We are currently ranked 32nd in the world for female parliamentary representation, below New Zealand, Rwanda and Iceland.
It’s on the rise. For example, in federal Parliament the number of female politicians has jumped 15 per cent since 2002, to sit at 40 per cent in 2023.
For those young women who feel excluded from politics and disinterested in the ‘he said-he said’ that is yelled across the political chamber, Zoe McKenzie’s message was a warm embrace that showed politics can be done in another way.
But it’s time we stopped celebrating little strides forward in equality with purple cupcakes and long celebratory lunches and looked at how we could genuinely drive real gender equality in our communities.
How can we raise our glasses this International Women’s Day when the fastest growing homeless group is women over the age of 55?
Or when some girls’ schools in Australia still do not allow shorts as part of the uniform.
Or when the media refer to a felon or an accused person as ‘a mother of three’ and the narrative is dominated by her role as a woman. Rarely do we know the marital status of a male in similar circumstances.
But it’s probably the heartbreak of domestic violence that drives home the absolute inequality now faced by many women in Australia (and indeed around the world).
Advertising campaigns, targeted school talks and new laws to address coercive control have all failed to reduce the nation’s shameful domestic violence figures, with police DV callouts now increasing 20 per cent each year. In the large proportion of those, the victim is female.
Imagine if domestic violence figures became the barometer of equality, and we – men and women – worked together to curtail the heartache that largely remains hidden.
Source: When can we really raise a glass on International Women’s Day?