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Speech - ‘Women and Leadership’ 2008 Australian Regional Women Leaders Convention (2008)

Sex Discrimination

‘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