International Women’s Day (IWD) has been celebrated on March 8 since 1911. It’s a day when women’s social, economic and political achievements are celebrated, but more importantly, it is a call to accelerate equality. The official theme 2024 of the United Nations’ observance of the day is “Invest in women: Accelerate progress”.
IWD still has enormous relevance today, with the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2023 finding that it will take another 131 years to achieve gender parity. “Invest in women” means governments should invest in programs and policies that drive greater equality. Women should demand this. Women’s rights are human rights.
Equality is a non-negotiable principle
Equality is not negotiable. I want equality in my lifetime, not in 131 years.
Women should invest in themselves and each other at a micro level. The sisterhood is strongest when women support other women. Women need to permit themselves to look after themselves more. They frequently put themselves last as they get pulled from pillar to post, juggling commitments ranging from family and work to ageing parents and saving the world. We know we can tackle the world better when we look after ourselves, but do we even consider our needs a first-order priority?
I frequently meet intelligent and successful professional women who confess to having “imposter syndrome”, feeling they don’t quite fit into what they still perceive as a male-dominated workplace. They think they must work harder than their male peers to feel “worthy”. One of Australia’s leading macroeconomists, Dr Angela Grant, who heads the G20 and Trade Policy Division in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, confessed to this at a HACCI event this week.
Affirmative action
Women CEOs are still paid less than their male peers because they ask for less remuneration. Women need to know their worth and be unapologetic in pursuing their demands. Our parliaments should reflect the diversity of the populations they represent. Australia now ranks 37th in the world for the percentage of women national parliamentarians (Greece ranks 104). Affirmative action was enshrined in the Labor Party’s rules in the 1990s – as a result, significant numbers of Labor women were elected around Australia.
My view is the conservative parties should enact similar measures as lots of talk about “merit-based” preselection seems to continuously lead to men of “merit” being preselected over women of merit. In more recent years, the focus in Australia has shifted to ending family violence, sexual violence and sexual harassment (through the #metoo movement), achieving pay parity and access to legal and safe abortions.
It was not until 2008, when abortion was decriminalised in Victoria, and 2015, when safe access zones were established around abortion clinics to prevent harassment of patients and staff, measures I supported in the Victorian Parliament on both occasions.
The overturning of the well-established right to abortion in the United States by the Supreme Court has raised alarm bells for women in many parts of the world. Only this week, the French parliament enshrined the right to an abortion in their constitution, with legislators citing what was occurring in the US as the reason to protect women’s reproductive rights. Regardless of one’s personal views on abortion, providing access to legal and safe abortions is about the right to choose, not someone else choosing for you.
Family violence remains at endemic levels in Australia; 61 Australian women died from violence in 2023, and on average, a woman a week is murdered by her current or former partner.
On average, Victoria Police attend a family violence incident every six minutes. These are staggering statistics that demand attention. We’ve had a Royal Commission that led to changes and investment, but this has to be sustained over time, and there has to be a greater focus on prevention. When media reports suggest most young men know who Andrew Tate is and a third of teen boys admire his controversial views, then we need a counter-narrative on instilling positive and healthy masculinity.
Greek women shaped us
I am immensely grateful to those women who came before us, including our Greek immigrant mothers and grandmothers who shaped us. Without those battle-hardened mothers who worked their hearts out for their children to have better lives than them, I wonder if the Greek community would be such a success story. Our community has astonishing women leading our organisations like PRONIA, Fronditha and Agapi. We have leaders in their fields and organisations who are medical researchers, doctors, judges, parliamentarians, school principals, CEOs, business women, artists and writers.
However, I look around our community and still feel disappointed in 2024 at how few women play a leadership role in many of our social and cultural organisations.Last week, Australia’s Workplace Gender Equality Agency released the latest gender pay parity data, finding Australia’s total remuneration average gender pay gap to be 21.7 per cent (the median was 19 per cent). For every $1 on average a man makes, women earn .78 cents. Despite more women graduating from university than men (women exceed 58 per cent of graduates), they are still concentrated at the lower salary levels of many companies, and even fewer women are board directors or CEOs.
These companies’ data was published for the first time. We learned that some of Australia’s largest corporations, such as the Commonwealth Bank, Qantas, and Woodside, have a gender pay gap bigger than the national average. The point of publishing extensive employer data is that a company that wants to be an employer of choice will act to close the gap. The United Kingdom has been publishing this data since 2017, leading to the reduction of the gap.
So, there’s a lot to celebrate this IWD, but so much remains to be done.
Jenny Mikakos is a former Victorian Minister and was the first Greek woman to be elected to a parliament in Australia. This is an edited extract of a speech to be delivered for International Women’s Day.