CART (2)Randwick Girls High School
Sydney
24/03/2016
Good morning students.
And thank you so much Anna Coutts-Trotter for that very generous introduction.
It is a great pleasure to be here this morning to be able to share a few thoughts that I hope might be useful to you as young women about to embark upon the great adventure that is life.
I last saw Anna a few months ago at a screening of the British film Suffragette. The movie tells the story of the militant tactics English women used in 1913 to try to get the vote.
They set fire to post boxes, smashed shop windows, horse-whipped Cabinet ministers and one woman, Emily Davison, killed herself by throwing her body under the King’s horse during the running of a famous race.
It is hard to imagine today that women would not be able to vote.
Yet there are still countries, such as Saudi Arabia, where women are not allowed to vote (or to drive cars!) and other, surprising places, like Switzerland, where women only got the vote in my lifetime, just a few decades ago.
Women fought for the vote because they wanted to be part of democracy. But they also thought that once they could vote, it would improve women’s lives and promote equality.
They were wrong.
By itself, the vote was not enough. It was necessary but it was not sufficient.
And in fact the story of how to achieve full equality for women has been the story of what has been tried – and what has worked.
When women realised that the vote, by itself, wasn’t enough, they said: OK, we need to make inequality against the law.
So, starting in the 1970s and for the next 20 years, Australia passed federal and state laws that made it illegal to discriminate against women because of their sex (or gender as we tend to say these days), their marital status or because they are pregnant.
The laws covered employment, education and the provision of goods and services, meaning that you could not be discriminated against in a shop or when you tried to rent a house. They also covered a few other things, such as sexual harassment.
These laws had a dramatic impact on our society because it was suddenly against the law to treat women unequally.
But, as we all know, these laws have not solved the problem of inequality.
We still have discrimination against women.
For instance, Women do not get equal pay. The average gender pay gap is around 18 per cent but in some jobs and in certain places it is much higher. In Western Australia, it is over 30 per cent.
That means women get paid thirty per cent less than men.
How fair is that!
And what is even worse is that it has not improved in thirty years.
Back in the 1980s I used to run the Office for Women in Canberra. At the time, I used to go round the country giving lots of speeches, talking about how women’s status was improving.
I was totally confident that, however you measured it, women were on the brink of true equality.
Sure, I used to say, women only earn 80 cents for every dollar that men get but, I reassured my audiences, Look at the trend.
Just ten years earlier, in 1970, women had earned only 59 cents; by the mid-1970s that had risen to 77 cents and by 1980 it was up to 80 cents.
We were closing in fast on men’s incomes and soon we’d have parity.
Or so I thought.
No one is more disappointed – and more upset – than I am that the trend did not continue up. In fact, it froze.
Women’s earnings have basically been stuck at 80 cents for the past thirty years.
And what is even worse is that the more educated you are, and the higher up you are in a company or organisation, the bigger the pay gap is.
I think the most shocking example of this is the situation with women university graduates.
A study in 2012 found that a 25-year-old woman with a post-graduate degree would earn $2.49 million over the course of her working life.
By contrast, the man who sat beside her at uni would earn $3.78 million.
In other words, just being male gets you more than a million dollars more over your working life.
I am not telling you all this to depress you.
Rather, I want to energise and inspire you.
I know that some of you, at least, have been looking at the whole issue of parity.
You obviously know that on some studies it is estimated that it will take more than a hundred years for women to achieve true equality with men.
Well, quite frankly, we can’t wait that long.
We – and especially you – are entitled to enjoy parity during your lifetimes.
And there is no reason why you shouldn’t.
But you are going to have to fight for it.
My advice to you today is to do three things:
- Use that vote wisely. Vote only for individuals and parties that totally promise to guarantee to support policies that will ensure that women achieve full equality.
- Use the laws that are there. If you experience discrimination, do not put up with it. Make a complaint. Get justice and, in doing so, set precedents that mean things will be easier for those who come after you.
- Support getting more women into positions of power. We need women in politics, in companies, in universities, in the military, in churches – in fact, everywhere.
I’d say we especially need more women in politics because that is where the laws are made, and where budgets are decided.
We need laws and we need money to fund the programs that will guarantee our equality.
In Australia at present, women make up between 30 and 40 per cent of our parliamentarians depending on which state and which party you look at.
We have already have had a female prime minister. We currently have a female defence minister and foreign affairs minister – both for the first time in our history.
We just need to ensure these precedents are not just one-offs, but that we continue to include women at all levels of decision-making.
We are currently witnessing history being made in the United States where Hillary Clinton seems set to be the first woman to be nominated as presidential candidate.
She may win the presidency.
I personally hope that she does because it way past the time that America should catch up with all the other western democracies such as Germany, England, Canada, India, New Zealand, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, France, Australia to name just some, that have already had a woman head of government or head of state.
It is impossible to exaggerate the significance of having a woman in charge of the world’s biggest economy.
Imagine! The leader of the free world being someone like us. A woman.
Not only that: a woman who is a feminist and who has made the economic progress of women and girls one of her signature issues.
Imagine how inspiring that would be for girls and women around the world to see another woman in charge of such an important country. And using that power to improve the lives of all Americans, but making sure to specifically include women and girls.
They say: You can’t be what you can’t see.
All of us here in Australia have benefitted from seeing women’s achievements, from running the country to riding the winner of last year’s Melbourne Cup.
These achievements have broken barriers and made it possible for others to aspire to do the same.
I am disappointed that so many young women say they do not support Clinton.
I just wish I could sit down with a few of these young Americans and tell them why I think it is so important for Hillary Clinton to win.
I have been to the White House a number of times, for lunch and for dinner.
Each time, I was greeted by a woman – the President’s wife.
I will most likely never have the opportunity to return to the White House and meet Madam President but some of you might.
You never know where your careers and lives might take you.
But I do know this much. If Hillary Clinton does not succeed this year, I expect that it will be many years – perhaps even decades – before another woman has a chance to run for the White House.
So I do hope that enough American voters will rise to the occasion and make history. We will all benefit if they do.
Just as women around the world benefitted from the struggle of the Suffragettes for women to vote.
And as all of us continue to benefit from the fight to achieve parity.
The fight itself makes us strong. It is also fun.
Never under-estimate the satisfaction you will feel from engaging in the fight for justice. Not just you, but your friends and colleagues, including the men in your life.
Women need to lead the fight because we are the ones who have so much at stake.
But we won’t win without the support of boyfriends and brother, friends and fathers.
They have to be part of the solution, sharing our lives as well as our workplaces, in a fully equal way.
That’s not too much to ask.
Nor should we have to wait.
I wish you every success – in your lives and in achieving the true equality that you so fully deserve.