In 1980, 34 women from Wollongong took on the biggest company in Australia. What they wanted was simple: a fair chance at a job. What they ended up with was a landmark victory that changed industrial history.
One of those women is Robynne Murphy, who now more than four decades later, has directed a documentary about this very movement. Titled Women Of Steel, the documentary tells the powerful story of how local Wollongong women fought against that major company for the right to work in the steel industry in the 1980s.
For decades, Wollongong was a man’s town. Its skyline was dominated by the Port Kembla Steelworks, run by Australian Iron and Steel (AIS), a subsidiary of Broken Hill Proprietary (BHP). The plant was a hub for employment in the region; unless you were a woman, that is. In the early 1970s, the city’s female workforce participation rate was just 30.8%, below the NSW average of 37.5%, and employment options were limited to retail, clerical work, or small-scale manufacturing. As one female steelworker is quote as saying in the book, Women of Steel: Gender, Jobs & Justice at BHP: “It was the steelworks or nothing…I’m not the type to dress up in a tizzy skirt and serve people at Grace Brothers”.
AIS maintained two separate waiting lists for job applicants: one for men, one for women. Between 1977 and 1981, around 2,000 women’s names were added to their list, most waiting years for a call that never came because there were “no jobs for women”. In the same period, the male waiting list held only 47 names, and the majority of them were working for the company within weeks.
“We thought we had to do something significant, go to the major employee, BHP, because nothing was going to change unless it was the major employee,” Murphy tells me. “We thought they had a responsibility to the community.”
On 20 April 1980, the Jobs for Women Action Committee was formed by the women who had been knocked back time and time again, while their husbands secured work. One day later, these women travelled to Sydney to lodge formal complaints with the NSW Anti-Discrimination Board. The following morning, the news was splashed across the front page of the Illawarra Mercury. Within months, 31 women had lodged official complaints of discrimination. The group was a mix of mothers, migrants whose first language wasn’t English, and community activists. This was not the first protest against the Steelworks’ hiring practices — a 1973 action saw women chain themselves to the gates during the afternoon shift — but with its sustained legal action, this campaign would be different.
With media coverage growing from day one, the women spurred ahead to execute a protest action that would garner increased attention, awareness and support for their campaign. This was the tent embassy, a protest held outside BHP’s employment office, to gain the support of the male steelworkers, raise money for the campaign, and make contact with more women. Strategically situated outside a main entrance to the Steelworks and next to bus and train stops where workers had to walk by them, the women draped banners over the railings of the over-bridge across the highway and rallied for petition signatures. The result was 2,000 signatures in just 24 hours, increased media coverage, and more than $600 in donations from workers.
“Some laughed at us, marginalised us as a bunch of women’s libbers, bra burners, but as we continued our campaign, I believe we won over the majority of the community and media,” says Murphy.
Nine years later, in August 1989, the NSW Equal Opportunity Tribunal found AIS had discriminated against women. The ruling was hailed by Judge Geoff Grahamas a “landmark in Australian industrial history”. The women won the right to work at the Steelworks and were awarded $1.4 million in compensation. By 1994, a further 709 women received smaller payouts, costing BHP between $4–9 million.
In the words of Murphy: “If you don’t fight for what’s right, you lose”.
It’s a reminder that equal work rights for Australian women were never just handed down, but won through tenacity, boldness, and solidarity.
Top photo source: Supplied