Introduction

International Institute for Educational Planning

Miriam Henry

Paris 1996
UNESCO: International Institute for Educational Planning

The views and opinions expressed in this volume are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of UNESCO or of the IIEP. The designations employed and the presentation of material throughout this review do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of UNESCO or IIEP concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area of its authorities, or concerning its frontiers or boundaries.

The publication costs of this study have been covered by a grant-in- aid offered by UNESCO and by voluntary contributions made by several Member States of UNESCO, the list of which will be found at the end of the volume.

This volume has been typeset using IIEP’s computer facilities and has been printed in IIEP’s printshop.

International Institute for Educational Planning
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? UNESCO October 1996

Acronyms

-	ANTA	Australian National Training Authority
-	AVTS	Australian Vocational Training System
-	OECD	Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development
-	RPL	Recognition of Prior Learning
-	TAFE	Technical and Further Education
-	VEET	Vocational Education, Employment and Training
-	VET	Vocational Education and Training

Chapter 1. Introduction

However, while a good deal of research is now accumulating on the more technical aspects of VET delivery, less attention is being paid to such equity claims. These are particularly significant for women workers given their ambivalent position in the labour market noted above, and given the significance of vocational education and training in determining labour market positioning. A careful examination, therefore, of emerging trends in women’s access to and participation in VET in this new context may illuminate factors likely to facilitate or inhibit the effective implementation of VET policies.

2. The Australian experience


The Australian experience is useful to look at in relation to these issues. First, there has been a good deal of research on the position of women in the Australian labour market and on the inadequate training opportunities available for women (Department of Employment, Education and Training, 1992b; Junor, 1993; Knox and Pickersgill, 1993). Secondly, over the past decade VET has become an explicit policy target in Australia as part of a broader process of workplace, industrial relations and labour market restructuring. In 1990, the National Training Board was formed to develop a framework for a national, competency-based training system; in 1992 a new system of vocational education and entry-level training, the Australian Vocational Certificate Training System (AVTS) was introduced; and in 1994 the Australian National Training Authority was established to oversee VET provision nationally. The reforms to the vocational education and training system are referred to in general terms as the national training reform agenda.

The training reform agenda has the potential to offer benefits to women. Whether these benefits will be realised is of course another matter given the uncertain path between policy goals and outcomes. Strategies for improving women’s access to and participation in VET have been set out in a variety of documents, though it is still too early to judge the success of these strategies or the more general impact of the new policies on women’s employment opportunities. Indeed, while elements of the training reform agenda have been developing over a number of years, the AVTS has just completed a three-year pilot phase. But precisely because the agenda is not yet set in concrete, this is an opportune time for careful analysis of emerging trends in order to draw some conclusions as to whether and, more importantly, under what circumstances, women’s access to and participation in vocational education and training may be improved. While the conclusions to be drawn from such an analysis will of course relate largely to the Australian context, such a ‘case study’ can raise issues which should be of interest to a broader audience of those interested in policy processes or the substantive issue of gender equity within vocational education and training.

3. Main sections of the monograph


The monograph contains five chapters. Chapter 1 is the introduction. Chapter 2 provides an overview of policy developments in Australia relating to vocational education and training on the one hand and gender equity on the other in order to clarify the problem confronting policy-makers: how to ensure that the equity goals of the national training reform agenda, particularly those relating to the provision of VET for women, are realised. Chapter 3, drawing on recent statistical and qualitative research data on VET and the AVTS pilot projects, reports on what is happening ‘on the ground’ in order to examine whether, or the extent to which, the new policies may be contributing to shifts in patterns of participation in vocational education and training for women. Chapter 4, on policy issues, has a more theoretical focus which is concerned with examining factors involved in translating policy objectives (in this case, improving women’s access to and participation in VET) into effective policy outcomes. Chapter 5 gives brief concluding comments on the Australian experience in light of research on developments overseas and considers more general implications for achieving gender equity in vocational education and training.

Chapter 2. Women and VET in Australia: the issues

1. Introduction


Developments in two interrelated fields of policy-making over the past decade are reviewed here: in vocational education and training, aimed at enhancing the skills base of the Australian workforce; and in gender equity policy, aimed at broadening training and employment opportunities for women and breaking down the sex-segregated Australian labour market. The chapter begins by looking at the position of women in education, employment and VET, and associated developments in gender equity policy. It then turns to an examination of the evolving training reform agenda and an overview of recent developments within vocational education and training. The chapter concludes with a review of the ambiguous implications for women of the training reform agenda.

2. Position of women and girls in education

Over the past two decades, girls' participation and achievements in education have improved markedly, though the educational policies underlying these improvements have to be seen in the context of more general policies and legislation aimed at enhancing the position and status of women in Australia. Landmarks here include the Commonwealth Sex Discrimination Act, 1984 and Affirmative Action (Equal Opportunity for Women) Act, 1986, with the various States and Territories passing sex discrimination legislation between 1975 and 1990. This legislation forms a significant backdrop to a range of subsequent social and economic policy initiatives including the National Agenda for Women (1987) and the Australian Women's Employment Strategy (1988).

In education, as Figure 1 shows, school retention rates to year 12 are higher for girls than for boys. One reason for this is that boys are more likely than girls to continue to vocational education at Technical and Further Education (TAPE) colleges, seen in Figure 2 where lower participation rates for young women are especially notable. In higher education, as Table 1 indicates, women's participation at diploma, bachelor and postgraduate diploma levels is higher than for men, though lower at master's level and above. There are still notable gender patterns in fields of study, seen in Table 2, though women are participating in - and in some instances dominating - a broader range of fields than previously.

Schooling is constitutionally a state matter within the Australian federal system¹, so that policies in girls' education have developed unevenly amongst the States. However, the Commonwealth has taken an increasing interest in schooling policy over the past two decades, including in the area of girls' education where a number of key reports have been produced: Girls, School and Society (Schools Commission, 1975); Girls and Tomorrow (Schools Commission, 1984); the National Policy For The Education of Girls in Australian Schools (Commonwealth Schools Commission, 1987); and the National Action Plan for the Education of Girls 1993-97 (Department of Employment, Education and Training, 1993b).

1. The Australian federation comprises the federal (Commonwealth) government and six State and two Territory governments. These are: the Australian Capital Territory; New South Wales; Northern Territory; Queensland; South Australia; Tasmania; Victoria; Western Australia.

In higher education, A Fair Chance For All (Department of Employment, Education and Training, 1990) marked the government's key equity policy initiative. As a consequence of this policy, universities were required to develop and implement an annual Equity Plan targeting increased access, participation and outcomes for specified disadvantaged groups, including women.

Source: Office of the Status of Women, Australian Women's Year Book 1994, p. 55

Source: National Centre for Vocational Education Research Statistics, 1993.

Table 1. Proportion of female higher education students by levels of course, 1988-1993

Level of course	1988	1989	1990	1991	1992	1993
	%	%	%	%	%	%
PhD or higher	31.8	33.5	34.5	35.8	37.6	38.0
Masters by research	37.2	39.0	40.0	41.3	42.3	43.3
Masters by coursework	39.9	40.2	41.7	43.6	44.2	44.8
Other postgraduate (a)	52.3	55.3	55.3	56.2	55.9	57.4
Bachelor	49.0	49.9	51.1	52.3	54.0	54.6
Diploma/associate diploma	65.7	67.9	67.1	67.0	60.4	53.1
Total	51.0	52.1	52.7	53.3	53.4	53.5

(a) Includes postgraduate qualifying or preliminary, postgraduate diploma, graduate certificate and bachelor's postgraduate.

Source: Office of the Status of Women, Australian Women's Year Book 1994, p. 58.

Table 2. Proportion of female higher education students by field of study, 1988-1993

Field of study	1988	1989	1990	1991	1992	1989
	%	%	%	%	%	%
Health	68.7	70.7	72.2	73.9	74.5	74.5
Education	70.4	72.0	72.4	72.7	72.7	72.7
Arts, humanities and social sciences	66.8	67.8	68.0	67.9	67.9	67.7
Veterinary sciences	49.3	51.2	52.5	52.9	54.0	55.9
Law, legal studies	41.7	43.7	45.2	46.3	46.5	47.8
Business administration, economics	36.6	39.1	40.7	41.8	42.6	43.2
Science	36.5	37.8	38.8	39.4	40.0	40.2
Agriculture, animal husbandry	31.0	32.1	33.0	32.7	34.1	35.3
Architecture, building	30.7	32.2	33.4	33.7	34.3	33.9
Engineering, surveying	7.8	8.9	10.1	10.8	11.8	12.5
Total	51.0	52.1	52.7	53.3	53.4	53.5

Source: Office of the Status of Women, Australian Women's Year Book 1994, p. 58.

Higher education institutions also came under the ambit of the Commonwealth Affirmative Action Act, under which institutions employing more than 100 people are required to report annually to the Affirmative Action Agency on progress on implementing employment-related targets for specified equity target groups, including women. While the employment focus tends to highlight staffing rather than student equity issues, there is provision under the Act to report on progress in improving access to and participation in areas of study linked to improved employment opportunities. As a result of these policy developments, there is now comprehensive equal employment opportunity machinery in higher education institutions to deal with equity issues.

3. Women in employment

However, these educational advances do not seem to have translated into improved labour market opportunities for women. As Table 3 shows, although women now comprise over 40 per cent of the workforce, they are overwhelmingly found in part-time (including casual) employment. They are still concentrated in just two occupational groupings, clerical and sales (Figure 3), and at the lower end of the career scales (Department of Employment, Education and Training, 1992b, p. 10). As Figure 4 indicates, on average women earn 80 per cent or less of the male wage.

There are some positive reasons for this patterning. For example, many women prefer part-time work because of family responsibilities, and some women may be choosing to opt out of the high stress, competitive work environments of senior management (Limerick, 1995). But there is also an extensive body of research showing that women's inferior employment status cannot be attributed, simply, to choice. Factors contributing to women's poor labour market positioning in Australia include the historical legacy of an arbitration system, supported by male-dominated trade unions, in which men's and women's jobs were clearly distinguished and paid at different rates (O'Donnell and Hall, 1988; Burton, 1991; Poiner and Wills, 1991). Underlying these practices have been - and seem to remain - deeply embedded beliefs about men's and women's attributes and appropriate fields of work and division of labour (Game and Pringle, 1983; O'Donnell, 1984). For many women, standard working hours and working arrangements do not take account of domestic responsibilities which are still perceived primarily as the mother's rather than the parental domain. Hence, child care provision has always been inadequate and many women have been forced into the secondary labour market as a consequence in order to manage domestic responsibilities (Rimmer, 1993; Cass, 1995).

Proportion of each occupational group who were women.
Source: Office of the Status of Women, Australian Women's Year Book 1994, p. 77.

Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Women in Australia, 1993, p. 179.

Table 3. Full-time and part-time employment, January 1995

	Males	Females
Number in employment	4,595,800	3,357,600
Percent of total employment	58	42
Number in full-time employment	4,111,600	1,196,900
Percent in full-time employment	67.6	32.4
Number in part-time employment	484,200	1,387,800
Percent in part-time employment	25.9	74.1

Source: Women's Bureau, Vol. 16, No. 1, 1995.

Table 4. Proportion of female TAFE students by type of enrolment, 1987-1992

Level of course	1987		1989		1992
	'000	%	'000	%	'000	%
Basic employment skills and educational preparation	148.5	58.4	150.2	58.2	142.8	52.3
Recognised trades, technicians	299.8	44.8	288.3	44.2	335.7	43.7
Advanced trade & technician skills	43.1	37.0	39.4	38.6	40.7	31.4
Total vocational streams (a)	441.7	47.1	439.6	47.1	464.2	44.5
Recreational courses	379.9	74.4	425.6	72.9	532.2	74.6

(a) Students may be enrolled in courses at more than one level.

Source: Office of the Status of Women, Australian Women's Year Book 1994, p. 55.

Related, historically 'women's work' has generally been defined as unskilled - part of women's 'natural attributes'- regardless of the nature or complexity of the task and has, consequently, been undervalued and relatively poorly paid (Cockburn, 1983; Burton, 1987; Cox and Leonard, 1991; Department of Employment, Education and Training 1992b). This both reflects and contributes to perceptions of women's paid work as supplementary to the household income despite the fact that many women are sole earners. Finally, the male culture of some work environments has acted as a deterrent to women's employment (Limerick and Lingard, 1995). Women's position in the labour market, then, cannot be accounted for by lack of skills or by 'preference'. The problem is that choices have been constrained, women's skills have not been recognised and appropriately rewarded and women's presence at times has not been welcomed.

4. Women in vocational education and training

Related to labour market positioning, vocational education and training opportunities for women have been much more limited than those available to men (Pocock, 1988; Department of Employment, Education and Training, 1992b, Junor, 1993; Knox and Pickersgill, 1993; Australian National Training Authority, 1994c). Women constitute approximately 45 per cent of total enrolments in technical and further education (TAFE), though there has been a marked decline of older women's participation since 1989 (seen in Figure 2). The reasons for this are not fully understood, but introduction of fees in TAFE after 1987 are thought to have been a contributing factor (Department of Employment, Education and Training 1992b). As Table 4 shows, women students within TAFE tend to be clustered in the basic/preparatory and para-professional courses rather than the trades or skilled areas which account for the largest numbers of students. The concentration of women in their traditional fields of study within TAFE has increased since 1990. Then, women constituted over 60 per cent of enrolments in six fields: arts/humanities/social science; education; health and community services; veterinary science and animal care; business administration and economics; hospitality and transportation. By 1993, women predominated in only the first four of those fields (South Australian Department for Employment, Training and Further Education, 1994, p.119).² Men tend to be distributed more evenly across all TAFE courses. Particular features which have been identified as contributing to women's poor participation in TAFE include its traditional association with trades training, its pedagogical approaches (rote rather than contextual learning) and a 'masculinist culture' (Department of Employment, Education and Training, 1991).

2. These are aggregated national statistics. However, as with schooling TAFE is State-based, with each State having its own distinctive history of TAFE arrangements. Thus there is considerable variation in participation patterns among the States.

Australia's dual training system of apprenticeships and traineeships has been identified as contributing to training inequalities for women. Apprenticeships, usually four years long, provide traditional entry-level training for trades. The Australian Traineeship System was introduced in 1985 as a means of extending training provision into non-trades areas. Traineeships are much shorter than apprenticeships, generally lasting only one year. On completion, trainees receive a Certificate of Competency which may articulate into further TAFE training, whereas apprenticeships result in trades papers and access to State or Territory trade award coverage. Women are under-represented in apprenticeships (except hairdressing) which still provide the most secure, best-structured and best-paid entry into jobs (Table 5); on the other hand, they have a higher share of lower-status, shorter and poorer-rewarded traineeships (Freeland, 1991). For example, about two-thirds of traineeships have gone to women, the majority of these being in the clerical area, reinforcing the concentration of women in a narrow range of more poorly paid occupations (Table 6).

In general, many women receive inadequate training for the work they undertake. On average, women:

· do more in-house (informal, uncredentialled) training than men;
· do less external (formal, credentialled) training than men;
· have less employer support for external training;
· get less of the training dollar than men;
· bear a higher percentage of their own training costs than men
(Knox and Pickersgill, 1993; Australian National Training Authority, 1994c, p. 20).

Table 5. Male and female participation in traineeships, 1993-1994

Area	Male	Female
Clerical	268	1448
Retail	327	461
Metals and engineering	224	17
Other trades	62	9
Hospitality	21	32
Misc.	88	32

Source: AVC Task Force, Queensland, AVC/CST Trainee Statistics for 1983/94 financial year

Table 6. Male and female share of apprenticeships, 1993-1994

Type	Male	Female
Work based	183	47
Institution based	313	171

Source: AVC Task Force, Queensland, AVC/CST Trainee Statistics for 1983/94 financial year

Source: Office of the Status of Women, Australian Women's Year Book 1994, pp. 66-7.

Figure 6. Male and female share of apprenticeships, 1983-1993

Training		unit	1983	1984	1985	1986	1987	1988	1989	1990	1991	1992	1993
Apprentices
	Women	'000	13.4	14.5	18.1	14.9	16.9	16.6	16.6	23.8	17.0	15.7	14.3
	Men	'000	137.7	127.5	129.7	119.6	122.8	136.4	158.9	138.8	122.2	121.3	96.9

Source: Office of the Status of Women, Australian Women's Year Book 1994, pp. 66-7.

This is particularly true for women in part-time or casual employment - about 60 per cent of working women - and for women from non-English speaking backgrounds (Stephens and Bertone, 1995). For many women then, training is "learned on the job, not formally accredited or recognised in an industry qualification and, as a consequence, is systematically underpaid" (Knox and Pickersgill, 1993, p. 14).

To summarize: while girls have made significant advances within schooling, women and girls still remain disadvantaged within vocational education and training and within the labour market. Women are entering the labour market at a more rapid rate than men, they are concentrated in a narrow range of occupational groupings; they predominate in the lower-paid levels of the workforce; and they have less access to the kind of vocational education and training which might assist in improving employment options and career paths. This is the background to concerns with gender equity in the training reform agenda, the main elements of which are now outlined.

5. The national training reform agenda

(i) Key elements and goals

The national training reform agenda brings together parallel developments in industry-based training and school-based vocational education which had been evolving during the 1980s. Key planks in this agenda include:

· the formation of the National Training Board in 1990 to establish a national framework for the development of competency-based training across all industries (the Australian Standards Framework);

· the Finn, Carmichael and Mayer Reports in 1991 and 1992 recommending expanded and improved post-compulsory education and training options for young people;

· the introduction of the Australian Vocational Certificate Training System (AVTS) on a three year-trial basis in 1992 (formally agreed in 1995);

· the formation of the Australian National Training Authority in 1992 (operational in 1994) to develop a national training strategy and coordinate VET provision nationally.

The Australian National Training Authority (ANTA) describes the training reform agenda as an attempt: to develop a vocational education and training system which is cohesive and allows for flexibility and choice. It also aims to balance the provision of broad education and training and create a more flexible and highly skilled workforce. Such a workforce is fundamental to improved productivity and efficiency (Australian National Training Authority 1994a, p. 1).

Some of the forces driving that agenda, according to the Authority (pp. 1-2), include:

· new demands for training and skills development at all levels of the workforce;
· the provision of a training market that increased choice and improved efficiency;
· an increased emphasis on demonstrated competence rather than time served;
· more flexible, broadly based and modular approaches to training;
· greater national consistency in training standards and certification arrangements;
· improved access to training for disadvantaged groups;
· better articulation between different forms and levels of education and training.

(ii) Background

While elements of this agenda had been evolving since the early 1980s, some of the main ideas were expressed in a key report, Australia Reconstructed (Australian Council of Trade Unions/Trade Development Commission, 1987), published following a joint government-union mission to Scandinavia and Northern Europe in 1986 to examine how other countries were responding to problems of economic restructuring. The 'high skill, high productivity, high wage' strategy enunciated in Australia Reconstructed resulted in a renewed interest in human resource investment. Recognition of links between Australia's international competitiveness, the skills and flexibility of the nation's workforce, and the quality of the relationship between employers and employees within enterprises became the driving force behind both industrial relations and training reforms aimed at improving labour force productivity (Diplock, 1995).

This recognition was given effect at a national wage case in 1988 announcing principles for restructuring industrial awards and developing a new system of wage fixation linking wages to productivity increases. Award restructuring involved amongst other things:

· the development of a skills-related classification framework within awards;
· the provision of career paths through training;
· the introduction of negotiated flexibility arrangements within centrally-approved guidelines;
· the removal of discriminatory provisions from awards;
· increased scope within new awards for permanent part-time work.

(iii) The National Training Board and Competency Standards

These developments implied a need for more cooperative national approaches to restructuring. Thus in 1990, the National Training Board was created to establish a framework for the development of national competency standards, known as the Australian Standards Framework,³ across all industries and occupations as the focal point for a new, competency-based system of vocational education and training. Advantages of a competency-based system of training were seen to include:

3. The Australian Standards Framework comprises a set of 8 competency levels serving as benchmarks for the development and recognition of competency standards in relation to work across the economy. The levels are seen as hierarchical, with increased discretion, autonomy, responsibility and complexity associated with higher levels. Levels I - 3 equate, broadly, to a basic certificate; levels 4 and 5 to an advanced certificate; levels 4 to 6 with a diploma or associate diploma; levels 5 to 8 to a degree or higher degree. The National Training Board was responsible for developing the framework for levels 1 - 6, but another body, the National Office for Overseas Skills Recognition was responsible for developments in levels 7 and 8, seen as the professional skills levels. There have been tensions and articulation problems arising from this.

· a clear statement of work requirements (rather than implicit assumptions of what is required);

· recognition of the skill requirements in occupations previously deemed unskilled;

· possibility for achievement of incremental achievement via statements of competence (rather than needing to complete an entire qualification before any credit is given);

· basis for recognition of prior learning, enabling portability and the recognition of competence (Mawer and Field, 1995, p. 36)

A National Framework for the Recognition of Training was agreed to between the Commonwealth and the States to regulate such matters as accreditation of courses, registration of training providers, recognition of training programmes, and principles of recognition of prior learning and credit transfer. Competency Standards Bodies were accredited by the National Training Board to undertake the task of developing and maintaining national competency standards within and across industries. The Board also established a Women's Advisory Panel to provide guidelines for ensuring that competency standards were not gender-biased. This the Advisory Panel did through a publication Eliminating Gender Bias in the Development of National Competency Standards: An Addendum to National Competency Standards Policy and Guidelines (National Training Board, 1991). As the title suggests, these were issued after the release of general policy and guidelines early in 1991, though in 1992 the Board issued a second edition (National Training Board, 1992) which made a brief reference to problems of gender bias.

(iv) Finn, Carmichael and Mayer Reports

Complementing developments in competency-based training in industry were initiatives in entry-level vocational education and training in schools and TAFE. These were framed by three key reports: Young People's Participation in Post-Compulsory Education and Training (the Finn Report - Australian Education Council Review Committee, 1991); The Australian Vocational Certificate Training System (the Carmichael Report - Employment and Skills Formation Council, 1992); and Putting General Education to Work: The Key Competencies (the Mayer Report - Australian Education Council/Ministers of Vocational Education, Employment and Training, 1992).

The Finn Report reiterated a number of ideas which had been circulating for some time: the need for a convergence of general and vocational education; for a convergence of work and training; and for young people to possess broader 'key competencies' in addition to job-specific competencies as part of their preparation for employment. These key competencies were subsequently elaborated in the Mayer Report and were identified as: collecting, analysing and organising information; communicating ideas and information; planning and organising activities; working with others and in teams; using mathematical ideas and techniques; solving problems; using technology; and, after considerable debate, cultural understandings. The Finn Report also stressed the need for a variety of pathways for students through the education system, with improved articulation between the schooling, TAFE and higher education sectors as well as with workplaces and training providers. And it paid some attention to strategies required for the successful participation of groups previously disadvantaged by the VET system, including women and girls.

(v) The Australian Vocational Training System

The Carmichael Report set out the broad parameters of a national system for combining work and training which would effectively extend schooling to the end of year 12. It introduced the Australian Vocational Certificate Training System (AVTS) aimed at providing "a broad range of pathways combining education, training and work experience" (Employment and Skills Formation Council, 1992, p. 4) in which trainees would develop both general employment-related key competencies as well as job-specific vocational competencies. It also endorsed the shift to competency-based approaches to training, assessment and certification, "concerned with... what a person can do, rather than how long they spend in training" (p. 8).

It too addressed issues of access and equity for disadvantaged groups within the new system. It claimed for example that the AVTS would contribute to improved post-school options for women by extending provision for training to all industries, and through the shift to competency approaches, including recognition of prior learning, seen as "very important for women; they often learn the skills they use at work 'informally'..[and] through life experience and in short courses" (p. 14). But the underlying assumption was that the new policies were likely to lead to more generally equitable outcomes than previously because of their more 'inclusive' education and training provisions. In the words of one of the chief architects of the new agenda, "If we get the basics right, equity will follow" (Carmichael, 1992).

Initially, the AVTS was administered by the Commonwealth Department of Employment, Education and Training which provided funding to the States for trialing the AVTS over the three years 1992 - 1994. More will be said about these trials in the next chapter of the monograph. At the beginning of 1995, responsibility for the AVTS was transferred to the new Australian National Training Authority.

(vi) The Australian National Training Authority

The Australian National Training Authority (ANTA) was established in 1992 with responsibility to "help Australia to become a more internationally competitive and equitable society by building a national vocational education and training system which is responsive to the needs of industry and individuals" (Australian National Training Authority undated, circa 1995, preface). It became fully operational in 1994 and in that year subsumed the functions of the National Training Board. The Authority coordinates and disperses funding for vocational education and training across the States via a network of consultative arrangements with state training authorities and state and national Industry Training Advisory Boards. The States take responsibility for their own training systems, but within the Australian Standards Framework developed by the National Training Board (discussed earlier) and within ANTA guidelines which are elaborated in its National Strategy and other documents (Australian National Training Authority, 1994e).

ANTA uses two mechanisms for negotiating with the states and with various industry sectors: state training profiles and industry training plans. The profiles show how funds will be allocated for vocational education and training in each State. Advice into this process comes primarily from state Industry Training Advisory Boards, in turn linked to a national network which is resourced by ANTA. Each national Industry Training Advisory Board is required to submit a training plan to ANTA, updated annually. The industry plans are used by ANTA in negotiations with the States over their training profiles.

Amongst other things, both the state training profiles and the industry plans are supposed to indicate how equity and access issues for specified groups, including women, are to be addressed. How this will be monitored is set out in ANTA's An Access and Equity Planning Model (Australian National Training Authority, 1994). This document indicates that performance indicators will be developed for monitoring the extent to which industry training plans and the state profiles are addressing gender equity obligations. The process for doing this involves:

· establishing baseline participation and outcomes patterns;

· identifying client group needs and negotiating priority training demands with client representatives;

· identifying desired changes in participation and/or outcomes patterns;

· negotiating agreed performance goals against national indicators within state training profiles thus ensuring allocation of resources to achieve these goals (Australian National Training Authority, 1994, pp. 8-9).

These various developments in training reform acknowledged the need to make VET more accessible to groups disadvantaged by existing arrangements. More specifically, what implications were seen for women?

6. Implications for women of the training reform agenda

(i) Potential benefits

The shift to a competency-based VET system was seen to provide scope for breaking down Australia's sex segregated labour market and associated inequalities. Features regarded as useful included:

· competency-based award restructuring linked to training, involving redefinition of jobs in less sex stereotyped ways (Department of Labour South Australia, 1989);

· accreditation of previously unrecognised employment-related skills including those considered 'natural' to women and, related mechanisms for recognition and accreditation of prior learning (Connole, Hypatia and Butler, 1992);

· access to skill related career paths (Junor, 1993).

Making the agenda work for women thus became a priority for advisory groups on gender equity formed to guide policy development⁴ and a number of key reports outlining problem areas, guidelines and strategies were produced⁵. Concerns raised in these reports included the need for:

4. These groups include: the Women's Employment, Education and Training Advisory Group which advises he Commonwealth Minister for Employment Education and Training; the Women's Consultative Committee of Department of Employment, Education and Training; the Women's Advisory Panel of the National Training Board; the Women's Standing Committee of the Vocational Education, Employment and Training Advisory Committee (later, the VEET Women's Task Force); the Women's Bureau within the Department of Employment, Education and Training which played an important role through its policy, research and funding functions, notably through the Women's Research and Employment Initiatives Programme projects. In addition, relevant departments in commonwealth and state bureaucracies contain equal employment opportunity or equity units.

5. Examples include: A National Plan of Action for Women in TAFE (Department of Employment, Education and Training, 1991); From Ummm... to Aha! Recognizing Women's Skills (Cox and Leonard, 1991); Eliminating Gender Bias in the Development of National Competency Standards: An Addendum to National Competency Standards Policy and Guidelines (National Training Board, 1991); Recognition of Prior Learning: implications for women (Department of Employment, Education and Training, 1992b); Strategies To Assist Group Training Companies Increase The Number Of Women In Entry Level Training Positions (Department of Employment, Education and Training South Australia, 1993); Equity Principles In Competency Standards: Development and Implementation (Burton, 1994).

· more appropriate learning environments and curricula in traditionally male-oriented arenas (TAFE institutes, for example);

· support services for women moving into non-traditional areas of vocational education and training;

· better representation of women knowledgeable about equity issues in key decision-making arenas;

· resourcing to sustain an 'infrastructure' necessary to achieve equity goals (e.g. advisers on gender equity, inservice programmes, monitoring and evaluation units);

· issues of skills recognition and the potential for gender bias in the development of the new competency standards.

This latter concern is worth elaborating in some detail.

(ii) Redefining skills in the new competency standards

The issues were, for women:

· how to identify the skills used in work;

· how to have these skills formally recognised and incorporated into the new competency standards and assessment modes.

Cox and Leonard's (1991) research showed that these were not straightforward questions: many women in fact had difficulty in naming and recognising work-related skills gained in both home and the workplace. One report for example (Department of Employment, Education and Training, 1992b, p. 10) showed that skills were normally perceived as being:

associated with those abilities gained through formal training and certification, e.g. keyboarding... [while] the other skills that a keyboard operator may use (proofreading, time management, spelling, etc.) are not recognised as skills pertinent to the occupation. Management skills such as prioritising tasks, delegation, time management, multi-tasking, planning etc... are often perceived as 'natural attributes' by employers and women alike, and are not acknowledged or recognized.

Beeton (undated) pointed to two salient features for women: the ways in which social or interpersonal skills were taken-for-granted in employment; and the ways in which women's employment-related skills were undervalued. Social skills, she argued, were widely in demand from employers in jobs requiring communication with the public - shop assistants, counter staff, receptionists and so forth. However, because these skills tended to be viewed as 'attributes' rather than learned assets, they tended not to be taught or formally recognised. However, even those skills which were taught to women were undervalued, she argued. She gave as an example the complexity and range of skills involved in typing and shorthand: fine motor co-ordination; making decisions about lay-out and re-wording; being knowledgeable about grammar, spelling and acronyms; making judgments about urgencies and priorities. "Yet for typists, there is no regulation of courses and no standard for certification. A typist must undertake a typing test at each job she goes to in order to prove her ability" (p. 11).

There was concern however that these same biases would become entrenched in the new competency standards. This issue was addressed by the National Training Board's publication Eliminating gender bias in the development of national competency standards (1991). This document suggested that even in this sense of the term many competencies used by women were frequently overlooked in traditional evaluations of work, for example: caring; planning and juggling work priorities; tact and diplomacy. The ideas in these guidelines were developed further by Burton (1994) in Equity Principles In Competency Standards: Development and Implementation. Here, Burton distinguished between 'integrated' and 'performance' approaches to competency assessment. The performance approach, which concentrates on the observable and the measurable, results in:

· a focus on discrete tasks (e.g. typing as a task of a keyboard operator);

· the exclusion of 'hard to measure' competencies (e.g. producing a complex document within a given time, also carried out by a keyboard operator);

· a focus on the definable, tangible outputs (e.g. typing speed).

However, in Burton's view, "since women were often more skilled in the 'hard-to-pin down' competencies than men (and since they often developed these skills in the domestic rather than the 'official' economy) there was a danger in this approach of reinforcing the under-recognition of women's competencies" (p. 6). She therefore opted for an integrated view of competence which assumes that competence is an intangible construct which cannot be observed directly. Using an integrated approach therefore results in:

· focusing on work roles, not just tasks (e.g. considering the full range of skills which a keyboard operator uses, including formatting, prioritising time, consulting, etc);

· focussing on links between processes and outcomes, not just outputs (e.g. creating a good working environment which enables the speedy processing of documents; being sensitive to cultural differences in dealing with clients);

· including the hard-to-measure competencies (e.g. remaining polite under pressure; having the capacity to negotiate with people from different cultural backgrounds).

This more subjective approach, she acknowledged, raises complex questions but ones which could not be avoided. Thus Burton stressed that, while competency-based assessment and training could assist in the re-evaluation of women's work, it was not in itself a solution, the danger being - as with skill evaluation - "the more objective something appears to be, the less likely effort will be put into the equity implications of the process" (p. 33).

(iii) Recognition of prior learning

One mechanism for trying to define and assess hard-to-measure competencies was that of Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL), discussed in a report Recognition of prior learning: implications for women (Department of Employment, Education and Training, 1992b). RPL was defined in this report as:

the acknowledgment of skills and knowledge gained through formal training (industry and education), work experience and/or life experience. Commonly, these skills could be acquired through work experience or formal training/education. The main focus of RPL is what has been learnt, not how it has been learnt (Department of Employment, Education and Training, 1992b, p.15).

RPL was linked to already existing procedures for credit transfer involving comparison of one formal training/education course or unit within a course with another. However, life experience was rarely used in this process, so that "recognition [was] conditional upon how and where the learning occurred as well as what has been learnt" (p. 16). The new competency-based training environment provided scope for recognition of skills gained in a variety of ways, hence the need to find ways of doing this in a gender neutral fashion. The report, based on survey and interview data on women who had undertaken RPL procedures, concluded that RPL could assist women by:

· helping women to draw out and identify relevant skills and hence counteract the tendency to undersell skills;

· providing a mechanism for recognition and accreditation of informally gained skills, hence increasing access to vocational training;

· assisting women to gain recognition of skills to access improved career paths and vocational training through links to award and workplace restructuring;

· encouraging women to undertake formal training because their study time could be significantly reduced.

(iv) Countervailing pressures

In various ways then, the training reform agenda was seen as providing scope for improving women's access to and participation in VET. However, there are countervailing pressures associated with workplace and industrial relations restructuring, in which training reform is embedded, which could work against the interests of women workers. These include the impact on women of the 'flexibility imperative' of new production processes and workplace organisation, the shift from a centralised wage fixing system to enterprise bargaining, anomalies in award restructuring, and women's 'double burden' of paid work and family responsibilities

(v) The flexibility imperative

A recurring theme in labour market and industrial relations restructuring is the need for greater flexibility in work-practices and organisation. 'Flexibility' is itself a flexible concept incorporating a number of dimensions: more flexible ways of organising tasks (functional flexibility associated with multiskilling and broadbanding of jobs); more flexibility in hours of work and numbers of workers (numerical flexibility); and financial flexibility relating to wages. These dimensions do not work uniformly in the interests of women workers (Bramble, 1988; Lever-Tracey, 1988; Nightingale, 1995).

For example, while functional flexibility may be useful because it recognises and rewards the existing multiskilled nature of much women's work, numerical flexibility is more problematic. On the one hand, numerical flexibility if used to facilitate working arrangements more compatible with family responsibilities could benefit women. More often however, numerical flexibility tends to be associated with employer-driven demands for financial flexibility, meaning in practice a press for casual contract rather than permanent work. It is this dimension of flexibility which lies behind the growth of the low-paid casual and contract labour market where women are already clustered (Rimmer, 1993; Office of the Status of Women, 1994; Pocock, 1995).⁶ In terms of the training reform agenda, the argument is that the benefits of restructuring (multiskilling, career pathways, job security, etc.) will accrue to workers in the male-dominated core labour market comprising full-time and permanent work. At the same time, these benefits will be denied to an expanding peripheral workforce of part-time, casual, contract and temporary workers, mostly women, "whose deployment is often structured to match changing business needs....maximizing flexibility while minimising the organisation's commitment to the workers" job security and career development" (Lever-Tracey, 1988, p. 212).

6. Contract work is also expanding at the upper echelons of management and public service under the rubric of flexibility, but associated with generous remuneration packages. At this level, contract work tends to be male dominated.

(vi) Enterprise bargaining

Industrial relations restructuring is also highly problematic for women. Australia Reconstructed attempted in its industrial relations strategy to find a balance between centralised wage setting mechanisms, endorsed at the time by the Australian Council of Trade Unions, and more flexible arrangements for dealing with industrial relations at the enterprise level. Centralised wage fixing systems, in contrast to enterprise bargaining, have been shown to be more effective in closing the wage gap between men and women (OECD, 1994, p. 173). In this context, it is noteworthy that in Australia, which until recently has always had a centralised system, the wages gap between men and women is among the smallest of the OECD countries. However, more recently Australia has moved to a system of enterprise bargaining, seen by critics as likely to work against the interests of women workers (Junor, 1993; Burgmann, 1994; Hammond, 1994).

(vii) Anomalies in award restructuring

While award restructuring, as noted earlier, contains some promises for women, there are anomalies which may contribute to employer resistance to the process. Award restructuring involves, amongst other things, reclassification of existing tasks and salary scales in order to 'broadband' formerly discrete tasks and encourage multiskilling, in turn linked to more flexible and adaptive work practices. Herein lies the problem for women. Restructuring of awards to achieve broadbanding and multiskilling is in the interests of employers in relation to work traditionally undertaken by men. This is because historically the award system perpetuated a logic of creating as many different job classifications as possible, often resulting in rigid work practices and demarcation disputes. Multiskilling in this context is in employers' interests because pay increases can be offset against costly disputes and unproductive work practices (Probert, 1992).

For women, however, the logic is reversed given that much women's work is already multiskilled, though not formally recognised as such. Thus, extending classification scales and formally recognising the existing multiskilled nature of women's work would, from an employer's point of view, lead to pressures for wage rises without any offsetting benefits - and hence be resisted. Pocock (1995), for example, details a number of instances of employer resistance to award restructuring, particularly in the clerical and retail industries where women predominate.

(viii) Links between paid and unpaid work.

This latter pressure is of a rather different order. It represents a 'silence' in the restructuring agenda which nevertheless needs to be acknowledged as a significant contextual factor impacting on women's access to and participation in VET and employment. Much of the emphasis on expanding opportunities for women in training and employment has tended to neglect the reality that women in particular face a 'double burden' of paid and unpaid work, with women undertaking about 70 per cent of unpaid work at home (Office of the Status of Women, 1991). Expanded child-care provision has been the main response to this, especially since 1991, but child care provision remains inadequate and, in Australia, generally not provided by firms. Application of the International Labour Organisation Convention on 'Workers With Family Responsibilities' is resulting in some improvements, for example in provision for more flexible working arrangements, provision in some awards for parental and dependants' leave, and some greater availability of permanent part-time work. However, VET provision and employment practices still largely neglect the constraints many women face in juggling home and work.

These broader pressures, though not directly under discussion here, need to be kept in mind when assessing progress for women in VET, a point to be taken up again in the final chapter of the monograph. But to turn now to Chapter 3 which looks more closely at what has been happening 'on the ground' as policies become taken up in practice.

Chapter 3. What is happening ‘on the ground’?


1. Introduction


This chapter focuses on two arenas of reform. The first of these is the Australian Vocational Training System (AVTS) for entry level training, now formally adopted following a three-year trial phase. Reviewed here is some research on how gender equity issues were addressed in the pilot projects. Three aspects are highlighted:

· procedures for implementing equity objectives in the pilot projects;
· patterns of women’s participation in the pilot projects;
· reasons for the patterns.

The other arena is the general field of VET provision, dispersed through a network of state training agencies and private training providers. Two aspects of the new developments relevant to improving training opportunities for women in VET are discussed here:

· the effect of the shift to competency-based approaches;
· changes in the culture of training.

Given that many developments are still at an early stage it is probably more useful to talk of emerging trends rather than successful or unsuccessful outcomes. However, it is useful to focus on these early developments, first to see whether or to what extent formal gender equity goals are in fact being taken up in practice. Secondly, an examination of some of the qualitative research now being conducted around the AVTS and the new VET system may provide a better understanding of factors contributing to, or hindering, gender equity goals. At the same time, it needs to be recognised that this is a long-term policy agenda and that processes of social and cultural change are slow. Additionally, many of the structural arrangements for delivering vocational education and training are new. Caution therefore is needed in interpreting early outcomes.

2. Procedures for implementing equity objectives in the AVTS pilot projects

The AVTS pilot projects were administered at the national level by the Commonwealth Department of Employment, Education and Training. However, because schooling and VET are both state matters, each State approved and administered its own 'suite' of pilot projects. Most States established some form of broadly representative Steering Committee to take overall responsibility for the AVTS. A distinction was made between work-based and institution-based pilots, the latter being located primarily within schools using workplace experience, the former being located in workplaces with trainees receiving some form of payment and thus coming under an award structure. A number of equity-related documents were produced by the Commonwealth (Federal State) to assist in the implementation of equity objectives within the AVTS. It is instructive to examine how these documents were taken up at state and local levels and to consider the implications of this for policy outcomes. What follows is a brief review of the key Commonwealth documents and a consideration of how they were utilised at the state level.

(i) Commonwealth documents and equity

Access and Equity. Explanatory Notes for Australian Vocational Certificate Pilot Proposals (Department of Employment, Education and Training, 1992a) was the first document issued to guide State committees and individual projects officers on how to incorporate access and equity principles in their pilot projects. The notes were distributed as 'Addenda to the Pilot Project Guidelines' almost six months after pilot project guidelines had been released. They contained principles and a checklist for use as a guide in developing access and equity strategies for specific target groups. And they noted that 'access and equity criteria should not be applied absolutely to individual projects' but were to be applied across the suite of projects in each State 'in order to identify gaps and best practice'.

A framework for implementing and evaluating equity objectives in the pilot projects was set out in the Australian Vocational Certificate Training System - Equity Strategy (Department of Employment, Education and Training, 1993a). This was issued almost a year after the pilot phase had commenced. The Equity Strategy highlighted the need to address equity concerns at all stages of the life of the pilots - in selection of participants, in the actual conduct of the pilot, and during monitoring/evaluation procedures. It indicated that a "matrix of pilot projects [would] be developed and maintained - to identify gaps in the pilot coverage of equity issues in relation to the identified groups" (p. 4). In noting that women are more likely to participate in institution rather than work based training, it also indicated that the pilot streams would be separated within the matrix in order to "allow clear identification of any access problem, and facilitate their being addressed in a timely manner" (p. 4). In order to carry out this task, a question on equity was included in the application forms used to determine pilot project status, asking applicants to: Describe features of the pilot project designed to facilitate access and equity.

Another relevant Commonwealth document was the Australian Vocational Certificate Pilots National Evaluation Strategy (Department of Employment, Education and Training, 1993c). Access and equity issues were prominent in the terms of reference for the evaluation strategy:

The evaluation will assess the extent to which the Australian Vocational Certificate pilots increase industry and enterprise coverage of, and thus participation in, vocational education and training; improve the quality and relevance of vocational education and training to individuals and to industry; and address key access and equity issues (p. 6).

These were the main Commonwealth documents. How were the strategies and guidelines enunciated in them taken up at the state level?

(ii) Dealing with equity issues at the state level

As indicated, each State developed its own procedures for implementing the pilot projects. Reported first are some examples of how equity matters were taken up in one state, Queensland, drawing on research carried out by Henry and Taylor (1995a and 1995b).

Queensland established a Steering Committee to oversee implementation of the pilot projects and a joint Commonwealth/State Task Force to manage the day-to-day administration of the projects. Membership of the Steering Committee represented all major stakeholders in VET with the exception of those formally involved in equity and equal employment opportunity units (e.g. in the TAFE Commission and the State Education Department). After intensive lobbying from the Queensland Education Department's Gender Equity Unit, two nominees with expertise in equity and social justice issues⁷ were added to the Steering Committee after it had been originally constituted. One of these had to resign after a few months and was not replaced for over a year. There was no expertise from this area on the Task Force.

7. In Australia, 'social justice' has become the umbrella term to denote a concern with achieving equitable participation and outcomes for disadvantaged groups in work, education, social welfare, etc.

Despite the fairly central place of equity issues in the Commonwealth documents, examination of the minutes of the meetings of the Steering Committee reveals that there was something of a struggle to keep equity issues on the state agenda. For example, a decision was made to form a Social Justice sub-committee of the Steering Committee. The terms of reference of this sub-committee were to formulate and distribute material on social justice to those involved with the pilot projects, to ensure that these issues were addressed, to assist in integrating access and equity into all pilots, and coopt expertise from other organisations as required (Steering Committee minutes, February 1993). However, there is no record of any meetings of this sub-committee in the minutes of the Steering Committee until over a year after its formation.

Indeed, equity issues appeared to have had low priority in the Steering Committee. For example, when the Commonwealth paper Access and Equity. Explanatory Notes for Australian Vocational Certificate Pilot Proposals was discussed, concern was recorded in the minutes that equity issues should not detract from the acceptance of the new training system. Hence, a decision was made to table the document but no other action was taken. A similar fate was accorded to another paper, Australian Vocational Certificate Projects and Equity which made suggestions as to how the Steering Committee could apply specific strategies to ensure that the projects addressed equity issues. The Steering Committee argued that data gathering in relation to access and equity issues could be left to the Commonwealth Department of Employment, Education and Training.

It would appear that this rather low-key response to equity was not confined to Queensland, judging by responses from other States to the question noted earlier "Describe features of the pilot project designed to facilitate access and equity". Examination of the 1993-94 project proposals (Department of Employment, Education and Training, 1994) reveals that the blandest of descriptions was enough to 'pass' the question:

· "Appropriate access and equity measures have been adopted by the [Northern Cattle Traineeships Inc.] company, which has a good record of achievement in respect of access and equity measures" (p. 82);

· "Participation from groups traditionally under-represented in the [forest] industry would be encouraged" (p. 86);

· "Equity issues will be addressed in the [Australian Earthmovers' and Road Contractors' Federation] project";

· "Access and equity to be determined as part of the [Australian Automotive Industry Training Council] project".

Not all the descriptions were quite so mundane. For example, one project suggested that an equity concern was "discrimination against female station officers which has been a feature of QR culture for many years" (p. 79); another acknowledged the need to open up access to new areas of work in order to promote career paths for predominantly women workers from non-English speaking backgrounds (p. 60); a Fire Services project aimed at investigating "appropriate affirmative action strategies with regard to possible reduction of gender segmentation" (p. 68); and a clerical training pilot made particular mention of the need to provide child care for mothers during off-the-job training sessions (p. 93). These descriptions indicate specific problems to be tackled and hence provide a concrete basis for subsequent evaluation. But even this modest degree of specificity was rare. By and large, abstract platitudes prevailed, making dubious the possibility of any qualitative assessment of reasons for "gaps" in the pilot coverage of equity issues as suggested in the Equity Strategy.

That this degree of 'slippage' was allowed to occur highlights the failure to delineate clear procedures for enabling the monitoring of objectives "at all stages of the life of the project" as stated in the Equity Strategy and in turn confirms the somewhat marginal position of equity in the AVTS at both commonwealth and more particularly at state level. What effect did this have on the pilot projects themselves?

3. Women’s participation in the AVTS pilot projects


The Department of Employment, Education and Training has carried out three evaluations of the AVTS pilot programme. A publication synthesising the findings from each of these evaluations was due for release in May 1995, though at the time of writing this was still unavailable. Also unavailable at the time of writing was the final statistical information on women’s participation in the pilots. Discussion here will therefore be based on interim 1994 information provided by the Department of Employment, Education and Training (Table 6), on material from the draft Systemic Review commissioned by the Department of Employment, Education and Training (ACIRRT, 1994) as well as on various qualitative research studies.

Table 6 summarizes a more detailed inventory of men and women’s participation in individual projects which showed that gender patterns in the AVTS pilots continue to reflect traditional labour market patterns. The projects fall into two categories, work-based and institution-based pilots. A smaller number of trainees participated in the work-based pilots where gender patterns were particularly notable: women as pharmacy assistants and care workers with a small number in the trades; men spread more evenly though dominant in electrical, metals and transport projects. One exception was a pilot in the electrical industry in Victoria. This project initially attracted no female applicants but finished with 11 per cent of females (compared with a state average of 1 per cent rate of female participation across the industry). However, this project had made recruitment of women a priority, employing strategies such as actively searching for recruits through advertising, making use of established networks to promote the project, making presentations in schools encouraging women to apply, and providing career counselling to women expressing interest (Morley, 1994).

In the institution-based pilot projects, women fared slightly better, but remained concentrated in the traditional areas of retail, tourism and hospitality and office studies, with men dominating in the trades area. In other words, the participation patterns in the pilot projects reflected the gender segmentation of existing training arrangements and the labour market.

4. Explaining the patterns