On the one hand, many aspects of the reforms could serve the interests of women. The commitment by labour and union feminists to nation-wide restructuring of rigid male-based industrial awards, to broadening the range of competencies that workers could be required to perform, to the establishment of skill-related career paths linking training, skills and wages and to progressive reform of workplace practices were (and still are) supported by feminists in vocational education. We shared a view that these changes would lead to more satisfying and skilled jobs for women as well as men, to greater employee participation in decision-making in the workplace, and that training had a vital role to play in achieving these objectives.

As well, the reforms still had an access and equity objective that could play a key role. The national recognition of training objectives provided an opportunity" for the skills acquired by women in workplaces to be publicly recognized and nationally portable. Recognition of prior learning was seen as a major step forward in obtaining formal recognition of the skills informally acquired by women. Even the objective of competency standards provided an opportunity to deal productively with the gendered definition of skill which had for so long restricted women's earning power.

On the other hand, the crunch has now come as the initially clumsy efforts to construct an open and competitive training market make way for a far more sophisticated version. There is a broad policy push towards applying microeconomic reform principles generally and public sector reform specifically to shape the vocational education and training system in both the public and private sectors. Such developments are part of the overall thrust of government at all levels in Australia to reduce the state's influence over the economy in favor of market forces, to scale back the public sector, and to make business and society generally less reliant on state assistance.⁵

Simon Kneebone

Increased application of market forces to what has long been considered a I public good leaves feminists in Australia I without a clear way forward. Many of us know that the public sector through TAFE has not been as efficient and responsive to the needs of women as it should be and that reform is needed. We know that feminist opposition based simply on continuing the current role of the public sector is not a sufficient response. We know that many feminists active in the labour movement support breaking the TAFE monopoly over training and directing more public resources towards the in-company training of women. We know that the state in this period of late economic rationalism is not neutral and not seriously concerned with equity for women outside their electoral potential. But we do not yet have a coherent feminist response to these matters of the training market, competition, and the role of government. This is our most urgent and important task.