societal attitudes to violence;
• 47.23 Removing sexist language from existing laws, and ensuring future legislation is non-sexist and does not assume assignment of roles according to sex (e.g. what constitutes a 'family' or 'woman's' role in family relations);
• 47.24 Strengthening laws which prohibit portrayal of women or children as objects of violence or sexual exploitation;
• 47.25  Repealing criminal laws relating to sex work;
• 47.26 Examining, updating and reforming laws protecting women, such as Anti-discrimination legislation, Equal Opportunity and Sex Discrimination, Affirmative Action and Equal Pay, Property and Family Rights; and
• 47.27 Increasing the funding for and restructure of the federal and state anti-discrimination tribunals so that they are able to respond quickly to referrals, with conciliation being available within one month of the referral and arbitration within six months.

Women and the Environment

48. The environmental decision-making process has, to date, largely excluded women, Indigenous Australians and other minority groups.

49. The domestic sector and those industries where women predominate should have equal representation in environmental planning and decision-making.

50. The Greens NSW will work towards:

• 50.1 Ensuring that resource accounting includes the domestic sector, community support systems and the health of children;
• 50.2 Ensuring equal representation of women on environmental decision-making bodies;
• 50.3 Applying Affirmative Action principles to ensure women are able to participate at all levels of planning, implementation and assessment of environmental policy;
• 50.4 Implementing strategies to ensure that all environmental assessments include considerations of impact on health, community and women;
• 50.5 Ensuring changes brought about by strategies relating to the elimination of sexual discrimination will not place undue and unequal responsibility upon women and add to women's workload; and
• 50.6 Implementing strategies to ensure that women's needs and advice are considered in the area of urban planning.

Women and Sport

51. The Greens NSW support access for women, equal to that of men, to recreation facilities, coaching, sports education, competition, media coverage and funding.

52. The Greens NSW will work towards:

• 52.1 Developing monitoring strategies for equal opportunity and anti-discrimination principles to be applied to the administration of all sporting organisations;
• 52.2 Ensuring allocation of funding and awards will not be discriminatory and will allow equal opportunity for women;
• 52.3 Raising awareness of women's rights to equal recreation and the importance of this; and
• 52.4 Improving attitudes towards women in sport.