Challenges Facing CALD Women in Australia

This assignment examines the unique difficulties encountered by women from Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) backgrounds in Australia. It delves into issues like domestic violence, racial prejudice, workplace inequality, and barriers to accessing government support. The analysis considers macro, mezzo, and micro levels of intervention, proposing policy recommendations and legal frameworks to address these challenges and promote the well-being and equality of CALD women.

social advocacy

Introduction
According to WHO, “Vulnerable people are those people who cannot anticipate, cope with
and regain from extreme unfortunate events”. The people of these groups are underprivileged
and are always at higher risk and prone to the impacts of disasters. When people are exposed
to miseries like economic decline, accidents, natural disasters, it is hard for them to withstand
its consequences, unlike others who have easy access to different facilities like health,
medical, and have easier reach to institutions to bail them out in crisis situations. So, these
vulnerable people have to struggle a lot more than others. In Australia many people do not
have access to enough opportunities and they face great challenges even to get basic things
that are important for daily life. These vulnerable group of people are deprived of basic
facilities like food, medical, education, employment, housing unlike the privileged groups.
Many new migrants even experiences food insecurity because of different traditional diets,
they fail to get nutritional value due to lack of knowledge about the nutritional value of food
available in their local markets. The situations that makes people vulnerable are social
exclusion, limited resources, inequality, poor government policies, environmental conditions,
disability. Groups of people who are considered to be the most vulnerable people in
Australia are:
 people living in rural areas
 people with mental illness
 Indigenous people
 people living in low socio-economic circumstances
 women
 children
 older people
 CALD (culturally and linguistically diverse) communities
 unemployed people
 victims of crime
 homeless people
Though these groups of people need additional care, support and intervention they are left
with negligence, less security and less support. These groups even face difficulties in birth,
marriages and death registrations other than most of the people who gets registration on
timely basis.

CALD (Culturally & Linguistically Diverse)
CALD simply stands for culturally and linguistically diverse communities of people coming
from different parts of the world having different ethnic background, traditions, languages
and religions. In other words, these are those people who are born overseas other than those
listed by ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics) as English-speaking countries. These
countries include Canada, United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, South Africa, USA and
New Zealand.
According to Australian institute of family studies, Australia is considered as a culturally and
linguistically diverse country as people in Australia are originated from over 250 ancestries
and speaks over 400 languages as at their home. Huge number of migrants comes to Australia
every year, most migrants are from Europe and India. according to Australian bureau of
statistics over 25% of people in Australia are born overseas. These people face many
problems like unemployment or insecure employment, poverty, health issues and are not able
to access government services. limited access to government services is one of the reason that
keeps CALD community to cohesively engage with Australian community. Even though the
migrants are well educated and are job holders their income is very low and are vulnerable to
poverty. Unemployment rate is much higher in recent migrants than Australian born
population. Many barriers are experienced by these people because of which they cannot
access government services. Some of the common barriers faced by different subgroups of
the CALD community are as follows:
 People from non-English speaking background often faces inequality and
discrimination additionally they are misinterpreted about their body language due to
difference in culture and language.
 They have limited options when it comes to choosing services due to lack of cultural
diversity.
 They lack knowledge of having proper understanding and accessing the available
services.
 Many people are unwilling to join or engage in any services as they are concerned
that they might be judged or stereotyped.
 They also have the fear of different government bodies like police, child protection,
taxation, civil laws, immigration, housing laws, etc as they do not proper knowledge
like the natives.

Although there are various age groups of peoples such as child, women, youths or adults
under CALD who faces various issues and challenges, we have taken the problems faced by
the women in this paper.
Women’s in CALD Communities:
The women from CALD communities more often faces double disadvantages of gender and
cultural diversity which results in their problems and necessities neither being addressed nor
discovered either adequately or not at all (FECCA, 2012)
This section draws the main issues identified by FECCA (Federation of Ethnic Communities
Councils of Australia) on the factors that impacts the well-being and health of the CALD
women. There are many intersectional challenges faced by the women from these
communities on daily basis who have many needs and yet they cannot access the basic
services provided by the government due to lack of knowledge or ineligibility to these. This
includes women who are temporary immigrants mainly those on 457 visas, members of
skilled migrants, foreign students and immigrants who arrive in Australia for a short period
due to which they do not qualify for settlement assistance.
The various independent bodies like FECCA who are concerned about the unmet needs of
these women in long term as they have serious social and economic effects on them, their
relatives and the society in which they live. These women who enter all alone or with their
partners under different visa categories are not allowed to take any settlement supports.
The lack of opportunities to socialize with the people beyond their working place or their
immediate sponsor, they feel lonely in their homes and therefore increasing the risk of social
exclusion.
The various factors affecting the health and social well-being of the women belonging to
CALD communities are discussed below:

Racial Discrimination:
The women whose appearance are different than those of the local’s, for instance the Muslim
women’s who wear burqa faces racial vilification and criticism in their work place and place
of their accommodation. As most of people of this community come from a non-English
speaking background, they have to take English classes but due to several family and cultural
restrictions they are less available to these classes resulting in less participation in the
community they live. It has been found that, they even face problems in getting jobs as
recruiters discriminates on the basis of their name. Even though they are unfairly treated at
their work place they don’t seek justice due to their lower wage rate. Highly qualified women
with leadership skills who show their participation to lead in mainstream issues often faces
discouragement and are not appreciated.
Violence against women
Many women in CALD community face domestic violence, police and legal system are
unaware of this because it is a hidden issue in most of the families of such communities.
These women are prone to suffer homelessness and due to different barriers, they get trouble
in accessing domestic violence support services, refuges shelters (Mitchell, 2011). They also
face lateral violence like harassment, physical violence, so they should be aware of their
rights and obligations. Many international students single working women with low income
have to endure abusive home environment due to fear of being homelessness. Many
immigrants are being the victims of human trafficking, rape, sexual assault and due to poor
access of judicial systems for them, they could not get justice. Disabled women are also at the
higher risk of violence by their carers and they are not able to get appropriate help and
services against violence.
Social exclusion and health problems
CALD women are socially excluded, which makes their living so hard that they could not
even get proper jobs and are not able to afford children education, housing (Philips, et.al,
2015). They should get secure jobs and should be able to access government services, to be a
socially included in Australian society.

Most women of CALD communities suffers from both mental and physical health problems.
The issues like lack of interpreters in the hospital, expensive hospital services, long waiting
lists in the hospital makes these women more vulnerable.
As we already learned about the various issues and challenges faced by these women and
taking social justice as a perspective we will discuss various ways to improve their situation.
By social justice we simply mean the equality that every member of the family or community
deserves in terms of opportunities, wealth distribution, social and political rights, etc so that
they can have a satisfying life style and understand their importance in the community.
The social policies that can be implemented to improve the standard and situation of women
belonging to CALD can be implemented at 3 different levels:
1) Micro: At this level, the government should ensure the individual or the families of
these women are given proper awareness about their rights so that they can exercise
them at the time of need. There should be proper counselling for these women so that
they can raise their voice against the domestic violence, racial discrimination at their
work place or society, etc. There should be a body to make sure the women from non-
English background are aware of the available government facilities which they can
avail. Even there should be an interpreter for them at the hospitals or detention centres
so that they can better explain their problems. The Government should implement
policies to provide safe and secure shelter to the homeless women’s.
2) Mezzo: At this level the work is implemented at small to medium sized groups such
as neighbours, local organisation or educational centres. As the micro deals with the
change at individual level but in mezzo it focuses on cultural or institutional change.
There should be actions of grassroots levels so that it promotes cross cultural respect
and understanding. There should be the support of Australian government to help in
these community levels programs to promote mutual harmony and cohesion.
Government should implement policies that should encourage the participation of
CALD women in decision making and leadership roles. There should be wider
approach so that women’s right gets an equal place in the society which is promoted
and respected.

3) Macro: This involves operating at higher or larger level of system. At macro level
there can be various policies which are discussed below that can be implemented to
address or improve the overall situation of CALD women.
 There should be initiatives on national level to reduce the domestic violence
cases against these women’s.
 The upgradation of Immigrants ‘rights on the basis of international laws and
agreements for the employment convention and migrant’s convention.
 International convention must be implemented to protect the rights of all the
migrants and their families.
 Access and Equity policy implementation within the public sector to ensure
there is effective representation of service user in decision making.
 The proper implementation of policies which support and encourage women’s
participation at economic and national level.
Conclusion:
As from the above study we can conclude that women form CALD community faces
injustice and problems at every step of their life be it domestic violence in their
families, racial discrimination in community or at their workplace. To overcome this
there should be policies or proper laws which secures the rights of women to freedom
from domestic or family violence, acts that’s oppresses the women, detention that
increases the trauma and different family practices which affects the health and well-
being of these women. Additionally, there should be proper laws which should give
them equal opportunities to access Government services for social inclusion in
comparison to other Australians. There should be strong laws to punish all those who
discriminate and harasses women on the grounds of gender, religion, sex, marital
status, ethnicity, age or race. Implementing these steps and the policies discussed
above will give the women the sense of security and freedom which will not only
improve the condition of these women but will also help in overall development of
community and country as a whole.

References:
Supporting Australian Women from Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD)
Backgrounds 2012, FECCA Women’s Policy Statement.
Working with culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) adolescents 2015, Australian
Institute of Family Studies.
Mitchell, L 2011, Domestic violence in Australia- an overview of the issues, Department of
Parliamentary Services.
Supporting women from CALD backgrounds who are victim/survivors of sexual violence,
Australian Institute of Family Studies.
Phillips, J, Dunkley, A, 2015, Domestic Violence: issues and policy challenges, Department
of Parliamentary Services
Micro, Mezzo & Macro Social Work, 2012, Another Mirror. Available from: http://another-
mirror.blogspot.in/2012/10/micro-mezzo-and-macro-social-work.html [Accessed 30th oct , 2017]
Macro, Mezzo and Micro Social Work, n.d, Social Work License Map. Available from:
https://socialworklicensemap.com/macro-mezzo-and-micro-social-work/ [Accessed 30th oct, 2017]
Social justice, 2014, Settlement and Multicultural Affairs. Available from: https://www.dss.gov.au/our-
responsibilities/settlement-and-multicultural-affairs/programs-policy/a-multicultural-australia/national-agenda-for-
a-multicultural-australia/participation/social-justice [Accessed 30th oct , 2017]
Barriers to service accessibility and appropriate service delivery for CALD families in Australia, 2008,
Australian Institute of Family Studies, Available from:
https://aifs.gov.au/cfca/publications/enhancing-family-and-relationship-service-accessibility-and/
barriers-service [Accessed 30th oct, 2017]