[A-List] Fw: Women trading down for husbands

["Gary Santos" <evs@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

What is feels like to be a salaried grunch.


----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Myers" <myers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "clem clarke" <oscarptyltd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, July 13, 2003 4:31 PM
Subject: Women trading down for husbands


1. Are men becoming the new part-timers?
2. Homing instinct
3. Sperm donor must pay child support, court rules
4. Woman admits rape lies
5. From the foundry to the mophouse - men swept into scraps of jobs
6. How Did We Survive?
7. Research turns women's fertility cycle on its head
8. Call for condoms at secondary schools
9. Women trading down for husbands

(1) Are men becoming the new part-timers?

The Age, Melbourne, July 12 2003

By Wendy Tuohy

http://www.theage.com.au/text/articles/2003/07/11/1057783356043.htm

Men, it seems, are being cast by employers as the new women, while many
career women are taking on work styles traditionally owned by men. And
neither sex is entirely satisfied.

The number of permanent full-time jobs for men has decreased sharply,
pushing thousands into involuntary part-time work, according to a book
on Australian work trends to be released today.

More women are stepping into high-stress, big-overtime jobs that were
once the province of men, and large slices of the Australian workforce
have experienced intensification of their work recently, but with no pay
rise.

John Buchanan, the Sydney academic and joint author of the book
Fragmented Futures - New Challenges in Working Life, says many men in
the new part-time workforce are struggling with under-employment.

Women, while "surging" in pay if they are at the elite end of the
workforce, are often overloaded because their home-based workload has
not diminished and back-up services such as child care are woefully
inadequate.

Dr Buchanan and his three fellow researchers, including Dr Iain Campbell
of RMIT, found that for two-thirds of Australian workers, the
traditional week has all but disappeared.

Work hours are polarising between often dissatisfyingly light loads, and
extremely long (49 hours-plus) working weeks.

"Just under 20 per cent of males are now working part time, and 40 per
cent of them say they want more work," Dr Buchanan says. Many are in
blue-collar jobs, where employers are increasingly using contract and
casual work to contain costs. "On the other hand, many women, due to the
success of the women's movement, find themselves in career jobs having
to adopt male working models.

"Over two-thirds of women working overtime want shorter hours."

And far fewer Australians are working a traditional week of between 25
and 40 hours. In 1982, half the workforce worked 25 to 40 hours a week,
but 20 years later, this has dropped to a third.

One-third of full-time workers now do more than 49 hours a week.

"The change has been equally spread between growing numbers of part-time
workers and a growing number of overtime workers," says Dr Buchanan,
deputy director of the Australian Centre for Industrial Relations
Research and Training.

"What we're describing here is the breakdown of the existing model of
work.

"Casual employment has gone from virtually nothing in the '60s to around
a quarter of the workforce; it's a massive growth in part-time and
extended-hours work."

Another strong trend is the intensification of work, where workers take
on more responsibility at their existing pay.

As many middle-management jobs disappear in profit-conscious companies,
remaining staff do more work. He says "chronic understaffing" is now
common.

"Companies are staffed to the minimum requirement, then topped up with
casuals or part-timers. There is no job-training or recuperation time,
and a greater load on what is in effect a skeleton staff," Dr Buchanan
says.

He says more than a third of the Australian workforce took on more
responsibility and extra duties in the 1990s, but only 7 per cent had a
pay promotion with it.

One consequence is that work-induced stress claims rose from 4 per cent
of "compensable occupation disease" to 18 per cent in 1998.

Workers were also increasing earning pressure on themselves by raising
their "consumption aspirations".

"Consumption norms have risen, which is basically behind people wanting
to work more hours . . . When you ask people how much income do you need
to live a comfortable existence, it has risen consistently faster than
the rise in real earnings," Dr Buchanan says, quoting the research of US
academic Juliet Schor.

"Real earnings are rising more slowly than aspirations, so people are
working more hours to meet unattainable goals."

Earnings at the bottom end of the Australian pay scale had increased
dramatically slower than those for workers at the top end - and
executives had enjoyed astronomical pay rises.

For men in the lowest 10 per cent of the pay scale, wages stagnated
between 1989 and 2001, but workers in the top 10 per cent had
experienced a rise from $28 and hour to $44.

(2) Homing instinct

Sydney Morning Herald, July 12 2003

http://www.smh.com.au/text/articles/2003/07/11/1057783354668.htm

More women are abandoning careers to stay at home with their children.
But, writes Caroline Overington, they need a manly man to do it.

Here is an intriguing statistic from the recent US census: rather than
giving birth and delivering the baby straight to a nanny, American women
are increasingly staying home to look after their children.

The trend, though small, is seen as radical because it was American
women who led the campaign to get women into the workforce - and for
them to be able to stay there once their babies were born. It now seems
that some women - particularly high achievers - are ditching the
hard-fought-for privileges to be stay-at-home mums.

Writer Danielle Crittenden, the daughter of the late Australian sports
reporter Max Crittenden, lives with husband David Frum, a former White
House speech writer, and their three children in Washington. She thinks
she understands this trend, and her novel about a stay-at-home mum,
amandabright@home, is climbing the US bestseller lists.

"Today's professional women aren't thrilled by the idea of spending long
hours in the office when they have a baby at home," says Crittenden, who
grew up in Australia before moving to the US. "They don't see work as a
glamorous frontier that needs to be conquered. They grew up as latchkey
kids, or in a family where there has been a divorce, and they want
something different for their own families."

Crittenden, who is the mother of an 11-year-old daughter, a
nine-year-old son and an 18-month-old baby girl, noticed her friends
questioning the quick return to work. They were "highly educated
professionals, like lawyers determined to make partner". Then they got
married and had babies and "were totally unprepared for how it changed
their life.

"They had fully expected to go back to work and were shocked when they
discovered they didn't want to. I think many of them saw it as a kind of
status symbol, that they could afford to give up a $200,000a-year job
[and] still have the suburban mansion and the private schools, because
their husbands were doing so well.

"But they also wanted to be there for their children."

LAST month, the US Census Bureau reported that the number of
stay-at-home mums was up by 13 per cent in less than a decade. Experts
put it down to the economic boom of the 1990s which enabled some
families to give up a second income. The increasing numbers of Hispanics
in America has also contributed because they tend to be more socially
conservative, expecting women to stay at home with young children.

William O'Hare, of the children's advocacy group the Annie E. Casey
Foundation, analysed the figures and suggested that parents who were
latchkey children often wanted something different for their own
children.

Stay-at-home mums are still in the minority in the US. Just 25 per cent
of children in two-parent families have a mother who does not work. But
their numbers are growing, with 55 per cent of women returning to the
labour force within a year of giving birth in 1999, down from 59 per
cent the previous year.

In Crittenden's novel, the central character, Amanda Bright, was raised
to be career-oriented by her feminist mother. When her first child, Ben,
is born, she goes straight back to work. But when Amanda drops Ben at
the day-care centre, she can hear his cries from the car park, even with
"the windows rolled up and the radio switched on". When her second child
is born she decides to stay home. That doesn't immediately work out
either: the family misses her income, and she feels bored, insecure and
under-appreciated.

The story has resonated with many professional women who also found it
difficult to give up careers even though they loved spending time with
their children. Mary James, founder of Moms Clubs in America, said it
was hard to leave work because she had just landed her dream job. "But
my baby was like a bungy cord on my heart - whenever I thought about
leaving her to go to the office, BOING, I wanted desperately to be with
her. I finally realised that if I returned to work, I'd be leaving her
at seven in the morning and not getting back until almost seven at
night. I wouldn't be raising her, the day-care person would be.

"In the 1970s and 1980s, we bought into the idea that smart women should
be in the office earning an income and being independent. But the longer
we did that, the more tired we became and the more we realised that
while our brains might like the office, our hearts wanted to be home
with our kids.

"And, the benefits of the office were, frankly, overrated. Commuting,
office politics, who needs it?"

Not that staying home with baby is easy. Like many women, James is "not
one of those who gets a kick out of housekeeping, and I do get tired of
reading the same book out loud for the 20th time. Creative things to do
with my kids don't come easy to me." Besides, James was often lonely,
which was why she began the Moms Clubs.

Now there are 1800 chapters, plus other groups like SAHMs (Stay at Home
Moms) and Main Street Moms, both of which report strong membership.

Besides Crittenden's popular book, there has been a flurry of
publications such as All Mothers Work: a Guilt-Free Guide for the
Stay-at-Home Mom and Staying Home: From Full-Time Professional to
Full-Time Parent. Besides that, the National Association of At-Home
Mothers has started a magazine called At-Home Mother which tackles such
topics as: "What to say when people ask: 'And what do you do?"'

For reference, the association warns against the "defensive response"
which goes along the lines of: "Oh, I'm a chauffeur, activities planner,
chef, nurse, teacher, interior decorator, landscape designer,
nutritional expert, maintenance engineer and child-development
specialist." This answer "bores people silly, or makes them wonder
what's the matter with you that you're trying so hard to impress". The
correct response is: "I'm a full-time mum."

Crittenden asks, "What's so embarrassing about saying, 'I am raising my
own children?"'

Crittenden and her peers can afford not to worry about status in their
marriages and in society because they have no financial need to work and
have support at home. She has a husband, a part-time nanny, a career, a
home office, and the ability to set her own hours. She realises she is
blessed, which is why she stresses that her main character, Amanda, was
not drawn from her experience.

But many reviewers have pointed out similarities, particularly the fact
that Amanda creates a workplace drama for her husband with an ill-timed
remark. Crittenden did the same when she wrote an email giving Frum
credit for coining the term "axis of evil" when he was a speech writer
for President George Bush. The White House was not amused.

"But Amanda is not me," she insists. "I was already working from home
when my first child was born so I didn't have to go from the boardroom
to the playroom. And, except for when the children were very small, I
tried to get three or four hours of help every day so I could write."

In other words, Crittenden has what surveys show most women want: a mix
of paid work and time with their children. "What I've seen, from the
late '80s into in this new century, is a swing back to staying home, but
it's not the same kind of staying home that my mother did. It is mothers
combining working and staying home, balancing the scales in a whole new
way. We're a lot more active, participating in business and in the
community, while being the hands-on raisers of our children."

Julia Tanner is the mother of two daughters, Brooke, 2, and Mia, six
months. She used to be a lawyer in Phoenix and Washington. Now she is
the president of the Mothers of North Arlington Club (for non-working
mums and mums who do).

"We are fortunate," she says, of her family. "My husband is a lawyer so
he earns a good income, and I have the luxury of not having to work. I
could have chosen to go back to work and, in some ways, work is more
rewarding, more intellectually stimulating for me. But caring for the
children is rewarding in a different way. I would not say I love it all
the time. I would say I love it a lot of the time ..."

NOT surprisingly, Crittenden comes in for some heat from feminists, who
think she is a hypocrite. Well-known activists like Erica Jong also
loathed Crittenden's first book, What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us, which
encouraged women to back away from sexual freedom and careers in favour
of marriage and child-rearing.

Critics say that her new book promotes a lifestyle the author would
never dream of adopting for herself. But Crittenden says that isn't
true.

"I'm not saying to any woman you shouldn't have a few hours a day to
yourself," she says. "I always had that time. But what I hear feminists
saying is, 'Women should go to work because that's more fulfilling than
staying home raising babies', or else they say men should do more of the
child-rearing so women can do more of the paid work, and I just think
those ideas are dead.

"The women I talk to ... would rather raise their own children, not have
a paid care-giver do it, and not have their husbands do it, either. To
me, that's just another way of saying there is something wrong with
being at home.

"What I see modern professional women saying is, 'No, I don't want you
to look after the baby so I can go to the office. I want you to be a
manly man and go to work and make a lot of money so that I can stay home
and be with my children."'

(3) Sperm donor must pay child support, court rules

The Age, Melbourne, July 12 2003

By Susan Murdoch

http://www.theage.com.au/text/articles/2003/07/11/1057783356093.htm

A man who donated sperm the "old fashioned way" to a lesbian couple, but
was then forced to pay child support, highlighted the need for lesbians
to have access to anonymous donors, a gay rights activist said
yesterday.

The Family Court found that because the child was conceived through
sexual intercourse and not artificial means, the Victorian man should
pay maintenance.

Family Court judge Joseph Kay said the man was liable despite an initial
agreement with the lesbian couple that precluded him from any parental
right of access and excluded any financial responsibility.

In his reasons for judgement, Justice Kay said: ". . . especially where
conception was 'in the usual and customary manner,' the biological
parent is the parent at law".

Gay rights activist Ray Croome said the case highlighted the need for
uniform laws across all states and territories allowing lesbian women
access to anonymous sperm donation. "If lesbian women could access
anonymous sperm donation in Victoria, it wouldn't create these legal
problems," he said.

The court heard that the biological parents of the child had once been a
couple, but the woman later ended the relationship and entered another
with a woman.

The woman, known only as BM, later asked the man, identified as ND, to
help the female couple conceive.

ND had sex with BM in the presence of her partner and the three later
made a written agreement that he would have no legal rights to the
child.

Men's Rights Agency director Sue Price said the decision could deter men
from donating sperm. "What should be relevant is the intention of the
parties," Ms Price said.

"We have three adults making a decision - whether you think it's right
or wrong - in reality it goes on. So, do we say to these adults well
'I'm sorry you can't make those decisions by yourself and we're now
going to look for the man in the trio to pay for the support of the
child."

Justice Kay upheld an earlier decision by a magistrates court that
ordered ND be assessed to pay child support, a process that must be
undertaken before family benefits can be paid.

Counsel for ND, David Schetzer, said the man did not wish to comment.

- AAP

(4) Woman admits rape lies

The Age, Melbourne, July 11 2003

By Dan Silkstone

http://www.theage.com.au/text/articles/2003/07/10/1057783286180.htm

She was a university lecturer, her husband a classical musician. She
told the police he raped her, in front of their children, on the floor
of their suburban living room. She lied.

The County Court heard yesterday that a woman falsely accused her
husband of rape in January 2001 and convinced their two teenage children
to lie to police about witnessing the fictional assault. Prosecutor
Michael Tinney said the woman was anxious her marriage was in trouble
and thought she would lose assets if it ended.

She pleaded guilty to attempting to pervert the course of justice. Her
name cannot be revealed because it would lead to identification of her
children.

The couple appeared to lead a life of prosperity. They were highly
regarded in their fields and had a collection of south-eastern suburbs
properties.

But behind this respectability, the court heard, was a family wracked
with dysfunction.

The woman told police at the Caulfield station that her husband entered
the house through a living room window on January 13, threw her to the
ground and raped her in front of the children. She said he then pointed
at their daughter and told her: "Next time it will be you."

But Mr Tinney said the man was staying with a relative after a domestic
dispute three days earlier and had returned to discuss the couple's
separation. He said the man left without incident.

The couple's son and daughter told police they had witnessed the rape
but suspicions were raised when the man revealed his daughter was out
shopping with a friend at the time of his visit.

Surveillance footage and testimony from the daughter's friend backed his
claim.

The court heard the woman then pressured her daughter's friend to change
her version of events, offering her money to retract her statement.

The children admitted to police that they had lied but later tried to
retract their admissions.

Police listening devices captured the woman rehearsing the rape story
with her children, including mock court scenes where she cross-examined
them.

Defence barrister Wendy Duncan said the family had been "terribly
dysfunctional" and that the false claim had been like "a snowball" that
got out of control. She said the woman had suffered years of physical
and psychological abuse from her husband.

"The fact that a wife and two children have turned against a father in
this fashion speaks very loudly," she said.

The plea continues before Judge Leslie Ross.

(5) From the foundry to the mophouse - men swept into scraps of jobs

Sydney Morning Herald, July 12 2003

By Sherrill Nixon, Workplace Reporter

http://www.smh.com.au/text/articles/2003/07/11/1057783358425.htm

For over 16 years, Dragomir Glisovic was a full-time process worker
enjoying regular overtime at the CSR sugar refinery.

When the refinery closed in 1992, "everybody was retrenched, everybody
went home" and Mr Glisovic has not found a full-time job since.

His plight is familiar to many men who lost full-time work in the 1990s
downturn. Increasingly, it is also the plight of young men who are
finding the only way into the workforce is through casual and part-time
work.

University of Sydney workplace academic John Buchanan said: "What's
traditionally been a woman's problem is now becoming a universal
problem."

For 11 years, Mr Glisovic has supported his wife and son by going from
casual cleaning job to casual cleaning job, two years here and six
months there.

He has been with his current employer for two years, and on his current
assignment - as a cleaner at Wetherill Park TAFE, working mostly broken
shifts - for about nine months.

But his requests to the contractor employing him to be made permanent
have been fruitless. "Too many promises, they never come true . . . to
give me a permanent job is not even thought about," said Mr Glisovic,
59, of St Johns Park.

Since 1988, the proportion of men in casual jobs has doubled to about 24
per cent, and is now much closer to women's traditionally high level of
casual work.

Dr Buchanan is co-author of a new book, Fragmented Futures - New
challenges in working life, which says the modern labour force may give
greater flexibility, but more to the employer's benefit than the
employee's.

Mr Glisovic might count himself lucky to have a job at all. Employment
rates for men in their mid-50s have fallen from nearly 90 per cent in
1981 to 70 per cent in 2001. "In other words, in the early 1980s about
10 per cent of 'eligible men' in their mid-50s were missing from the
workforce; by 2001 nearly one third of them were missing," the authors
wrote.

Much of that unemployment is from the shrinking of the manufacturing
sector. It accounted for 26 per cent of jobs in 1966, but only 12 per
cent last year.

In contrast, the number of contract cleaners has more than doubled since
1987 to more than 90,000.

The union representing Mr Glisovic, the Liquor Hospitality and
Miscellaneous Workers Union, recently told the Senate poverty inquiry
that half of its contract cleaner members work fewer than 30 hours a
week, with a quarter working fewer than 20.

"Cleaning is clearly an extreme example of a larger trend towards
short-hour work which makes it difficult for a range of Australians to
piece together a living," it said.

(6) How Did We Survive?

Authored by:Unknown Publishing Date: 1.2.2003

http://www.seniormag.com/whitt/survival.htm and
http://flatratetech.com/pub85.htm

How did we survive......

Looking back, it's hard to believe that we have lived as long as we
have.....

My Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread mayo on the same
cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem to
get food poisoning.

My Mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter AND I used to eat it raw
sometimes too, but I can't remember getting E-coli.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors, or cabinets, and
when we rode our bikes we had no helmets.

We played with toy guns, cowboys and Indians, army, cops and robbers,
and used our fingers to simulate guns when the toy ones or my BB gun was
not available.

Some students weren't as smart as others or didn't work hard so they
failed a grade and were held back to repeat the same grade. That
generation produced some of the greatest risk-takers and problem
solvers. We had the freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we
learned how to deal with it all.

Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of
a pristine pool (talk about boring), the term cell phone would have
conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and a pager was the school PA
system.

We all took gym, not PE... and risked permanent injury with a pair of
high top Ked's (only worn in gym) instead of having cross-training
athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors. I
can't recall any injuries but they must have happened because they tell
us how much safer we are now. Flunking gym was not an option... even for
stupid kids! I guess PE must be much harder than gym.

Every year, someone taught the whole school a lesson by running in the
halls with leather soles on linoleum tile and hitting the wet spot. How
much better off would we be today if we only knew we could have sued the
school system.

Speaking of school, we all said prayers and the pledge and stayed in
detention after school and caught all sorts of negative attention for
the next two weeks. We must have had horribly damaged psyches.

I can't understand it. Schools didn't offer 14 year olds an abortion or
condoms (we wouldn't have known what either was anyway) but they did
give us a couple of aspirin and cough syrup if we started getting the
sniffles.

What an archaic health system we had then. Remember school nurses? Ours
wore a hat and everything.

I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was
allowed to be proud of myself.

I just can't recall how bored we were without computers, PlayStation,
Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital cable stations. I must be repressing that
memory as I try to rationalize through the denial of the dangers could
have befallen us as we trekked off each day about a mile down the road
to some guy's vacant 20, built forts out of branches and pieces of
plywood, made trails, and fought over who got to be the Lone Ranger.
What was that property owner thinking, letting us play on that lot. He
should have been locked up for not putting up a fence around the
property, complete with a self-closing gate and an infrared intruder
alarm.

Oh yeah... and where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got
that bee sting? I could have been killed!

We played king of the hill on piles of gravel left on vacant
construction sites and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48 cent
bottle of mercurochrome and then we got our butt spanked. Now it's a
trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $49 bottle of
antibiotics and then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for
leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat.

We didn't act up at the neighbor's house either because if we did, we
got our butt spanked (physical abuse) ... and then we got our butt
spanked again when we got home.

Mom invited the door to door salesman inside for coffee, kids choked
down the dust from the gravel driveway while playing with Tonka trucks
(remember why Tonka trucks were made tough... it wasn't so that they
could take the rough berber in the family room), and Dad drove a car
with leaded gas.

Our music had to be left inside when we went out to play and I am sure
that I nearly exhausted my imagination a couple of times when we went on
two week vacations. I should probably sue the folks now for the danger
they put us in when we all slept in campgrounds in the family tent.

Summers were spent behind the push lawnmower and I didn't even know that
mowers came with motors until I was 13 and we got one without an
automatic blade-stop or an auto-drive. How sick were my parents?

Of course my parents weren't the only psychos. I recall Donny Reynolds
from next door coming over and doing his tricks on the front stoop just
before he fell off. Little did his Mom know that she could have owned
our house. Instead she picked him up and swatted him for being such a
goof. It was a neighborhood run amuck.

To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they
were from a dysfunctional family. How could we possibly have known that
we needed to get into group therapy and anger management classes? We
were obviously so duped by so many societal ills, that we didn't even
notice that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac!

How did we survive?

(7) Research turns women's fertility cycle on its head

The Age, Melbourne. July 10 2003

By Jamie Berry

http://www.theage.com.au/text/articles/2003/07/09/1057430274874.htm

Women can sometimes ovulate several times in a month, according to
scientists in Canada, whose recent study could rewrite biology books.

If verified, the finding would overturn traditional wisdom that women
produce an egg cell once a month.

It would also help explain why "natural" methods of birth control, based
on the idea that ovulation can be predicted, often fail.

"We are literally going to have to rewrite medical textbooks," said
Roger Pierson, director of the Reproductive Biology Research Unit at the
University of Saskatchewan, who led the study. "It's exactly why the
rhythm method doesn't work."

Standard medical science says a woman has a cycle running roughly 28
days in which an egg ripens, is released by the follicle, drops into the
fallopian tube, and then is either fertilised or shed during
menstruation. Writing in the journal Fertility and Sterility, Dr Pierson
and colleagues found this did not always happen.

But Melbourne couple John Billings and his wife Lyn Billings told The
Age yesterday that the Canadian study was "nonsense".

The couple developed the Billings Method - a natural fertility control
technique - in 1953. This method teaches women to recognise if they are
fertile or infertile at any time of the month by being aware of their
vaginal discharge.

Dr Lyn Billings said trials had shown 99 per cent effectiveness and she
said the Canadian study was "completely ridiculous".

"They published it in quite a reputable American journal, which is a
pity," she said. "(But) it's completely false."

Dr John Billings said the study was "an absolute clanger for this
particular person who's supposed to be directing research into
reproductive biology". In the study, Dr Pierson, veterinarian Gregg
Adams and graduate student Angela Baerwald did daily, high-resolution
ultrasound scans on 63 women for a month, which allowed them to see the
follicles very clearly.

Of those 63 women, all had normal menstrual cycles, but only 50 had
normal ovarian cycles, Dr Pierson said.

Thirteen of the women ovulated multiple times, in various ways.

Of the other women, 40 per cent had up to three waves of activity by the
follicles, any one of which could result in the production of an egg.

But Dr John Billings said: "What he's describing simply doesn't happen.

"It's absolutely impossible for two ovulations, or more ovulations to
occur in a cycle on different days."

- with Reuters

(8) Call for condoms at secondary schools

The Age, Melbourne, July 10 2003

By Andra Jackson

http://www.theage.com.au/text/articles/2003/07/09/1057430274868.htm

The State Government will be asked to make condoms available in schools
to counter rising rates of sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted
pregnancies among teenagers.

Deputy director of the Centre for Adolescent Health at Melbourne's Royal
Children's Hospital, Susan Sawyer, is making the call after an American
study's findings on condom availability in schools.

Professor Sawyer said the study found students who can get condoms at
high school do not begin sexual activity any earlier than those at
schools that do not provide condoms.

"There is evidence, actually, that people from these particular schools
where this form of education took place were acting in a more
responsible way sexually," she said.

"Given the increasing rates of sexually transmitted infections we are
seeing in our younger people, and given the high rates of unplanned
pregnancy in Australian teenagers, these are the sorts of approaches
that I think Australian schools need to be really seriously
considering."

The study looked at the impact of condom availability on 4166
adolescents in grades nine to 12 in Massachusetts high schools where
condoms were and were not available.

Condoms are supplied at 431 schools in the US through school health
staff, not vending machines, which Australian education authorities had
rejected.

Professor Sawyer agreed condoms should be available through school
health staff, not via vending machines.

The study findings have just been published in the American Journal of
Public Health.

A key finding was that students in schools with condom availability
programs were slightly less likely to report having had sex than
students at other schools. Another was that sexually active teenagers at
schools with condom availability programs were twice as likely to have
used a condom in their last sexual encounter.

"One of the concerns within the Australian community and indeed
internationally from parents and schools was that this will be an
invitation for children to be sexually active," Professor Sawyer said.
"The study provides evidence that this is not the case."

Noting that American schools in the study promoted condom availability
within a broader sexual health program, Professor Sawyer said this
reinforced the need for an integrated approach.

Professor Sawyer said she would send a copy of the report to the State
Government.

A spokesman for Education Minister Lynne Kosky said last night she would
want to see a copy of the report before she could comment.

(9) Women trading down for husbands

Christine Jackman

The Australian, July 12, 2003

GROWING numbers of highly educated, well-paid women are "marrying down",
partnering men who do not have university degrees and earn less than
traditional husbands.

A new study shows women in couples where both partners work full-time
are much more likely to have university degrees than men.

The study also showed men in these couples earn less than men in
partnerships or marriages where the woman worked part-time or not at
all.

Author of the study, Mark Western, from the University of Queensland,
said high- income women were now facing a situation where they had
effectively priced themselves out of the marriage market, where women
have traditionally coupled with men who earn more than they do. "I don't
like describing it as a market but ... it appears men are 'marrying up'
in these relationships," Dr Western said. "My suspicion would be that
it's a trend that is probably growing, where women have higher education
and more of the power financially in a couple."

The study found 34 per cent of women without children in couples where
both partners worked full time, had bachelor's degrees, compared to 25
per cent of men.

That proportion increased slightly to 35 per cent of women with
children, but remained the same for men.

Dr Western said it was possible some women in these partnerships were
working to "compensate for the man not earning enough". But the fact
these double-income households boast higher overall earnings than any
other household types suggested it was unlikely the women were working
because they were in dire financial need.

"It does look like some of these women may be in full-time employment to
offset their partners having a lower income," he said.

"But at the same time, these women are very, very highly educated and
attitudinally, they value full-time work as part of their identity." Dr
Western said.

Asked to rate their attitudes to work and family, women in
double-full-time couples were more likely to say they would work "even
if I did not need the money".

Full-time working women with full-time working partners and dependent
children gave that statement 4.7 on a seven-point scale where seven was
"strongly agree"; those without children rated it 4.9.

In contrast, non-working women with fulltime working husbands rated it
at 4.3 if they had children and 4.4 if they did not.

Women in double-full-time couples also strongly believed "a working
mother can establish just as good a relationship with her children as a
one who does not work for pay".

Dr Western said he and his co-author and partner Janeen Baxter had been
surprised by the figures showing women's higher education levels in
double-full-time couples.

--
Peter Myers, 21 Blair St, Watson ACT 2602, Australia
http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers          ph +61 2 62475187
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