‘Women and Leadership’
Speech by Elizabeth
Broderick
Sex Discrimination Commissioner and
Commissioner responsible for Age
Discrimination
Australian Human Rights
Commission
2008 Australian Regional Women Leaders
Convention
Main Hall, Town Hall, Melbourne
Wednesday 19
November 2008
I want to begin by acknowledging that we are gathered today on the traditional land of the Wurundjeri people and I want to pay my respect to their elders past and present.
It’s a rare privilege to be speaking with a group of women who have travelled from so many places across Australia. Many of you have a deep relationship with the communities, the region and the land. On all our behalf I would like to thank the Wurundjeri people for their ongoing care and responsibility for the land that we are meeting on today.
I would also like to thank Di Pierce and the Regional Women Leaders Conference for asking me to speak with you today.
I have been in the position of Sex Discrimination Commissioner since late in 2007. As part of the Australian Human Rights Commissioner, I am responsible for promoting progress towards gender equality in Australia and providing independent advice to Federal Parliament on how laws, programs and policies may affect women. The Commission is also responsible for receiving complaints for breaches of federal anti discrimination legislation including the Sex Discrimination Act and holds public inquiries into issues of national importance.
When I began in the role of Sex Discrimination Commissioner I was keen to hear what people thought about gender equality – I wanted to find out where we are at in our pursuit of gender equality and where we should focus our efforts in the future.
Over six months, I travelled all over Australia. I couldn’t go as far as I would have liked to, but I made sure to experience the diversity of Australia – I visited city and urban areas, regional and rural communities and remote Australia. I met over one thousand people - Abattoir workers, young women, bankers, Chinese factory workers, African women, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, community workers, academics, business, and parliamentarians – to name just a few. I feel incredibly privileged to have heard so many stories of women achieving remarkable things everywhere, everyday.
The people who shared their experiences on that Listening Tour and since have provided me with a deep level of knowledge that no number of reports or papers ever could.
The Listening Tour directly informed the setting of my agenda for my term as Commissioner. In July this year I launched my Plan of Action Towards Gender Equality. My Plan focuses on five key areas:
- Achieving greater balance between paid work and family responsibilities for men and women;
- Increasing the number of women in leadership positions, including supporting Indigenous women’s leadership
- Driving down the incidence of sexual harassment;
- Reducing the gender gap in retirement savings; and
- Strengthening laws to address sex discrimination and promote gender
equality.
As I’ve travelled through Australia it has become clearer that the way women are affected by these issues depends on their age, race, their social and educational background, their level of ability, sexuality and where it is in this wide country they call home. I have more to hear about the experience of regional women in regards to these issues and I’m grateful to have the opportunity to meet you today and hopefully work towards some common aims in the future.
No matter where I have been – when we are talking about gender equality – what I heard from women and men across the board – is that gender equality matters. It matters to individuals, to business, to our communities.
For me, it has been in considering the area of women and leadership that some of the differences and some of the similarities between regional, rural and remote women and women who live in major cities have come to the fore.
While I was on the Listening Tour I heard many inspiring stories of women’s leadership, from board rooms to community organisations. I met women who are driving immense social change within their communities – often in the face of extremely limited resources.
For those of you who are yet to make your way up to the beautiful Kimberley region of northern Western Australia, let me tell you about Fitzroy Crossing. Set in a landscape of red dusty dirt, beautiful rock formations and the odd roaming cow, the Fitzroy Valley is where four main Aboriginal language groups meet. Fitzroy Crossing, the town centre, has a population of around 1500. There are around 45 remote communities in the surrounding areas.
In Fitzroy Crossing, I met some exceptional women. Last year, they organised a women’s bush camp where they came together to take stock of the issues facing their community. They decided to fight for a 12 month ban on the sale of takeaway alcohol because they wanted to reduce violence and other problems associated with alcohol. I was shocked to hear that some estimates suggest that 30% of babies in this area are born with foetal alcohol syndrome.
As a direct result of their lobbying and advocacy, a ban on the sale of full strength alcohol was put in place last year. The ban, led by the women, has delivered great results. Police reports show that domestic violence reports have decreased by 43 per cent. The number of kids going to school has gone up. Police call outs for alcohol related violent incidents have decreased by 55 per cent. People are feeling safer too. Some senior women in the community told me that, since the ban, they have been able to sleep peacefully through the night without fearing for their own safety or that of their family.
The collective resolve of the women of Fitzroy Crossing to ensure that every woman in the community has a right to live without fear of violence is inspiring. I certainly have felt motivated and energised by their achievements. It is a story which needs to be told not just nationally but globally and we are hopeful that June and Emily will be able to tell their story at the Commission on the Status of Women in New York in March next year
Last week Make Poverty History and Oxfam Australia launched a series of short films called Sisters on the Planet.[1] As we know, the impact of climate change will be gendered. These short films told the stories of six women who are leading the response to climate change in their own communities. One of the women was in Uganda, another in Bangladesh, one in the Carteret Islands. And one of them was a woman called Helen Henry, from Hamilton in Victoria.
I didn’t have the privilege of going to Hamilton this time around – but it’s a regional centre in the South West of Victoria. Almost ten thousand people live there. It’s boarded by Lake Hamilton and the Grangeburn River loops through the town.
Helen Henry was born in a town of 100 people 50 kms outside Hamilton. She remembers growing up in a wet, green place. Like many young people, she finished school and wanted to leave the area. In her words – “I didn’t want to be in a small town where everybody knew everybody’s business.” Ironically it was the same qualities of regional communities, as she said, “the way people look after each other,” that brought her back home 10 years later with her own young children.
She was shocked at how her landscape had changed while she’d been away. She realised that the changing climate meant that her children would not carry with them the same memories of growing up there. She reasoned that there must be other people who felt the same anxiety so she wrote to her local paper to see if there were people who wanted to come down to the local coffee shop and talk about it. The paper ran it on the front page and thirty of forty people turned up – farmers, plumbers, mothers, teenagers brainstormed local projects to reduce the community’s carbon foot print. She also joined the Al Gore’s Climate Project and now provides information to her community about the impact of climate change and how we might respond.
Interestingly, Helen described the primary purpose of her group to be keeping community leaders accountable. She did not seem to realise that she is a community leader in her own right.
Like many of the stories you will have heard and told over the past two days, these women’s stories are inspiring. I am sure that to you it is not surprising that these stories come from areas outside the major cities. The Australian Bureau of Statistics has shown that where you live has significant influence over the way you engage with and feel about your community. If you live in a regional or remote part of Australia you are more likely to volunteer in a typical week and more likely to be an active member of a sporting, hobby or community-based club or association than people who live in major cities. It is no surprise then, that people who live in regional or remote Australia are also significantly more likely to say that they feel part of their local community.[2]
June, Emily and Helen are leading efforts to make their communities safer, healthier and stronger. They are true leaders – they have vision, they inspire people and they do it without the fame or fortune afforded to others.
Of course over recent months I have also welcomed a more public debate about women’s leadership. The appointment of a number of women to highly skilled positions including Julia Gillard as the Acting Prime Minister, Quentin Bryce as the Governor General, Julie Bishop as the Shadow Treasurer, Kay Goldsworthy as an Anglican Bishop and Liz Cossin as the first Major General in the Army clearly matters. It highlights just how long it has taken for Australian women to be appointed on merit to roles which they can so clearly perform. The appointments are important steps towards our goal of gender equality.
These women are often more notable because they are an exception to the norm – but equality is not proved by examples. On the evidence it seems that these very public appointments might actually be a veneer for the more common experiences for women.
Women in Australia remain under-represented in leadership positions in virtually all sectors of the paid workforce. The public sector, law and academia are areas dominated by the achievements of women until you reach the highest echelons.
As Virginia outlined, last month the Equal Opportunity in the Workplace Agency released the Australian Census of Women in Leadership which is the definitive benchmark for the representation of women on corporate boards and in executive management.
We now know that the picture in corporate Australia is even gloomier.
An analysis of women’s representation on regional representative bodies in 2005 suggested that the representation of women in leadership positions declines as we move from metropolitan areas to regional areas and further still as we move from regional to rural areas.[3] As the previous speaker mentioned, the issues of distance, childcare and schooling are more exacerbated in regional areas and are some of the things preventing more regional women from taking up positions of leadership.
There are some positive stories. Some representative bodies – like Regional Development Boards, Catchment Management Authorities and Area Consultative Committees can say the representation of women on their boards is three times higher than the lowly average set by ASX200 companies.[4]
However, when it comes to women chairs there was not one Agricultural Company Board, Rural Representative Body or Agricultural Commodity Council which had a woman at the helm. At the time they were surveyed, the Regional Research and Development Corporations and Agricultural Companies hadn’t been able to find a single woman to fill the position of Chief Executive Officer.[5] Is it because there are no women in regional Australia equipped for such positions? Interested in such positions? Looking around the room today – that doesn’t seem likely.
When it comes to the representation of women in leadership it seems there are some stark similarities between our town and country sisters.
Some of the reasons for this low level of representation are the same in the city as they are in regional centres and in the country. Regional and corporate women have reported that organisational culture is male dominated and resistant to change. Regional and corporate women tell us that the ‘work’ they do is still imagined as men’s work – if I told my kids to draw a farmer or a corporate chairman, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t be wearing a skirt. Regional and corporate women tell us they are not socialised into leadership positions in the way their male peers are. Regional and corporate women tell us that even where there are women in leadership positions their representation is precarious and unsustainable; their numbers are so small that even a small movement of women from top jobs has a big impact on the representation of women in leadership positions. Regional and corporate boards seem to feel that appointing women is too risky and it is better to stick with a known quantity.
Some of you may have taken part in the National Rural Women’s Summit which was held earlier this year. Others of you will know that 82 women came to Canberra from rural, regional, remote areas all over Australia. They included Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, women from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds and women with disabilities. They were all leaders – decision makers in small business, primary production, health, education and environment and they came to claim a stronger voice in decision making. As they departed, they committed to work with government and influencers to implement and deliver their recommendations.
I followed their recommendations with great interest. Second on their ambitious list was “the need to increase the number of women in decision making positions to achieve a 50% minimum standard.” The instructions supporting this recommendation were specific and unequivocal and they demanded action and accountability. For me – the determination of this advice was refreshing.
The Summit also called for the development of a national gender plan with national benchmarks including benchmarks on women’s representation. They urged all government departments, agencies and boards to report annually on gender equity and representation issues.
But leadership and women’s representation was number two on the National Rural Women’s Summit’s official communiqué. Number one on their list of recommendations was the plea to “immediately declare a National State of Emergency for water,” and to establish a bi-partisan war cabinet which would legislate, allocate resources and implement best practice on water.
Hearing this recommendation it struck me that while there are many shared experiences between regional, rural and remote women and women living in cities and urban centres in Australia, there are also significant differences in the issues that concern us most.
I was immediately reminded of a woman I met earlier this year when I was privileged to travel to the United Nations in New York to take part in the Commission on the Status of Women. Once a year, delegations from 192 member countries come together to discuss the promotion of women’s rights.
Let me tell you, this was an experience of a lifetime. There were over five thousand delegates – government, non-government and women’s organisations from all around the world.
What struck me the most was the level of passion, determination and creativity amongst the women. I heard some extraordinary stories of women’s achievements across the globe.
But the woman I thought of was a woman from Ghana who talked about the impact of climate change on women’s lives in Africa. Drought has severely impacted the north of Ghana. She told us that in the past, she had been able to rise at 4.30am to start the search for firewood and water. But now, as a result of climate change, she needs to start at 3am and spend up to eight hours a day searching. She talked of the increase in the number of young women dropping out of school to take on these extra workloads, thereby reducing the opportunity for them to participate in more productive activities. There was a real anger amongst African women, that they were suffering for a problem not of their own making but at the same time – there was a determination to come together to bring about change.
Much of this determination can be heard when regional women in Australia, like Helen Henry from Hamilton talk about their future and the future of their family and their community.
Climate change will bring with it increases in temperature and decreases in rainfall.[6] Water supplies for cities and towns, agricultural, industrial and environmental purposes will be threatened. We can also expect the already exiting state of drought to be exacerbated. Climate models suggest that by 2030 drought could be as much as 20% more common over much of Australia and up to 80% more common in south-western Australia by 2070.[7] The rising sea levels will increase the salinisation of surface and ground waters.
These conditions will be punctuated by increasingly frequent extreme weather events such as drought, fire and flooding. What will this mean for regional industry and what will it mean for the regional communities which support them?
Echoing the Ghanaian woman’s story, one farm in Bourke reported that to cart the water required to keep their property going, they now have do a round trip of 120 kilometres every day.[8] The increase in work loads, coupled with the decrease in income, has also led many farming families to seek work off the farm. Working off-farm often entails enforced separation as one partner travels to bigger centres to find work. While this will obviously have a huge impact on individual families, it will also have a significant impact on the regional communities, services and businesses that support them.
It seems that in the coming years there will be an enormous need for regional leadership to avoid divisions developing and to ensure that regional Australians have the same access to services and the same outcomes as people in the city. Women’s roles on the land, in communities and in business and services means their input to this leadership is absolutely central to this project.
Climate change, water shortages, extreme weather events are issues which will draw out new leadership and new alliances. As it has often been observed – these environmental phenomena do not seek visas or wait patiently to have their passport stamped – they move across our borders quickly and unpredictably. As regions, states and countries move to tackle them alliances will have to be strategic, flexible and responsive.
I saw an early example of this four years ago when the Western Australian Farmers Federation reversed its opposition to the Kyoto Protocol to control greenhouse gas emissions and urged the then Prime Minister to ratify the agreement.[9] As their spokesperson said, "It might seem like a departure from normal agri-politics but the issue is just too big for us to be petty minded and not try and do something about it. Farmers, like the rest of the community, are part of the problem and part of the solution.”
There may also be strategic alliances to be made by regional and rural women in Australia and their counterparts internationally. In some cases, regional women in Australia may have as much in common with regional women in Bangladesh as they do with their compatriots in Brisbane.
So where are we now when it comes to gender equality and how can we maximise the strength of women in Australia?
Right now we are at a critical juncture in terms of achieving paid maternity leave for women in Australia. Paid maternity leave is a crucial plank in achieving equality for women in the workforce as in positions of leadership and influence. I hope that we will all join together to be strong advocates for its introduction.
Some of you might know that I am also the Commissioner responsible for age discrimination. Knowing how rapidly our population is ageing, one of the things that concerned me most as I heard from women across Australia was the state of women’s retirement savings. Half of all women aged 45-59 have $8000 or less in their superannuation fund compared with $31 000.
This will also be an issue which will be keenly felt in rural and regional communities where a lot of women have spent a lifetime engaged in unpaid labour working to support farms, properties, businesses and rural industry.
There are many groups of women who work tirelessly for regional Australia. I met some these women through my Listening Tour and hopefully I will get the chance to meet a few more today. After I heard women tell their leadership stories through that tour I made a commitment to act as a public voice of support for all those working to improve women’s leadership and achieve gender equality. Today I undertake to continue to hear your voices. Where I can, I will support you and I welcome the opportunity to talk to you further.
Addressing the issues raised by regional women will benefit all women –it is clear that your voices are a crucial part of women’s leadership in Australia.
Let us join our voices together and help to build the Australia we want: found on a new sense of equality as we meet the challenges of our shared future.
Thank you.
[1] Oxfam Australia, Sisters on the
Planet: Women Tackling Climate Change www.oxfam.org.au/campaigns/climate-change/take-action/sisters-on-the-planet/
[2] Australian Government
Department of Infrastructre, Transport, Regional Development and Local
Government, About Australia’s Regions June 2008, http://www.bitre.gov.au/publications/38/Files/RegStats_2008.pdf
[3] Australian Government
Department of Transport and Regional Services (now Department of Infrastructure,
Transport, Regional Development and Local Government), Women’s
Representation Rural and Regional Australia: A Snapshot of Women’s
Representation on Selected Regional Bodies, 2005, www.infrastructure.gov.au/regional/councils/rwac/pdf/women_rep_snapshot.pdf
[4] Ibid
[5] Ibid
[6] Australian Government
Department of Climate Change, www.climatechange.gov.au/impacts/overview.html
[7] www.climatechange.gov.au/impacts/water.html
[8] Alston and Kent, Social
Impacts of Drought, Charles Stuart University, Centre for Rural Social
Research, 2004, www.csu.edu.au/research/crsr/ruralsoc/Social%20Impacts%20of%20Drought.pdf
[9] “WA farmers' group
supports Kyoto Agreement,” www.abc.net.au/rural/news/stories/s1096488.htm
