Equal Employment Opportunities in the Workplace

Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) broadly refers to workplaces being free of discrimination and harassment. When you are on placement or working in any form of medical service, you will be required to be non-discriminatory in your practice. This will cover a range of areas that includes race, religion, age, gender and sexuality. Your workplace will have professional standards that address these responsibilities, but even in your everyday life, all Australians are subject to legislation that protects them from discrimination.

 Don't forget the Acts aren't only your responsibility -
they protect your rights too!

 

Legislation against discrimination includes:

  • Age Discrimination Act 2004 
  • Australian Human Rights Commission Act 1986 
  • Disability Discrimination Act 1992 
  • Racial Discrimination Act 1975 
  • Sex Discrimination Act 1984

Further information: Human Rights Commission - A guide to Australia's anti-discrimination laws

Racism and Health

The key form of discrimination experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples is racism. International literature acknowledges that "racism is a fundamental social determinant of health" (Durey 2010,87).

 How do you think racism affects health?

Types of racism

In a discussion paper on The Impact of Racism on Indigenous Health in Australia, Parides, Harris and Anderson (2008, 4) define three types of racism:

  • Internalised racism: Acceptance of attitudes, beliefs or ideologies by members of stigmatised ethnic/ racial groups about the inferiority of one's own ethnic/racial group (e.g. an Indigenous person believing that Indigenous people are naturally less intelligent than non-Indigenous people).
  • Interpersonal racism: Interactions between people that maintain and reproduce avoidable and unfair inequalities across ethnic/racial groups (e.g. experiencing racial abuse).
  • Systemic racism: Requirements, conditions, practices, policies or processes that maintain and reproduce avoidable and unfair inequalities across ethnic/racial groups (e.g. Indigenous people experiencing inequitable outcomes in the criminal justice system). This type of racism is also referred to as institutional racism.

 Activity

In each of the University community focus groups, people were able to recount many examples of all three types of racism in their past and present experiences.
Read one elder's story below:

Another issue was - going to see doctors. Even in my day they wouldn't see you inside the hours of their surgery… A doctor actually even used to tell my Nanna to bring me up to his house on the top of the hill so that I would not be seen in the surgery. In the hospital when I was a child, I had pneumonia. They put us out on the veranda. All the White kids were all inside and given all the right food. We were given porridge. We weren't allowed to have cornflakes or rice bubbles, which we would have loved because it would have been a treat. We weren't allowed to go and play out in the area where the children could play- the rocking horses and all that- and that was why one of the first things I bought my children was a big rocking horse mate because we couldn't play on it. But those things, they stick in your mind. So when we talked about the Medical Centre, the same thing happened on the Central Coast. Aboriginal people on the Central Coast who had these diseases or these medical situations and they weren't attending a medical facility. So it was important that we looked at getting up an Aboriginal Medical Service that would cater for the needs of the Aboriginal people who weren't being treated for their illnesses.

In commenting on the Elder's story, the Chairperson of an Aboriginal Medical Service commented:

That social scar tissue hasn't gone away. It actually gets passed down from generation to generation so that the younger ones are picking up on the things that Mum and Nan and Grandad were all going through and they've got those issues and attitudes towards those institutionalised services… We've got to try and overcome those things.

  • Think of an example of discrimination you have experienced,
    • How did it make you feel?
    • How did you deal with the discrimination? (For example: withdrawing from the situation; angry response; made a formal complaint).
    • What was the outcome? 
    • What would you do differently? 
    • In your family or community are there examples of social scar tissue? (Examples: the Holocaust for Jewish communities, gender discrimination such as lack of opportunities for girls, homophobic attitudes and violence).
    • What is the effect of these social scars?
  • List examples of the three types of racism:
    • Internalised racism
    • Interpersonal racism
    • Systemic racism
  • How do these impact on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples?