Skip to main content

‘Women’s achievements: untold stories’ (2008)

Sex Discrimination

‘Women’s
achievements: untold stories’



Speech
by Elizabeth Broderick




Sex
Discrimination Commissioner and Commissioner responsible for Age
Discrimination


Human
Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission


Black and White
Committee


Women of Achievement
Lunch 2008


Four Seasons
Hotel


17 June 2008


I want to begin by acknowledging that we are
gathered here today on the traditional land of the Gadigal people of the Eora
Nation. I pay my deepest respects to their elders past and present. I would
also like to acknowledge Her Excellency Governor Marie Bashir who is with us
today. She is an inspiration to many of us, as a committed leader and advocate
for social justice.

I am honoured to be here today with such an
impressive group of people. Looking across this room, I see that there is
certainly no shortage of women who are great achievers in this country. And it
has indeed been a big year on this front.

It is wonderful that our next Governor –
General will be a woman – Her Excellency Quentin Bryce is to be the
first female representative of Australia’s Head of State in the 107 year
history of that position. I was very honoured to recently spend time with Her
Excellency as part of my Listening Tour. She is clearly a remarkable woman. Her
appointment is both historic for our country, and a beacon for all women and
girls about what should be possible, regardless of gender.

She has been a ground-breaker for women all of
her life. She was the second Sex Discrimination Commissioner appointed from
1988 to 1993, at a time when the need for a Sex Discrimination Commissioner was
still being widely challenged.

And of course, in recent months Julia Gillard has
also made history for Australian women by becoming the first Deputy Prime
Minister and then Acting Prime Minister shortly after the Federal Election. We
also have a female deputy Leader of the Opposition, Julie Bishop.

The fact that these senior leadership roles are
now held by women 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.

However, I think that we need to pause and make
sure that, when we talk about ‘women’s achievements’, we
don’t just focus on the number of women in political life, or the number
of women on boards.

It is equally important that we support and
resource the efforts of the many women who are working at the grassroots,
particularly amongst marginalised and disadvantaged communities found everywhere
across our nation.

There are many women in Australia, working long
and hard to make this world a better place - most of them without fame or
fortune in return. Today, I want to toast their achievements.

As you may know, I have recently completed my
national Listening Tour, and my findings from that tour will be made available
next month.

For me, putting the human face to the issues I
work with is incredibly important. The Listening Tour was about hearing
personal stories. I wanted to know what mattered to people, and how I could make
a difference. Over six months, I met over one thousand people - Abattoir
workers, young women, bankers, Chinese factory workers, African women,
indigenous 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.

Today, I want to share with you just a few of the
women leaders I met along the journey – these women are extraordinary, and
they need our urgent support.

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 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.

Another remarkable individual I met on my
Listening Tour was an older woman working in a young women’s refuge in
Tasmania. Her life story is a long chain of incredible achievements - mostly
unrecognised. Over the course of her life, she has contributed to bettering the
lives of disadvantaged young women. Everyday she works with girls who are
homeless for many reasons – violence and abuse from parents, drugs,
alcohol or poverty. She gets up all through the night to help these young women
– and on the morning I met with her she had been up at 2.30am, 3.30am and
6am. She is tireless and she is 72. The sad part of this story is that Lurline
should be retired from paid work. But because of a life spent caring for others,
and the poor wages in the community sector, she has little to no savings. She is
representative of the 50% of Australian women in the age group 45 yrs to 59yrs
who have less than 8K in retirement savings. She is still working to the
detriment of her own health, not only because of her dedication to the
community, but also to make ends meet. Her achievements are many.

The stories of these two women epitomise the
strength of women of achievement, sometimes in extremely challenging and adverse
circumstances. Their stories are replicated in different ways all over
Australia, and indeed amongst women around the globe.

Earlier this year 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 in political, economic, civil,
social and educational fields.

Let me tell you, this was an experience of a
lifetime. There were over 5000 delegates – government, non-government and
women’s organisations from all around the world.

The first thing I noticed was the incredible
diversity in the room. Everywhere I looked there was a different cultural dress,
ranging from the Sub Saharan African women in their spectacular head dresses to
Chinese women in their beautiful silk dresses, to women in military uniform,
corporate women, women in saris and every other combination imaginable.

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.

One women’s organisation in India showed us
their heart wrenching television campaign, to bring attention to the plight of
HIV positive women who were kicked out of their homes once their husbands died.
This was a bold and courageous effort as the issue was seen to be highly
controversial and had not been in the public arena before this campaign.

Another story was from a woman in Ghana who
talked about the impact of climate change on women’s lives in Africa. 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
needed 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.

What all these stories tell us is that although
women’s achievements are abundant, they are often unacknowledged and
undervalued. In the Australian context, this became particularly clear a few
weeks ago. In the top two categories of awards, there were only four women out
of thirty. This is why as women we must celebrate and tell the world of
women’s achievements - no matter how big or small. Importantly, we should
bring attention to those achievements that otherwise go untold and unheard.

So, I want to talk a little about the importance
of telling our stories and sharing them widely. Every woman in this room and
across the globe has a different life experience, but we are also connected by
the common bond of womanhood. We are daughters; we are sisters; we are mothers;
we are friends; we are aunties; and we are partners. These lived experiences tie
us together. Importantly, these experiences can often help us cut through the
barriers of language, culture, wealth and poverty.

One direct result of our shared experiences is
our shared knowledge as women. Elizabeth Blackwell, the first American woman to
become a physician once said "what is done or learned by one class of woman,
becomes by virtue of their common womanhood, the property of all women.”

By sharing our stories with each other, we
continually build our learning and understanding. It is through shared learning
that we become inspired to make change happen. To put it simply, stories are
powerful. They are a catalyst for change.

The sharing of stories between women in my family
is a strong tradition. When my mother was diagnosed with leukaemia several years
ago, my sisters and I had young children. Mum was keen to impart to us all she
knew about raising children. So for several months we would meet most evenings
(just the women) to share the wisdom and insights that she had on child rearing
and inevitably the process of dying. She created for us a small booklet which
she named – The Gift of Children: Lessons for life. Her
booklet is full of detailed
practical advice from a grandma who knows she won’t be around long enough
to offer the help herself. She has sections on holidays (mainly in the big red
van) and the mealtime traditions she valued. Her booklet captures the spirit of
the happy childhood my sisters and I remember. My mother was a woman of many
achievements, including as a mother, and a grandmother.
Now that she is gone, I still find myself
referring to her teaching regularly. It is also the gift that I give to all my
girlfriends as they enter motherhood and in a small way ‘what has been
learned by one woman, has become the property of many women’.

Women’s voices and experiences matter.
When we support each other in using our voice, speaking up, and toasting a
woman’s achievement, we not only honour the woman and her success. We also
honour all those women who helped to inspire her. And she in turn becomes an
inspiration for us all.

I want to warmly congratulate the organisers on
today’s landmark event. Many of you will know my colleague at the Human
Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Graeme Innes. As the Disability
Discrimination Commissioner and Human Rights Commissioner – also the
previous chair of Vision Australia – he inspires me every day. He told me
this event was one not to be missed and I will be very happy to report to him
that he was not wrong.