Whispers from the Bush

This book is a product of 107 interviews conducted across Australia with rurally located employees and employers about their experiences and observations of sexual harassment at work. It is a sombre reminder that there is much to do to ensure all Australians are afforded the protections long established in our legal system, since at least the passage of the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 (SA). Conclusions of Dr Saunders’ research include that: * 73 per cent of employees said they had been sexually harassed by a colleague * 70 per cent said they had witnessed a colleague being harassed in the workplace * 93 per cent of women in the agricultural industry said they had been harassed. These numbers, while alarming, will not be the enduring feature of this research. The strength of Dr Saunders’ work lies in the accounts given by those who have experienced sexual harassment. The interview excerpts make for uncomfortable reading, and in many instances, are heartbreaking. Empirical legal research too often is statistical. It can be more powerful, especially in this area and related fields, to report on human experience. The book is for those who are seeking an on-the-ground account of the reach and limits of anti-discrimination law. - Leigh Howard, InPrint, Law Institute Journal Victoria, Jan/Feb 2017 This book makes two original contributions to an understanding of the factors that contribute to sexual harassment in rural workplaces - first, it presents original data from interviews with rural employees and employers, and secondly, it draws a number of trends from a comparative analysis of workplace sexual harassment cases in rural and urban Australia. … Based on her findings, Dr Saunders questions the reach and effectiveness of laws such as the Sex Discrimination Act in rural Australia and recommends that the law be “translated” into plain English to enable rural men to distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable workplace behaviour. … it is certainly an interesting read for lawyers practising in employment and discrimination law. Read full review… - Sarah Pitney, Australian Law Journal, 2016, 90 Saunders’ research has identified specific industry workers who are particularly at risk and this threat is not spread evenly across rural employment areas. She has demonstrated that higher education levels are both a protection and a guide to appropriate responses when facing sexual harassment. She has also shown that lack of female solidarity contributes to the negative impact of sexual harassment. … this work is original and timely with important policy implications and now out of the Academy and into the public domain. Knowledge of circumstances cannot necessarily prevent events from taking place but they are the first and best way to start. Read full review… - Mickey Dewar, Australian Journal of Politics and History, September 2016 Remote and regional Australia is often depicted in popular culture as a place of male power and domination, which has become its iconic identity. Women are painted as ‘alien others’ with all the attendant consequences of disempowerment this inevitably brings. This is the central theme of Whispers from the Bush: The Workplace Sexual Harassment of Australian Rural Women, by Skye Saunders. … There can be no doubt this publication achieves all it sets out to do with great clarity. It employs a combination of both qualitative and quantitative analysis to its subject area. The ‘whispers from the bush’ are voices taken from 107 in-depth interviews with rural and remote participants; 84 rural- based employees, and 23 rural-based senior managers from both NSW and Western Australia. Elements of traditional doctrinal research together with intensive review of relevant literature are skillfully integrated. Read full review… - Anne Gorman, Precedent, Australian Lawyers Alliance, July/August 2016 … Skye Saunders’ pioneering research publication speaks volumes about the extent of the ‘cultural epidemic’ of sexual harassment in rural Australian workplaces. [It] draws on original research to examine the entrenched sexual harassment culture pervading the lives of working women. A total of 107 interviews conducted with rurally located participants deliver results that are both staggering and heartbreaking, leaving the reader with far more than a whisper of a problem in desperate need of redress. Despite the enormous quantity of data the book has to offer, Saunders’ triumph is her ability to siphon through the information and bring the most salient points to the reader’s attention in a thought-provoking way. It is a credit to the author that a topic so often drenched in statistics preserves the personality and experiences of those who contributed to it. At times the book is hard to put down, at other times the weight of personal stories can make it hard to read at all. The responses of the interviewees can, at times, make for uncomfortable reading, but play an important part in giving a voice to those who have remained voiceless for so long. Read full review… - Richard Bell, Bar News, NSW Bar Association, Winter 2016 “I commend Dr. Saunders for giving voice to women in rural and regional areas whose lives have been harmed by sexual harassment. As the daughter of a farming family in rural Victoria who launched out into the world of journalism through my local newspaper, it is only fully now, decades later, that I look back and see the entrenched sexism that, being young and lacking the language to describe, I didn’t know how to deal with. The senior editor’s hand on my leg in his car (taking me ‘under his wing’ as a work experience student), the ruler up my skirt (made to feel I’d asked for it and told to stay out of the ‘lay out’ room where the man worked, though I had to walk through it to get to the toilet), the sexually loaded jokes about my body, descriptions of sex acts I didn’t understand (especially when a male radio announcer friend dropped by), the male bonding over assessing the bodies of any woman passing through the building, the porny calendars on the walls of the print room, and so on. My few female co-workers didn’t object. You were expected to joke along with the boys, not to be a pain or ‘hung up’. To be both young, unformed in feminist thinking and not knowing I had any rights, made speaking out almost impossible. As well, this was a community where the second class status of women was not named. The indigenous woman married to a white man who turned up to work on the family property with a black eye most days, the wives of certain migrant workers never allowed to leave their homes, the mothers in my street struggling to raise their children with family income downed in a partner’s beers. One of the first pieces I wrote as a cadet journalist was about the opening of a women’s refuge in my town. These experiences were the seedlings of my later feminist activism. So I welcome this book. When Dr. Saunders told me about it, my first thoughts were: at last. May Whispers From The Bush break the silence of rural women. May it empower and strengthen them to speak out and no longer put up with mistreatment. May it contribute to solidarity among our sisters in dusty, remote places. All of us who live or lived in these places - and have parts of our heart remaining there even when we have moved on - owe Dr. Saunders a debt of gratitude.” - Melinda Tankard Reist, Advocate for Women and Girls

Dr. Skye Saunders is an academic at the Australian National University (ANU).