Melbourne Unitarian Peace Memorial Church

Address to the Unitarian Church for International Women's Day 2008 Sunday March 9, 2008 Janet Powell

Thank you for inviting me to speak with you for IWD, 2008

On December first last year, this headline appeared on the Opinion page of The Age:

"Exciting, defining times for women."

Tracee Hutchinson, a Melbourne writer and broadcaster was clearly excited by the previous week's election result and what she called a seismic shift in identity and direction in Australia.

Of the all the many monumental occurrences that excited her, she nominated: a flashpoint when I felt my body jolt upright with exultant anticipation and gushing love of country...courtesy of the first lady elect, Therese Rein. She went on as follows:

When Kevin Rudd walked on stage to claim his place as Australia's 26th Prime Minister, the woman he calls his life partner stood with her hand in his beside him, and shimmied. She leant forward and, with a glint in her eye, shook her shoulders from side to side and shimmied. And it was glorious...
It was sassy and confident and delicious. And 100% woman.

And it set the tone for how the rest of the week unravelled....with a posse of impressive, talented women who would help run the country ...Australia finally has a group of governing female MP's who reflect the status of women and the diversity of our lives in contemporary Australia...

Women who are the daughters of migrants, women who are single and/or childless, openly gay, unmarried with children, married with children but who haven't taken the surname of their husband and others who have.

"These are exciting and defining times in our nation's political life ...and for Australian women. We are finally at the table of power ...and it's been a long time coming. Let's all get down and shimmy."

We can only agree with Tracee that these are exciting times for women in Australia. We have our first female Deputy Prime Minister - how marvellous it has been to hear news items quoting the Acting Prime Minister, Julia Gillard. Even the Opposition has seen fit to match the government by installing its own female Deputy, Julie Bishop. However, watching the opening of the new parliament I did note that Julie was a lone female figure in the front ranks of the Opposition, whereas Julia was far from the only woman in her leadership group.

There has been a good deal of excitement about how well women are now doing in politics.

Indeed, the announcement of the new Rudd government ministry elicited this headline in the The Age on Friday November 30th:

"Rudd and the sisters ministry."

I was reminded of a Bulletin cover, way back in 1988 -here it is. I keep it as evidence! This headline said Women Take Over the Law. But did we? This article was prompted by statistics like: within the next five years the majority of graduates from Australia's law schools will be women ...and women will be in far greater numbers in police forces.

And yet, 20 years later, the Women Lawyers Association, in a press release points out that, although there are now two female High Court Justices:

...women continue to be under-represented in the Australian judiciary... and in senior positions across the profession... despite the fact that over the last 20 years, female representation in undergraduate and graduate law programs has been greater than 50 per cent on a national basis. Women form half of those entering the legal profession each year.

BUT..

By October 2006... women represented a national average of just over one-fifth of all appointments to Australian superior Courts.

Further:

In the year 2006- 7, only about 14% of new silk appointments were women, and, on average, only 19.6% of partners at leading law firms were women.

So this is what passes for a takeover? Of course we do also have a female police Chief Commissioner here in Victoria - and a female Chief Justice of our Supreme Court. But does this mean we have taken over the law? I think not.

Likewise, we should not be lulled by headlines like Rudd and the sisters ministry. We've had a recent stark example of the continuing failure of women to be accorded anything like equal status - the choice of nine men and one woman to chair the Prime Minister's up-coming Ideas Summit.

The reality is that just under a quarter of the new ministry is women, and one fifth of the Cabinet is women. In the new Federal parliament as a whole, 28% is women - 26.5% in the House of Representatives and 35.5% in the Senate - only the House of Reps increased its proportion at last year's election - and then only by less than 2%.

Around the states we now see our legislatures generally comprising somewhere between almost a quarter, to around third of women MP's. The average is lifted by the fact that, in the upper houses, where PR is almost in all cases the electoral system used, the percentage of women tends to be higher.

But we seem to be stuck at these levels, after a very slow start historically in getting women elected.

There was a long time lag between gaining the right to vote, the right to stand for office, and the election of women to parliament. Edith Cowan was the first -in the WA parliament, in 1921, 19 years after female franchise in the state.

Federally, it took 40 years for women to enter the parliament - Dame Enid Lyons (Liberal) from Tasmania to the House of Representatives, and Dorothy Tangey (ALP) from WA to the Senate - both in 1943.

Labor didn't elect a woman to the House of Representatives until Victorian Joan Child in 1974.

In 1993, my last year in the Senate, the Department of the Senate, published Trust the Women, commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the advent of women to the Federal Parliament. And yet, after those 50 years, so late in the 20`h Century, it was still possible to print on the cover
of the book, a 2x4cm photograph of every woman who had ever sat in the Federal parliament to that point - and still have space for a summary of the book's purpose and contents on the back. There had been only 59 of us to that point.

As numbers then built through 1990's and we saw women, including myself, begin to assume leadership positions, hopes were high - a wave of women and even the feminisation of politics was anticipated.

So we get all excited when a fifth of the Federal ministry are women - here in Victoria it is about a quarter. And this is the year when. we are celebrating the Centenary of women's suffrage in this state!

Nevertheless, Australia is not keeping pace internationally.

This year, according the Inter Parliamentary Union, the body which represents all democratically elected legislatures in the world, Australia has slid to its lowest ever place - 33rd - on the international table of representation of women in national parliaments. We ranked 15th in 1999. We now rank below, not only the famously more equal Scandinavians, but many others including neighbours New Zealand, Timor-Leste, Cuba, Burundi, Andorra, Viet Nam - and even that great champion of the rights of women, Afghanistan.

Nevertheless, this is the nearest we have ever been to equality in the exercise of political power.

In the corporate world the picture is no more encouraging with the latest figures showing that of the top 200 companies listed on the Australian Stock Exchange, around 50% have no women on their boards or in executive management positions. Women hold around 8% of executive management and board positions, and most of those women are the only females in those roles in the company.

The picture in academia is similar. While we have seen some women reach the highest levels, most are clustered in the lower ranks and struggle to penetrate the formal structure.

While a similar problem exists within the public service, where women serve in high proportion, especially in some policy area associated with people and their needs. Nevertheless, in general, women rise to higher levels and in greater numbers within the public service than they do in the private sector

On the brighter side - or is it? - statistics emerged last month that women now outnumber men at the top of school education in Victoria, with 50.9% of school principals now being women-up from 18.3% in 1991. Over the same period, the proportion of male primary school teachers has halved. Interesting? Remember-teachers marched in the streets last month in an effort to be better recognised through pay and conditions as highly skilled professionals who play a vital role in society- and in the economy. Is there any correlation here?

We do know that women are still clustered in casual, part-time and low-income work, even as they now constitute almost half the paid work force. And women still do the majority of volunteer work in the community, and most of the family caring and domestic labour. All of this says something about the way women see work and where it fits into their lives, and the lives of their families and the community.

But, even assuming women were closer to equal in numbers in positions of power and influence, would that really be enough?

What are we looking for, what do we expect from a world where equality of representation might be a reality?

I recall an old feminist T-shirt that said:
If you think equality is the goal your standards are too low.

And then there is quote attributed to Timothy Leary:
Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.

Thinking about these issues I recalled a conference we held in 1995, when I was President of YWCA Victoria, called Sharing Power. We, and other women's organizations, were concerned about the erosion of women's voice in decision-making, and loss of services important to women in our state at that time - including in the changes to local government where women were most strongly represented.

Several of the eminent contributors to that conference made points about what that T-shirt and Timothy Leary were saying.

Christine Milne, then the leader of the Greens in the Tasmanian parliament, and now a Greens Senator in Canberra, said: Political power in Australia has been hijacked by the marketplace and by the language of the economy and-the language of violence... Politics has become largely, management of the economy rather than leadership of the society.. We've forgotten that the economy is meant to be the means to an end, and not an end in itself.

How correct she has proven to be as our so-called leaders have handled the contemporary challenge of climate change. Our former PM said that no matter what the scientists might be saying, he would not take any action that would adversely affect the economy. The new government, while it has acknowledged the problem and makes noises about action, seems increasingly wary in its approach, as it waits for yet more reports - from an economist no less! And on the question of the mining and export of uranium, there has so far been agreement by the major parties that we must do it because of all the money to be made - even to the extent of export to Russia and China- where safeguards guarantees must surely be described as dubious at best.

Christine went on to say: "In sharing power we don't want what is, but rather what can be.:

She pointed out that, because of the adversarial and other negative characteristics of politics, most women are reluctant to put themselves forward. She described the real world of decision-making where decisions are thrashed out in parliament. There you will discover a war of words, attacks are mounted, skirmishes and stouches occur. People are targeted, sacrificed, or fall on their swords ...watch their backs, are knifed in the back, look down the barrel, are dragged kicking and screaming to the right outcome. Or there will be casualties, some will be blown out of the water, or they may tough it out, stand and fight and remain unscathed.

Indeed, it is the language of violence, war - and sporting contest. As Christine said:

Debate means abuse ...In Roman times it was described as bread and circuses, economic and gladiatorial contests or power games for entertainment. Now it is men in dark suits who have entered the bear pit, but the agenda remains the same - bread and circuses, power games and economics.

Christine's proposition, however, is that we need more than simply numbers of women to enter politics, and other decision-making areas: that the women who do go there should take with them what she calls the feminine perspective.

She quotes Gloria Steinem:

Women don't. want to change places with men, we want better places in a kinder, gentler, less rigidly-gendered world A world where women's values and ways of doing things impact on decision-making - networking at community level, listening to what people are saying-
not doing all the talking, actually solving problems by working through them, not theorising and grand-standing.

I don't know anyone who considers Maggie Thatcher as the epitome of any feminine perspective, yet even she is quoted as saying:

"In politics, if you want anything said, ask a man; if you want anything done, ask a woman."

So Christine went on to suggest what we need to do to make the changes necessary to achieve a critical mass of feminine perspective in order to reclaim politics from economics, for society.

We need to begin by making certain that the processes involved are open and accountable, with built-in practices and principles which will attract and enable women to move towards implementing policy with a feminine perspective. Issues like a Bill of Rights, freedom of information and electoral systems are all important in making this a reality.

Practical changes must be made to make participation a genuine option for women who most often will put the welfare of their family over, the opportunity to take on the task of achieving power in any field. This is a huge task as so many of the institutions in our society are organised exclusively for the convenience of, mostly, white middle class, and married, men. I must admit that I often yearned for a wife when I was in a position of so-called power.

We need to choose candidates for office whose life experience has been to promote or to work within the realms of the feminine perspective.
And, Christine proposes, we need to prune our language of violence ...take out those words which have been created in the service of economic rationalism.

Ultimately, we need to change ourselves so that we reflect the feminine perspective in what we say and what we do. We must actively participate in our local communities and work from the bottom up ...to ultimately achieve power in a democracy organised to suit our needs, not just our economic wants.

I will conclude, as Christine did those thirteen years ago, by quoting a long-time inspiration of mine, E F Schumacher - a true holder of the feminine perspective I would-say, with what is a true challenge to us all - and especially to those who hold or aspire to power:

We must do what we conceive to be the right thing, and not bother our heads, or burden our souls, with whether or not we will be successful. Because if we do not do the right thing, we will be doing the wrong thing and we'll be part of the disease, and not part of the cure."