Towards a Net Zero Workforce: Overcoming Structural Barriers

Australian governments – national, state/territory and local – are taking seriously the transition to a “net zero” economy. This includes establishment of the new national Net Zero Authority “to ensure that the workers, industries and communities … can seize the opportunities of Australia’s net zero transformation.” We will soon see “huge public spending to kickstart a new era of green industries” that will “drive economic change”, says Treasurer Jim Chalmers. The primary driver of these new industries: clean electricity.

Skilling for a “net zero” economy has become a major discussion point with Australian industry, government, economists and non-profits. The comprehensive Jobs and Skills Australia (JSA) report, The Clean Energy Generation: workforce needs for a net zero economy (October 2023), works to define the clean energy workforce, identify critical occupations and make recommendations. The study identifies the industry workforce requirements in energy supply, energy demand, enabling clean energy workforce, carbon lifecycle, emissions-intensive sectors and transitioning sectors.

The JSA report outlines how a net zero transformation “presents an unprecedented opportunity to revitalise the Australian education and training sector”, in which “Australia can be a renewable energy superpower.” This is heady stuff.

Source: Global Australia

Three issues that need to be addressed in a net zero workforce strategy: the challenge of recruiting women; how literacy and numeracy (“foundation skills”) needs will hold us back; and structural issues in Australia’s post-secondary education system. These are not the only issues (engagement of First Nations and migrants into this workforce are also essential), but possibly the most significant barriers to be overcome.

Women in the Net Zero Workforce

Not surprisingly, almost all the 38 occupations identified in the JSA report as essential for net zero are traditionally “male” roles in engineering, transport, plumbing, electricity distribution, building, metals and machinery, agriculture, chemistry, mining and other trades. The report (p. 16) acknowledges the predominantly male characteristics of the current workforce will hold it back: “The clean energy sector cannot grow at the scale required without the participation of half of Australia’s population, but this won’t happen without addressing significant barriers that exist. Many female engineers report experiencing gender discrimination and bullying in the workplace and do not feel they have equal access to career progression opportunities, salary advancement or mentoring. The energy sector also has the third highest incidence of workplace sexual harassment, with 71% of women having experienced sexual harassment in the last 5 years.”

This is consistent with research into Australia’s vocational education and training (VET) sector. “There is no increase in the female composition of the male-dominated trade sectors over the 20 years, consistently remaining at under 2%. This continuing gender segregation is a sign that gender stereotyping of occupations remains a powerful influence on the career paths for males and females,” writes Dr Karen Struthers. “Female composition of trades in the manufacturing, automotive, electro-technology and construction industries in Australia has generally remained stagnant at under 2%…. Advocates of change have been increasing their efforts to reduce gender segregation of the trades. Yet this research indicates that action will be more effective if the low participation of women in male-dominated trades is elevated from a social issue to a social and economic problem of national significance.” (Italics are mine.)

The JSA report commences that elevation of female participation to an issue of national significance, calling for “an acknowledgement that safe workplaces are ultimately the responsibility of industry (employers and employees) to improve the sector’s culture.”

The report includes three recommendations:

1.       Ensure financial supports and incentives for women in trades are genuinely at the scale required to generate transformational change in the workforce’s composition and culture;

2.       Explore opportunities to directly support employers to attract, employ, mentor, train and cluster female trade apprentices to increase retention outcomes; and

3.       Pre-empt targeted interventions to increase women’s safe and successful participation in the clean energy workforce through: targeted recruitment drives and training programs; employer focused initiatives to promote gender representation in hiring processes and women’s independence and decision making in the workplace; support for flexible working arrangements; mandating the provision of suitable amenities for all workers; and concrete and practical programs to improve the safety, culture and appeal of the sector for women and all underrepresented groups.

These recommendations outline the beginnings of a strategy, but much more needs to be done – requiring substantial resourcing – to change the male-dominated culture of industry training, much of the VET system and the industries themselves, so that women start to feel confident and safe to participate in the traditional male-dominated trades. We will NOT achieve our net zero workforce goals without addressing these issues. It’s time for a “whole of government” and industry to make that happen.

Foundation Skills – Language, Literacy and Numeracy

The JSA report mentions foundation skills (broadly defined as language, literacy, numeracy and digital skills, abbreviated as “LLND”) but does not present strategies to address how these skills gaps hold back the development of the workforce. An estimated 3 million Australians – at least 20% of the adults – “lack the basic literacy, numeracy and digital skills to gain better jobs and participate fully in society.” For First Nations people, 40% of adults have minimal English literacy, which can rise as high as 70% in remote communities. Peak business organisations Business Council of Australia (BCA) and Australian Industry Group (AIG) have long expressed concern about workplace literacy, with AIG stating, “almost all employers experience low levels of literacy and numeracy that impact on their business.”

Australia consistently cannot meet the requested demand for adult literacy assistance (considering much of the need is not even expressed): the Reading Writing Hotline notes that it cannot refer callers to suitable provision for 13% of calls, peaking at 48% of requests from the Northern Territory. “Australia’s skills are not keeping pace with the demands of work and life in the 21st century, and that proficiency declines with socioeconomic status,” says the Australian Parliament’s report, Don’t take it as read: Inquiry into adult literacy and its importance. To really develop this workforce, we need a strong national commitment. The Commonwealth’s current foundation skills strategies are a great start but will need strong and continued support, sustained over many years.

Structural Issues in Australia’s Post-Secondary Education System

The JSA report does not discuss the profound splits in Australian post-secondary education, which is one system with two distinct sectors – universities on one side, and VET on the other – with different funding models (VET students are generally funded at 50% of university students), different language and acronyms, and different types of providers with different business models. The great majority of higher education (university) courses are delivered by public universities, whereas the majority of VET is delivered by private for-profit companies. Although “TAFE” is sometimes used as a way to refer to VET, each year almost 75% of VET students enrol with 3500+ private for-profit providers. Although private VET companies receive only about 20% of total government funding, they do garner over half VET Student Loans funding. The result is an unbalanced system that operates on a “cost-plus” so that any innovations – such as new “net zero” training places – will need to provide major incentives to meet private VET profit margins of 30% for them to consider participating. This is NOT the way to address a major workforce development project, yet the JSA does not analyse these underlying structural issues.

Australia’s VET system is still recovering from the VET FEE-HELP scandals that plagued VET, which the Sydney Morning Herald described as “the biggest public policy scandal in Australian history: the systematic rorting of the vocational education and training system.” Australia’s VET sector carries an unfortunate legacy of poor credibility that no amount of “re-branding” and public relations can change easily: VET will remain a poor cousin to universities. The “marketisation” of VET has not, generally, resulted in higher efficiency. Although TAFEs – and where they can, not-for-profit adult and community education providers – can be relied on to respond to these “net zero” training initiatives, any reliance on thousands private VET providers to deliver such training will inevitably run into significant problems, as recent problems with international VET students have shown.

Film review of On the Basis of Sex

(This film review of “On the Basis of Sex” appeared in the Australian Jewish News on 14 February 2019.)

Directed by Mimi Leder; written by Daniel Stiepleman; starring Felicity Jones, Armie Hammer, Justin Theroux, Sam Waterston, Kathy Bates and Cailee Spaeny.

*****

United States Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg must be one of the most powerful Jewish women in the world. Sitting on the US Supreme Court since 1993 (appointed by President Clinton), Ginsburg is one of three Jews and three women currently serving – and one of the four remaining liberal/progressive judges. The recent controversy surrounding the appointment of Justice Brett Kavanagh (a conservative Catholic) shows how fraught the politics of the US Supreme Court currently is.

As topical as current Court machinations are, the film “On the Basis of Sex” reaches back in history to provide a dramatic re-creation of 15 formative years of Ginsburg’s early life and career, from the late 1950s to the early 1970s. The film opens in 1956, when Ruth is commencing Harvard Law School, one of only nine women to enter that year. To the rousing chords of the gridiron football fight song, “10,000 Men of Harvard”, she marches into the Law School building, her blue dress standing out in a field of grey suits. She too stands out as a student, despite the efforts of some professors not to acknowledge her presence.

The young Ginsburg is played by British actress Felicity Jones (“The Theory of Everything”). Ginsburg’s husband, fellow Harvard Law School graduate and taxation expert Marty Ginsburg (Armie Hammer in his second Jewish role, following “Call Me by Your Name”) must surely be one of the most ideologically sound and “liberated” Jewish males ever to appear on screen: he shares child rearing, he cooks (better than Ruth) and looks out for her career. Despite being first in her class at both Harvard and Columbia Law Schools, Ruth was denied every job she applied for immediately out of school, given excuses of “too Jewish” or “the wives would be jealous”. Instead she commenced lecturing at Rutgers University, Newark, replacing the African-American teacher who had left.

The young Ruth is disappointed at not practicing law, but grabs an opportunity that Marty discovers of a man not allowed to claim a carer tax deduction, one that women can claim. The Ginsburgs see the political opportunity in attacking gender discrimination through a man’s case rather than a woman’s. The second half of the film charts this case, in which they enlist Melvin Wulf (Justin Theroux), the Jewish head of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

Powerful female director Mimi Leeder (“Deep Impact”, “ER”) helms the film and ensures that the normally uncinematic idea of equal rights for women is brought to life on screen. There’s no violence, just a great deal of wordplay: “The word woman does not appear in the US Constitution,” a judge tells Ruth. “Neither does freedom,” she responds. The film’s deepest insights come in illustrating how laws change, often readied by political protests: “We are not asking the court to change the law; we are asking you to give our country the right to change,” Ruth also tells the judges.

Screen icons Sam Waterston and Kathy Bates appear respectively as Erwin Griswold, Dean of Harvard Law and later US Solicitor General, and Dorothy Kenyon, lawyer, feminist and civil rights activist. Perhaps the most touching performance comes from Cailee Spaeny as the Ginsburgs’ daughter Jane, exhibiting as a teenager the same activist impulses as her parents. (In real life, Jane also attended Harvard Law, and now teaches at Columbia Law. Her daughter Clara, Ruth’s grand-daughter, also attended Harvard Law; they are possibly the only family with three generations of women – and especially Jewish women – to attend that school.) Not coincidentally, scriptwriter Daniel Stiepleman is the nephew of Marty Ginsburg and had direct access to Ruth, who we see in a brief cameo outside the Supreme Court.

Despite its slightly off-putting title (would “on the basis of gender” be any better?), the film is likely to enter the pantheon as one of the best Jewish female “biopics” ever. While the ending is not in doubt (surely all who watch the film know she wins the case), the film provides an inspirational role model to women – and especially Jewish women – considering the law as a career.

Film review of Gett – The Trial of Viviane Amsalem

(This review of “Gett, The Trial of Viviane Amsalem” appeared in a slightly different form in the Australian Jewish News on 23 October 2014.)

Directed and written by Ronit and Shlomi Elkabetz

Starring Ronit Elkabetz, Simon Abkarian, Menashe Noy, Sasson Gabay and Eli Gorstein

There are few more dramatic moments captured on film than courtroom interplay, seen in the best courtroom dramas such as “Twelve Angry Men”, “A Few Good Men” and “To Kill A Mockingbird”.  But despite the many thousands of Jewish films over the past 100 years, there has only been one great Jewish courtroom drama – “Judgment at Nuremberg”.

That was then.  Now there’s a second one, and it’s the opening night film in the Jewish Film Festival.  “Gett, The Trial of Viviane Amsalem” is nothing but courtroom drama:  no exteriors, no back story and no historic replays.

At its simplest, “Gett” is Viviane’s (Ronit Elkabetz) attempt to get a Gett, the religious Jewish divorce, from her passive-aggressive husband Elisha (Simon Abkarian).  The action takes place over five years, with countless appearances by Viviane with her advocate Carmel Ben Tavin (Menashe Noy), a secular son of a noted rabbi.  Despite the long-term separation and the clear breakdown of their marriage – they seem temperamentally unsuited in all ways – Elisha steadfastly refuses the divorce, even when ordered to by the three rabbinic judges, and is even willing to suffer a short stay in jail.

The point of “Gett” is crystal clear:  women, at least in matters of marriage and divorce, are second-class citizens in Israel, and are effectively powerless.  Viviane rarely speaks in court, and is a virtual bystander in decisions on her own fate.  As Viviane, Ronit Elkabetz gives a breathtaking performance of controlled fury.  She also co-directed and co-directed the film with her brother Shlomi Elkabetz.  This is the third of their trilogy about the Amsalems with the same characters, following “To Take a Wife” and “The Seven Days”.  But “Gett” can be appreciated on its own.

Courtroom dramas are ostensibly about justice, but what drives the action and most engages the viewer is really character, specifically the clash of characters:  the judges, the witnesses, the lawyers and those on trial.  And this is where “Gett” shines: a tight script (in Hebrew, French and Arabic) gives these characters much to say and do.  Through the Amsalems and their advocates, relatives, friends and neighbours, we see a superb portrayal of Israeli society, one frequently infused with moments of black humour.   Brilliant in all ways.

Joan Didion and the female imagination

Almost three years ago, I highlighted a great article by Caitlin Flanagan in The Atlantic about the Stephenie Meyer “Twilight” books.

Well, Flanagan has surpassed herself in an article in the January/February 2012 issue of The Atlantic about Joan Didion – entitled “The Autumn of Joan Didion”.  Unlike so many news and cultural outlets these days, The Atlantic appears to make all of its content free online – and thus I, for one, am keen to support them as much as possible.  So buy their magazine (and then throw out the paper copy once you have finished with it – or better yet, pass it on to a close friend – and keep looking at the online links if you need to go back to it, as I am now) and patronise their advertisers. Keep them in business, please, with writers like this one.

I am not in the core Didion demographic, not being of the female persuasion, but I have always enjoyed her work (although not the recent efforts – more on those, perhaps, another time), particularly Slouching Towards Bethlehem and Play It As It Lays.  Here is one description by Flanagan:

Women who encountered Joan Didion when they were young received from her a way of being female and being writers that no one else could give them. She was our Hunter Thompson, and Slouching Towards Bethlehem was our Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. He gave the boys twisted pig-fuckers and quarts of tequila; she gave us quiet days in Malibu and flowers in our hair. “We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold,” Thompson wrote. “All I ever did to that apartment was hang fifty yards of yellow theatrical silk across the bedroom windows, because I had some idea that the gold light would make me feel better,” Didion wrote. To not understand the way that those two statements would reverberate in the minds of, respectively, young men and young women is to not know very much at all about those types of creatures.

Or this:

Didion’s genius is that she understands what it is to be a girl on the cusp of womanhood, in that fragile, fleeting, emotional time that she explored in a way no one else ever has. Didion is, depending on the reader’s point of view, either an extraordinarily introspective or an extraordinarily narcissistic writer. As such, she is very much like her readers themselves.

But what makes Flanagan’s writing so memorable and touching is her interweaving of the personal with the cultural and the historical.  She (Flanagan) grew up in Berkeley, California, the daughter of the Chair of the UC Berkeley English Department.  Her description of the dinner which Didion attended at Flanagan’s house (Flanagan was 14 at the time) and Didion’s major lecture on the campus during that visit, is one of the best in recent English-language essay writing.  This was Flanagan’s view at the time:

I don’t like writers. I like Carly Simon and Elton John and The Mary Tyler Moore Show. I like getting out of Berkeley altogether, driving through the Caldecott Tunnel and going to the Sunvalley Mall, where they have a food court, a movie theater, birds in cages, a Macy’s, a J. C. Penney, and a Sears. I am trying to make a life very different from the one I’m growing up in, which is filled with intellectuals and writers and passionate ideas about long-dead people. I’m growing up with people who take a dim view of America (many who come to dinner parties at our house hate America), but I love America, a place whose principal values and delights are on display at the Sunvalley Mall.

The personal, the political, the literary, the historical all combine here in an evocative and moving cultural memoir about female writers in America.