Insecure, casual work in universities is damaging for women

National Tertiary Education Union national president Alison Barnes. Picture: James Croucher

The pandemic has revealed much about the type of work – and the type of worker – the federal government values.

We all agree that industries affected by Covid should receive government assistance in difficult times, and sectors such as construction, mining and manufacturing, which happen to be male-dominated, were well supported.

But the lack of corresponding support for a sector that has one of the highest levels of female-dominated industries – tertiary education – is deeply revealing.

It’s certainly not that women employed in tertiary education are any less affected or less vulnerable than workers elsewhere. Over the past 12 months, 40,000 jobs were lost in the tertiary education sector. Of those, 61 per cent were performed by women. But universities have been denied both JobKeeper and a rescue package. Contrast that with the $688m announced for the HomeBuilder program, or the JobTrainer policy aimed at supporting apprenticeships.

Even for the women who managed to retain their jobs, the situation is far from rosy. The women that have kept their jobs are often only employed on a casual basis. After bearing the brunt of the pandemic, women employed in universities face insecure work, short-term funding and increased workloads. In mathematics, for example, 64 per cent of all women in academic positions are in casual jobs.

Women in research are particularly pessimistic, with more than 60 per cent saying they feel it is unlikely they will be able to maintain their employment in the sector over the next three years.

This insecure work inflicted on women has created a toxic environment where women are afraid to speak up about what they are forced to endure. Sexual harassment and discrimination is chronically under-reported by insecurely employed staff because they don’t want to rock the boat and jeopardise future employment opportunities.

According to an NTEU survey, one in five women at Australian universities had personally experienced sexual harassment in the workplace. These are most commonly in the form of sexually suggestive comments or jokes, unwelcome touching, hugging or kissing. But also reported are cases of upskirting, drink spiking, and sexual assault. Almost one in 10 women in that survey indicated they had experienced inappropriate physical contact.

Women are also most likely to be victims of attacks online through student evaluation surveys. I have personal experience of this. I have been subjected to feedback about my appearance or my tone of voice which I am certain would not happen to a man in my position.

My colleagues have experienced far worse, many being confronted with sexually explicit comments and one being told they need a “boob job” to better fulfil their role. Others are regularly hit with misogynistic abuse, like being called a “bitch” or a “feminazi”.

We know universities are well aware of these problems. But they don’t want to take meaningful action because their business models rely on employing workers insecurely.

Activists have had to drag ­universities, kicking and screaming, just to get them to admit they have underpaid casual workers millions of dollars over years – 21 out of Australia’s 40 public universities are now under investigation.

So it’s clear we cannot leave it to university managers to fix this crisis. It’s up to the government to intervene. To do so effectively it needs to attack the root of this problem in insecure employment.

The reopening of universities gives the Prime Minister the opportunity to rectify the damage inflicted on the sector as a result of funding cuts and the pandemic by urgently providing temporary additional funding, as recommended by the Senate Select Committee on Job Security last month.

The government must then develop a proper national higher education funding strategy and design a system of casual and fixed-term conversion appropriate for the sector.

It is also imperative each university undergoes a thorough audit of its employment practices to reveal its use of insecure employment.

There must also be much stiffer penalties for wage theft.

Higher education should be a sector offering high-quality, well-paying jobs to women. But without action, the prognosis for the average woman in our sector is grim.

Dr Alison Barnes is national president of the National Tertiary Education Union.