Bring back the cane: revisiting patriarchy

The head of the government's curriculum review, Kevin Donnelly, said yesterday that corporal punishment in schools was an effective way of disciplining children. The conversation continued, leading to the implication that Donnelly is not averse to reintroducing corporal punishment into Australian schools.

Australia is a signatory to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Australia therefore has obligations to protect children from violence or abuse, by their parents or anyone caring for them (article 19); and discipline in schools should respect children's human dignity (article 28). There is no overarching statute however that implements the provisions of this Convention and regulation of schools and criminal laws that may apply, are left to the states.

A number of news outlets have conveniently summarised the legal framework on corporal punishment in schools - see eg Crikey's explainer. There seem to be examples in both West Australia and Queensland where corporal punishment is integral to some schools' program - including in one reported case, the requirement for parents to accept corrective punishment as a condition of enrolling their child.

For a government appointee ostensibly holding expertise in education and charged with advising government on matters of education, these comments and their implication are concerning. This is so despite Minister Pyne's rejection of the idea. What these views really tell us about the state of play in Australia at the moment is the resurgence of patriarchal views and patriarchal control. These views are apparent, for example, in the government's discourse around 'lifting and leaning'. Donnelly's views play into this discourse.

I'm interested in this post to explore the way in which this patriarchal attitude underpins support for corporal punishment in schools, and the lack of logic in Donnelly's ideas.

'Family' values and the privatisation of welfare

If women have a baby outside a stable relationship, they may break the social security system.

A couple of news items in the weekend papers have piqued my interest in the ongoing conservative putsch to retain the centrality of the family in society. The first of these was a story about the Federal Opposition MP, Kevin Andrews, who has signalled a 'socially conservative change' to welfare policy under a coalition government. (Andrews' views on family are well known.)

The second is a piece in the Weekend Australian by Catholic pro-family conservative writer, Angela Shanahan opining about the importance for women of marrying a stable man. For the children.

These uncritical views rely on a combination of sentimentality and ‘facts’ about how society benefits from this institution. What they fail to reveal is the history of paternal control over women and children central to the effective operation of the family in a patriarchal society. And by family, what they mean is a married heterosexual procreative union.

These views of family implicitly blame single mothers and their children for the breakdown of society. I maintain that it is instead the narrow construction of the institution of ‘family’ that feeds into the moral (conservative) panic of social collapse. What we need instead is a re-imagining of society.

Women's rights are human rights

Nurse-in on Bribie Island*

Well the double standard is alive and well on social media today.  Outrage - outrage - at women staging a 'nurse in' outside the Sunrise studios. The tenor of this outrage on Twitter seems to be somehow that David Koch, in calling for women to be discreet and classy in their breastfeeding habits, is simply expressing opinion and that this is not deserving of protest.

Contempt for Women in the Public Sphere: A New Low or an Old Trick?

Feelings are still running high about Shock Jock Alan Jones’comment on Friday that women (ie the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, Sydney Mayor Clover Moore, former Victorian Police Commissioner Christine Nixon) are ‘destroying the joint’.

Tory Maguire, writing in The Punch, suggests that feminists should save their energy for 'battles that might change something'.  I agree with her that it is unsurprising to hear Alan Jones make derogatory statements about women, and I agree that it becomes wearing to expend our energy on each insult leveled at women in the public sphere.  (And there have been a number of them this week.)

I do think however that concerns about women who do not have the power of the Prime Minister, Sydney Mayor or a state Police Commissioner; concerns about access to safe abortion and employment conditions, are all related to the increasingly public vilification of women - including women in power.

My question is why, in 2012, are women belittled in this way.  To ascertain this, let’s be clear: first, that it is women (not individuals) who are targeted; and that it is designed to belittle.