With the centenary of International Women’s Day (IWD) only days away, I’ve noticed a growing belief amongst both women and men, that Australia’s gender gap has closed. It started with Julia Gillard’s ascendancy to the Prime Ministership and has snowballed since then. The argument goes something like this: “We’ve got a female Prime Minister, female Governor General, female Premiers and 10% of board seats on ASX 200 companies are taken by women. We have paid parental leave, sexual harassment is illegal and women are taking over non-traditional industries in droves…what more do you want?”
Well, my answer is “A LOT!” I want a LOT more.
- I want an Australia where women earn the same as men for equivalent work. I want the gendered pay gap of 15% (up to 26% in some industries) to be addressed.
- I want the 50% gap between women’s and men’s average superannuation balance to be addressed, so women are no longer more likely than men to live in poverty in their retirement years.
- I want something to be done about the fact that the fastest growing cohort of people at risk of entering homelessness for the first time in Australia are now women aged 45 and over – with over 21,000 of these women already identified on Australia’s eastern seaboard.
- I want the double burden that women carry – that of taking on paid work outside the home and most unpaid work inside the home – addressed by the introduction of family-friendly working hours across Australia.
- I want business to step back from its traditional linear, male dominated leadership model and introduce a flexible model that allows corporate women to succeed and achieve leadership positions despite taking career breaks for family and caring reasons.
- I want Australians to stop patting themselves on the back because 1 in 10 board seats on ASX 200 companies are now taken by women – and instead, ask themselves why that figure isn’t closer to 5 in 10. And on that note, I want more than 3% of ASX200 CEOs to be female.
- I want more female politicians appointed to Cabinet positions and I want strategies built in to our education policies so that girls are equally represented in the take up of mathematics, science, technology, engineering and construction subjects in school, vocational college and university.
And when they’ve graduated, I want young women to be able to work in those non-traditional industries without being harassed, or discriminated against because of their gender – a leading cause of the drop out rate of women from “hard hat” jobs.
- I want every Australian girl and young woman to know that there is never an excuse for the physical or emotional abuse of women and I want real protection offered to women and girls who have the moral courage to report these crimes to the authorities – along with real penalties put in place against the perpetrators.
- I want every woman in Australia to have the freedom and support she needs to follow the life path that is right for her, and I want real action taken by government, industry and the non-profit sector to make this happen.
That’s not all I want, but it would be a good start! Happy International Women’s Day!
