The Scarlet Letter | Season 2 | Episode 12 | Paula Gerber
This episode we welcome the woman behind the organization that spans an entire industry, bringing together everyone from tradies to architects. Professor Paula Gerber from Monash's Faculty of Law did just that with the National Association of Women in Construction (NAWIC) in Australia. She shares her experiences growing up in a feminist household, her adventures in the male-dominated field of construction law, and her efforts to promote gender equality. She also talks about her involvement in setting up NAWIC, which has become a lifeline for many women in the industry. Closing the gap on Indigenous birth registration and advancing LGBTIQ rights are a couple of the many important feminist topics addressed in this episode.
First published 2017.
The Scarlet Letter podcast is produced by the Feminist Legal Studies Group. This podcast features interviews with feminists connected to the law, discussing their life, work, and feminist perspectives. It's perfect for anyone passionate about feminist legal scholarship.
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Transcript | The Scarlet Letter | Season 2 | Episode 12 | Paula Gerber
Tamara Wilkinson: [00:00:00] Good morning. I'm Tamara Wilkinson, and welcome to this episode of the Scarlet Letter, the monthly podcast of the Feminist Legal Studies Group at Monash University's Faculty of Law. Today I'm joined by Professor Paula Gerber, who is one of the members of our Feminist Legal Studies Group. Paula has been here at Monash since 2004, and in addition to being involved in the Feminist Legal Studies Group, she is also a co director of the Australian Centre for Justice Innovation and a deputy director of the Kaston Centre for Human Rights.
Paula is an internationally renowned legal scholar with expertise in two distinct areas of research, being construction law and international human rights law. She has a particular focus on children's rights and LGBTIQ rights. Welcome, Paula. Thank you so much for taking [00:01:00] the time to have a chat with me today.
Paula Gerber: Thank you. It's lovely to be given this opportunity.
Tamara Wilkinson: Paula, perhaps you can start by telling me a little bit about what feminism means to you in a personal context.
Paula Gerber: I guess I've always been a feminist. I grew up in a family where they had a brother and a sister, and there was really no distinction between us.
It was all that we were going on to university, and we were all doing either law or medicine. They were the only options in my family. So my brother and I became lawyers and my sister a doctor, and there was just, yeah, never any distinction between the genders at all. And I went to an all girls school, again, where I was just instilled in me that, women could do anything and be anything that they wanted to be.
So I remember when I first started working in the law and in construction law, which was a very male dominated and still is a very male dominated area, I was really struck by some people thinking that it was strange for a woman to be in this field or that somehow my knowledge and skills were inferior [00:02:00] because of my gender.
So to me, yes, I think I've always been a feminist and it's, about just equality. It's a person's sex or gender has nothing to do with their skills or capacity to achieve what they want out of life.
Tamara Wilkinson: Yeah. I'm very pleased and impressed to hear that all the siblings in your family did actually follow the instruction.
Paula Gerber: Yes. Yes. Some of them resisted more than me. I was lucky that I always knew I wanted to be a lawyer. My brother wanted to be an environmental scientist and he ended up doing law. My sister wanted to be an occupational therapist and he ended up doing medicine. Yes, but I think they're all happy in their careers now.
Tamara Wilkinson: And why was it that you always, or do you know why it was? You always wanted to be a lawyer.
Paula Gerber: Look, my father was a lawyer and as a young child, he was, he practiced in the area of criminal law and he actually took us along to prisons when he was interviewing clients. And he was also an academic for a period and he took us along to the law school and we ran amok there.
So I [00:03:00] think I just, I, it was I breathed it, it was osmosis that Yeah. And I've always been, quite up for an argument and and and quite talkative, so it just seemed a very natural fit for me. Yeah. Yeah. That's fantastic. Yeah. It is nice to know, And for it to then be as good as you, you hoped.
I love my job, I love my work, I love the law. And so many people I know either didn't know what they wanted to do when they finished school or they did law because their parents made them do law and, or pressured them to do law and then they found that it wasn't right for them. So yeah, I feel very fortunate that I knew what I wanted to do and it didn't happen.
It's turned out as well as it has. That's so nice.
Tamara Wilkinson: I always wanted to be a lawyer too. I wanted to be a vet when I was very young. But yeah, I always wanted to be a lawyer. And I'm very happy with it too.
Paula Gerber: Yes, good.
Tamara Wilkinson: So obviously, as you said, you were, grew up as a feminist. You're part of who you were.
Yeah. Do you remember the point when you [00:04:00] first consciously came to associate with the term?
Paula Gerber: It was probably when I was working in the area of construction law. Yeah and which was such a blokey field and It was probably really I got admitted as a lawyer in Queensland, which is where I grew up.
And that probably contributed to my politics and my commitment to equality and justice. Cause I actually was under the grew up under the reign of so very right wing, very male dominated political force that I resisted and rebelled against. I then went overseas for 10 years, 5 years in London and 5 years in California.
And in California, I I became associated with the National Association of Women in Construction, which was an organization designed to attract more women into the construction industry and help retain the ones who are there because they're not, a lot of parents say to their daughters, you should be a plumber or a builder or an engineer.
And When they, if they do go down that path and they then find that [00:05:00] there is a lot of discrimination against them and they don't last long. They might've spent four or five years studying, for example, engineering at university. And then when they get into the profession, they find it so hostile towards them because of their sex that they leave.
Yeah, I really got involved with NAWIC in America. And when I came back to Australia I looked for. And it didn't exist. So I set it up. And so the National Association of Women in Construction was set up in Australia in 1995 and it's still going strong.
Tamara Wilkinson: That's your baby
Paula Gerber: And that's my baby.
I'm now patron of it. But I remember I was working at Mallison's at the time and my secretary said, do we really need to contact every woman who's ever picked up a hammer? Cause I was just, spending my time trying to find NAWIC is unique, not only because it's for and about women, but also because it is an organization that spans the whole industry and related professions.
Normally, you've got the Institute of Architects, you've got the Institute of Engineers, you've got the Master Builders Association. They're all very unique. siloed. [00:06:00] Whereas NAWIC is about anyone who's involved in construction, whether you are a tradie or an architect or an engineer or a construction lawyer or construction financier, quantity surveyor.
And so it's very popular still because it is a way of people in different professions. Sections of the industry connecting with each other.
Tamara Wilkinson: Yeah, I can imagine it would be quite the lifeline for some people. Yes, absolutely Hopefully it's changing now, but even 10 years ago or even now Yeah
Paula Gerber: I remember the very first meeting that I had in melbourne for people who might be interested in setting up this organization with me And it was at mallison's it was at seven o'clock in the morning because the construction industry tends to start very early in the morning You And a hundred women came and they wouldn't leave.
I thought they'll be gone by nine at the latest. And they were just, the energy level and the excitement and the enthusiasm that, they didn't feel so isolated. Yeah. And so yeah, it has been a bit of a struggle. Yeah, that would have been such a good feeling. It was. The buzz from that was amazing.
And then we went and set it [00:07:00] up in, Sydney and Brisbane and New Zealand. And yeah, it really took off like wildfire. Oh, fantastic. Well done. Thank you.
Tamara Wilkinson: You've recently been involved in two large projects, one on closing the gap on Indigenous birth registration and another on advancing the rights of LGBTIQ people in Australia and around the world.
Which I suppose are both human rights related other than that quite different areas. Are you able to tell our listeners a little bit about that?
Paula Gerber: Sure. So I guess my areas of research and interest are very much informed by my desire to make a change, to I don't want to research and write about things that nobody is going to read about or they're not going to make a difference.
So I would describe myself as a As an activist, academic, and in the case of the Indigenous birth registration I heard an interview where a lawyer was talking about, a lawyer at a community legal centre in rural Victoria was talking about the fact that he was spending [00:08:00] a lot of the time helping Indigenous people get birth certificates, and I'm like, This is madness.
It should be automatic. We're a first world country with state of the art services. How can this be? Because I teach children's rights and I teach about the importance of birth registrations and I use the Philippines as a case study of, what happens when you don't have birth registration that, it leads to trafficking of children, child soldiers, child brides, all these issues.
And I couldn't believe that in my own country, there was a problem with that. Some people were experiencing with getting birth registration. So I contacted the lawyer and started researching and writing about it. Ended up applying for an ARC grant to ascertain the extent of the problem and the the underlying causes.
And so what, and I worked on that with Melissa Castan and what we discovered is that it really is quite a significant problem within indigenous communities. That of course there's no simple solution to, because it's [00:09:00] multifaceted problem. One aspect is for example, that birth registration offices are only in capital cities.
So if you live in remote areas, you've got to fill out the paperwork. You've got to go and get a money order from the post office. You've got to send it into the central registry. All of that is, is time consuming and not necessarily straightforward. The forms for birth registration were quite complex.
I've gone through, I've got three children myself, I know what's required of those forms. They're not straightforward. There's fees involved, so if you've, if you don't have a lot of money and you've got to prioritise between, nappies or a birth certificate, you're probably going to choose nappies.
Then there's things like the legacy of the stolen generation, that they don't want the government to know they've got children in case they there's things like not understanding that this is their child's right and a human right. It's viewed as a burden and something that they're doing for the government, that the government wants this data.
[00:10:00] Yeah, we had lots of discussions with the community and Just through doing this research, things have changed. And Victoria has really been a leader in this field. So for example they now have, I think it's 18 regional centres where you can register births. So it's no longer just centralised in Melbourne.
They set up an Indigenous Access Fund. So you get fee waivers. Yeah. All these sort of things. They've got Indigenous liaison officers now. So all these sort of things that in Victoria have made it a lot easier, but the problem still exists. Yeah and also what we discovered was of course, it's not just Indigenous.
It's also recently arrived immigrants. It's lower socioeconomic. Group. It's a bigger problem than we initially thought. . And then in terms of the LGBTIQ rights I'm part of a group called Kaleidoscope Human Rights Foundation, which is about protecting the rights of LGBTIQ people in the Asia Pacific region because globally most of the attention seems to go on Africa, where you get this, this high profile, situations [00:11:00] of people being beaten or imprisoned for being gay and a bit Russia as well. And what a lot of people don't realise it is right on our doorstep there are 20 countries where it's still a crime to be gay. Yeah. I think 8 in the Pacific and 12 in Asia. Looking at ways of Australia's role in, in the region in helping to better protect the rights of LGBTIQ people.
I was just contacted today by a journalist about a situation in Indonesia where a village has decided to try and rid themselves of LGBTI people by performing religious exorcisms on them. So yeah it's again, a multifaceted problem. Law is one aspect of it, and we need to reform the law and decriminalize homosexuality, but it's also about education and awareness raising and making sure that even if you change the law, that society moves along with that.
And I guess we've seen that a bit in Australia and that, we achieved marriage equality. It'll be a year ago [00:12:00] tomorrow. And yet, we're still having debates about children being expelled from school for their sexual orientation or gender identity. So fixing the law is necessary, but it's never the whole.
In many ways, it's just one step, exactly, one piece of the jigsaw puzzle.
Tamara Wilkinson: Yeah. Yeah. Those are fantastic, in terms of actual impact, those two projects are incredible.
Paula Gerber: Yes, and hopefully, yeah, they are making a difference, which is what I want my work to do. Yeah, that's so important.
Yeah.
Tamara Wilkinson: So do you have, I'm sure you probably have quite a full plate, but do you have anything else on the horizon coming up?
Paula Gerber: Heaps, there's actually 18 articles that I am currently writing. Oh my goodness. Which are in various stages of completion. But it's because one of the one of the projects that I'm working on is to map the work of the UN in relation to LGBTI issues.
I'm doing that through analysing the work of each of the UN Treaty committees in LGBTI [00:13:00] over a period of 10 years. Wow. So I've already done the Hugh and Hume Rights Committee. I'm now working close to finishing the work on the Children's Rights Committee. And then of course we've got our SESC committee.
We've got the Disability Committee. We've got CERD and CDOR. And so each of those is a separate article analyzing that data. To, see what the trends are. To see which committees are perhaps doing better than others in this area. And really it's about that intersectionality of human rights violations and Realizing that often people who are subjected to one human rights violation, it's it's generally not just one there's often different layers and aspects to it.
So that's one project I'm working on. Another which I'm very excited about is looking at the ethnic diversity within the bench. What I was approached by the Asian Lawyers Association, who pointed out to me that there is not a single judge of Asian descent on any superior court anywhere in Australia.
So no Supreme Court, no [00:14:00] federal court. There's a few magistrates a county court registrar. But and a lot of people I talk to go that's just a matter of time. It's no, it's not actually. If we look at when we started having the, Vietnamese refugees coming in. That was in the 1970s.
That's enough time for them to get through law school, their children, get through law school, graduate and be at a level where they should be getting considered for judicial appointments. And so yeah, so I'm looking at getting some more members of the team in with expertise in different areas like unconscious bias.
Yeah. To try and ascertain. what's behind this and then hopefully come up with some recommendations about how it might be overcome.
Tamara Wilkinson: Yeah, that's fantastic. I remember reading that. I was really shocked. Yes. I remember talking to some students in my corporations law class about the similar issue with partners in law firms.
People keep saying, Oh, it was just a matter of time until women start making up half of the partners and [00:15:00] saying we already have more than half our graduates are women and have been for decades and have been for decades. Why aren't they partners? There's something else at play.
Paula Gerber: So it's a lot of similarities between issues of gender in the senior ranks of the legal profession and issues of ethnicity as, as well.
Yeah, that's an exciting project to work on and a lot of the work I do is I like to take a comparative approach. So this is an issue about ethnic diversity on the bench in the UK and the US as well. So we're going to be looking at what initiatives they've taken to try and overcome this. Are they doing better than us?
I think they've been talking about it for longer than we have. What I was amazed at is it's not really even seems to be on the radar very much here at all. I think they are a few years ahead of us, but I don't know that they've got the answer yet.
Tamara Wilkinson: Yeah.
Paula Gerber: Yeah.
Tamara Wilkinson: Thank you so much for joining me today, Paula.
I really appreciate it, especially now that I know how many. Other commitments you have. It's been amazing getting to hear about your work.
Paula Gerber: Oh, thank you. It's always a pleasure to talk about my work. I'm very passionate about it [00:16:00] and I love the opportunity to share what I'm doing with others.
So thank you.
Tamara Wilkinson: And thank you all for listening to this episode of the Scarlet Letter. You can catch us again next month on iTunes or on our blog, which is found at feministlegalstudies. wordpress. com. And don't forget to subscribe to The Scarlet Letter to make sure you never miss an episode.