The author, who works for a federal government organisation in Australia, prefers to stay anonymous to protect her job. The organisation is a paid member of Pride in Diversity and a participant in the AWEI index scheme. This account shows how ACON’s influence on organisation culture extended from LGBTI rights to negatively impact women’s rights to maternity leave.

Motherhood statements

I work for a large federal public service department. Our department is signed up to Pride in Diversity. We have a LGBTI Strategy which states it has been written in line with Pride in Diversity recommendations. However it is not really the influence ACON has on the LGBTI Strategy that is an issue, rather it is the impact on language use and policies in other areas of the department, such as maternity leave policy. 

The LGBTI Strategy has actions on inclusive language use:

We will develop and implement an inclusive language guide utilising the Words at Work Guidelines developed by the Diversity Council of Australia and ensure that this is communicated and demonstrated by our senior leadership … We will encourage the use of gender neutral language when writing and giving speeches, i.e. “everyone/all” not “ladies/gentlemen”[1].

… this push for inclusive language has erased women from policies

This article will step through how this push for inclusive language has erased women from policies designed to assist them in the workplace and works to actively undermine women’s rights. 

Gender equality 

Several years ago my department implemented a gender equality strategy, aimed at increasing female representation at senior levels in the department. The strategy included targets, such as:

Targets are set for the representation of women at the SES Band 1 and Band 2 levels, with the goal of achieving 40-40-20 gender balance at these levels by 2020. That is, 40 per cent women, 40 per cent men and 20 per cent either. Evidence indicates that workplace culture becomes more gender inclusive in organisations with over 40 per cent women in senior leadership positions. 

An update of the strategy was implemented in the last two years. The targets are now worded differently: 40/40/20 target comprises 40 per cent men, 40 per cent women, and 20 per cent either gender, with a focus on including our sexual and gender diverse colleagues.

The updated strategy also talks about gender-disaggregated data, whereas the original strategy mentioned sex-disaggregated data. These are not the same things. 

My Department also has a gender equality network, which is open to people of ‘all genders’. However the original recommendation from the gender equality strategy was to establish a women’s network. The original terms of reference states that one of the aims of the network is ‘supporting female employees to reach their full potential and to achieve job satisfaction’ however the wording has been changed to ‘Supporting employees of all genders to reach their full potential and achieve job satisfaction’. The focus on women has been lost, from a committee that was originally intended to be a women’s committee. 

Our department also has a style guide for written communication. It has an entry for female that states: refers to biological sex, while woman/women refers to gender. Using woman/women is more inclusive. Similarly the entry for woman is: female refers to biological sex; woman/women refers to gender. Using woman/women is more inclusive. Notably there are no entries for male or man in the style guide, which shows the imperative to be inclusive is only being imposed on one of the two sexes. This is leading to grammatically clunky expressions like ‘women entrepreneurs’ rather than ‘female entrepreneurs’, as female is an adjective but woman is not.   

Maternity leave 

One of the other actions from the gender equality strategy was: 

Review and clarify policies around maternity/adoption/parental leave to make the experience as positive as possible… Capture all relevant information in an easy to access and understand format. 

The strategy update included a related action: 

Clarify policies around workplace support for people with caring responsibilities ensuring they are inclusive of all types of caring. This includes a review of emergency childcare provisions as well as continued advocacy for equitable parental leave entitlements including for men, same sex couples, and surrogate parents both within [the department] and across the APS. 

Note that the term ‘maternity’ is no longer used and now the focus is solely on parental leave. Maternity leave and parental leave are not synonymous and parental leave should not be used as a catch-all term that includes maternity leave. 

In Pride in Diversity’s Australian Workplace Equality Index (AWEI) Employer Evidence and Scoring Guide, section 1 on HR policy and diversity practice includes a question on new parent leave inclusive of LGBTQ parent families. It states in the rationale for the question: 

There are many ways that children come into LGBTQ families; for some this is limited to surrogacy, adoption or foster arrangements. In each of these instances, there will be leave required during the initial stages of caring for a new member of the family. Some leave policies still [sic] only of “birth mothers” which is an outdated terminology when referring to any parental leave entitlements. Such terms exclude those who become parents by means other than “traditional” parenting or adoption.

Maternity leave is a specific type of leave for women when they give birth, i.e. birth mothers[2]. Federal public servants are covered by the Maternity Leave Act 1973, which provides women 12 weeks paid leave when they give birth. The move towards using gender-neutral language and/or providing gender-neutral parental leave when talking about birth will undermine women’s rights to paid maternity leave which is required because women experience pregnancy, birth and breastfeeding. Employers do not need to provide men and women equal leave when women give birth. This is confirmed by section 31 of the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (SDA) which states: 

Nothing in Division 1 or 2 renders it unlawful for a person to discriminate against a man on the ground of his sex by reason only of the fact that the firstmentioned person grants to a woman rights or privileges in connection with pregnancy, childbirth or breastfeeding.

In fact the opposite is true. By giving men equal leave to women when it is women that give birth, women are disadvantaged on the basis of their sex. 

There is a brilliant paper on the importance of sexed language which states that ‘As a general principle of communication it is well established that the sex of individuals should be made visible when it is relevant and should not be invoked when it is not (4-9)’. Another excellent paper makes a similar point that giving birth is not like chairing a meeting. It cannot be done by a person of either sex. Maternity leave policy is an instance where the sex of individuals is relevant and should not be obscured. 

The Australian Public Service Commission (APSC) is currently conducting a review of the Maternity Leave Act. This emphasis on both gender-neutral language and gender-neutral parental leave in APS departments has the potential to undermine women’s existing rights to maternity leave. The 12 weeks paid leave women receive is already inadequate, but instead of advocating for increased leave for women to recover from birth and establish breastfeeding, many submissions will have advocated instead for gender-neutral leave (and hence are primarily advocating for men’s interests)[3]. This includes the gender equality network in my department, which supported a submission to the review which specifically called for all references to maternity to be removed from the Maternity Leave Act. This will fundamentally undermine the original aims of the Act. 

Breastfeeding policy 

My department’s original gender equality strategy included the following action: 

Clarify policies around workplace support for breastfeeding mothers, including to undertake work-related travel. Review breastfeeding facilities in [departmental] offices in Canberra and enhance to maintain Australian Breastfeeding Association accreditation. For all other [departmental] offices improve breastfeeding facilities as required. 

The department does have a breastfeeding policy, but it does not mention mothers or women at all, only ‘carers’. This mirrors the recently published APSC Gender Equality Strategy, which has a recommendation on supporting breastfeeding in the workplace, but only mentions ‘birth parents’ in pointing out that breastfeeding support will not be ‘limited’ to them and that all parents and caregivers will be supported in breastfeeding regardless of gender and whether or not they are the birth parent. If you want to know why it is problematic to talk about parents rather than mothers when it comes to breastfeeding, see papers in the Journal of World Nutrition here and here. 

Conclusion 

ACON through the Pride in Diversity scheme and the AWEI is influencing language use, so that you can no longer link women’s issues in the workplace to the female sex. In everything from my department’s style guide to the gender equality strategy to the breastfeeding policy, the link between women’s issues and being female has been severed. 

ACON through the Pride in Diversity scheme and the AWEI is influencing language use, so that you can no longer link women’s issues in the workplace to the female sex.

If policies around pregnancy, birth and breastfeeding do not take into account the physical differences between the sexes, it will lead to discrimination against women when they become mothers, despite the fact this is when the differences in earning and career progression between men and women are exacerbated. We have all heard of the motherhood penalty, however the way to deal with it is not to obscure the fact that women are the sex that has the babies. We need to be clear about this fact of life so we can design policies that don’t disadvantage women when they become mothers. There is currently an active campaign to roll back the maternity leave rights that women fought hard for in the past under the guise of ‘gender equality’ and it is being aided by our inability to use accurate sex-based language. 

Thankfully the sections of the SDA relating to pregnancy and breastfeeding were not altered with the 2013 amendments that removed the definition of women and men (which were rightfully previously defined as relating to the female and male sex, respectively). In the SDA, it is recognised that women are the ones that become pregnant, give birth and breastfeed. Public service agencies need to revert back to language around pregnancy, birth and breastfeeding in line with the SDA that recognises these are female-specific physiologic functions, and design policies to adequately accommodate them in the workplace. 

Footnotes

[1] Words at Work is A Diversity Council of Australia (DCA) Initiative. Many of the organisations signed up to ACON’s Pride in Diversity Scheme are also paid members of DCA. ACON and DCA have worked together on several projects. 

[2]  When it is pointed out that the primary purpose of maternity leave is related to giving birth, a common response is ‘what about lesbian couples/adoption/surrogacy’. In the case of lesbian couples, clearly it is the woman giving birth that requires maternity leave, and her partner should receive leave akin to paternity leave. The number of adoptions in Australia is so low that this is somewhat of a red herring, but policies need to make separate provision for adoption. For surrogacy, if a woman is acting as a surrogate mother she should receive maternity leave like any other woman that gives birth. The commissioning parents should be covered by adoption leave provisions (noting surrogacy is an illegal practice in several states in Australia). 

[3] The APSC has not yet published submissions to the Maternity Leave Act Review on its website, despite the period closing three months ago.  

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Last updated on October 1, 2022