Why we still need to fight for gender equality.

On 11 October 2020, we will celebrate the International Day of the Girl Child. This United Nations’ observation supports more opportunity for girls and increases awareness of gender inequality faced by girls worldwide. This inequality includes areas such as access to education, nutrition, legal rights, medical care, and protection from discrimination, violence against women and forced child marriage.

This past month we have lost some amazing women who shaped how women are treated across the developed world, and in Australia in particular.

Ruth Bader Ginsberg fought discrimination embedded in hundreds of pieces of US legislation and succeeded to the US Supreme Court as an Associate Justice – a role she held for 27 years until pancreatic cancer took her. Bader Ginsberg had to fight discrimination in almost every aspect of her life, but despite the fight, became one of the most articulate and successful legal minds in the United States. That discrimination included responding to the Dean of Harvard Law School (when she was one of only nine female legal students in a class of more than 500) on why she was at Harvard Law School taking the place of a man, and, on being appointed a professor at Rutgers University, being told that she would be paid less than her male colleagues as she had a husband with a well-paid job! And those examples were well before she started making her mark as a judge. 

Susan Ryan was elected as one of the first two Australian senators for the ACT in 1975, on the slogan ‘A woman's place is in the Senate’. In March 1983, Ryan was appointed Minister for Education and Youth Affairs and Minister assisting the Prime Minister for the Status of Women. Ryan held key roles in cabinet for the next few years, finally resigning from the Senate in 1988. Ryan had a strong focus on gender equality in politics and, possibly, her greatest contribution to Australian society was her private member's bill introduced in 1981 which was crucial to the development of the Sex Discrimination Act 1984, the Affirmative Action (Equal Employment Opportunity for Women) Act 1986, the Public Service Reform Act 1984 and the Equal Employment Opportunity (Commonwealth Authorities) Act 1987. This dramatically reset the way women are employed, treated and paid in the workforce, and introduced a much more level playing ground and fairness, despite this not being the experience Susan had had herself. 

In September, we also lost Helen Reddy, the woman who gave an anthem to the Women’s Movement in the 1970s. Winner of an Australian TV singing competition, she flew to New York with something like US$200 in her wallet and a return air fare. Thinking she had won a recording contract, the trip became a disappointment when she was told she had only won the chance to audition, which she did and wasn’t successful. Undeterred, Reddy stayed in the US with her three-year-old daughter. Reddy finally got her break, but it was I am Woman—which reached number one on the Billboard charts—that really launched her career. The song earned Reddy a Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, and reflects the strength women have despite the potentially overwhelming odds:

I am woman, hear me roar

In numbers too big to ignore

And I know too much to go back an' pretend

'Cause I've heard it all before

And I've been down there on the floor

No one's ever gonna keep me down again

CHORUS:

Oh yes, I am wise, but it's wisdom born of pain

Yes, I've paid the price, but look how much I gained

If I have to, I can do anything

I am strong

I am invincible

I am woman

You can bend but never break me

'Cause it only serves to make me

More determined to achieve my final goal

And I come back even stronger

Not a novice any longer

'Cause you've deepened the conviction in my soul

I am woman watch me grow

See me standing toe to toe

As I spread my lovin' arms across the land

But I'm still an embryo

With a long, long way to go

Until I make my brother understand

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Helen Reddy / Ray Burton

But why would these women be important to me, the CEO of an Australian charity working to end poverty in the developing world?

Firstly, as a woman who has benefitted from living in a world where many of the inbuilt gender discriminations have at least been identified and can be fought, I feel incredibly thankful to each of those who have fought against discrimination in the past. I started my working career at the time when Susan Ryan’s legislative framework for eliminating sex discrimination was being enacted. It was a turning point for many organisations who struggled to understand what they needed to do different. Yes, there were moments I would shake my head in disbelief, but at least I could point to a legislative framework to ensure there was appropriate action to make things fairer in the future.

Secondly, it's important to note that even in a country such as Australia, the ‘fight’ isn’t over, but just like the three amazing women we have just lost, we’ve got to continue pushing the point. Recent research from Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre and the Australian Government’s Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) demonstrates the tangible, positive improvements in company productivity and profitability that correspond with greater female representation in Executive Leadership Team positions. Despite this, the Chief Executive Women’s 2020 Census results show women hold just 12 per cent of Executive Leadership Team roles that have profit and loss responsibility in Australia. And COVID-19 conditions have highlighted the importance of traditionally considered feminine leadership qualities, such as empathy, compassion and truthfulness. Yet, of the 25 CEO appointments in 2020, only one was a woman. How can this be, 35 years after legislation was enacted to stop discrimination in the workforce, and at a time when our economy desperately needs empathetic and compassionate leadership?

Thirdly, I am a mum and I want a fairer world for my daughter. And I want my son to be sensitive to the generally privileged position he has, and the responsibility to make the world a fairer place for all.

And I desperately want the women Opportunity International Australia works for to have a fairer environment to work and thrive in. As mentioned, Opportunity is working to end poverty in the developing world. We do this primarily by addressing financial exclusion by providing small loans to those living in poverty who can’t access ‘normal’ bank loans. With more than 95 per cent of our partners’ loans being given to women, we are helping to fill a huge gap of financial inclusion discrimination. 

I want our partners’ 6.9M clients to not have to face domestic violence that is culturally acceptable in the countries we operate. One in every two women in India report some form of domestic abuse, and then there’s the honour killings, dowry related abuse and deaths, and rapes. That’s why our domestic violence identification, mitigation and counselling services are so critical – to allow people to understand that violence against someone you love, isn’t love and isn’t acceptable. 

And I certainly don’t want our partners’ clients to be caught out by the traffickers that prey on those living in poverty and tell them that they have a fortuitous “marriage, job or educational scholarship” arranged for their child, overwhelmingly, their daughters. In a place like India, it is estimated a child is trafficked every three minutes and their average age is 12. I want girls to have a childhood and for that not to be robbed from them. 

And I want girls to be given the same access to education as boys, to be provided the same resources and not seen as second-class citizens expected to serve the male family members. And I don’t want girls to be married off as teenagers as a punishment for showing too much ambition. 

But all of these issues are challenging to address. Each is embedded in deep cultural norms and it takes huge undertakings to move the dial. But, like Bader Ginsberg, Ryan and Reddy, I’m not willing to just let things stay as they are. Will you join me in the fight? Will you support Opportunity’s programs to bring more equality to those who are “down there on the floor”?

Is that too much to ask on International Day of the Girl Child?