Jonty Bush: 'She was stabbed to death by her boyfriend' , Young Australian of the Year - 2009

26 January 2013, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

Good afternoon.

Well, thank you for having me. I'd like to start by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we meet, both past and present and respectfully thank them and yourselves for the opportunity to stand here today and to share with you part of my story, and my personal and very humble thoughts on what makes Australia remarkable.

Particularly, given I understand that Lance Armstrong today is, is running the whole confession. So, you know, quite an appealing thing to stay home and watch that Oprah run through. So thank you for coming out and making the effort.

So what does make Australia remarkable? It's a question I've been asked many times since receiving the Young Australian of the year award in 2009, and a question which is highly subjective, depending on who you ask. So yesterday morning, I did probably what every one in my generation does, and I popped the question onto Facebook, 'What makes Australia so great', and predictably there was a varied response. I dunno if everyone can read that but —.

[lists virtues] positive sunny people, the coffee, the beaches, the fact that AFL would always be on the front page of the paper even if world war III was breaking out ... how we're surrounded by an ocean patrolled by the deadliest sharks in the world, sense of community is something that really shone through for people, they really related to that sense of community that Australia seems to have, safety growing up in a community, swimming, water slides, water sprinklers, you know, people really reflected on their own childhoods a lot. What else have we got in there? healthcare system, obviously someone's over in London and a bit dirty at the healthcare system at the moment, the people, the passion and the environment, and then David, the fact that it's not America.

What becomes apparent from this is that people I think are essentially meaning making species and will identify with the Australian traits and the mannerisms which means something to us. We go about our lives witnessing events and actions, forming connections and conflicts with others. And the meaning that we attach to those events begins to form a picture or a story, If you like, around who we are as individuals and how we connect in the world.

I'd like to illustrate this to you by sharing parts of my personal story. Not only to showcase one of the 20 million lives that makes up the tapestry of Australia, but to highlight how our own personal experiences influence what it is that we notice in the world around us.

On the 30th of July in the year 2000, I received a phone call informing me that my 19 year old sister had been in an accident. She'd been out the night before with her live-in boyfriend of just three months. And as far as I knew, she'd been safely tucked away in a hotel room, sleeping off a big night. Within the hours that followed. I learned that my sister had been murdered, she was stabbed to death by her boyfriend, the man who professed to love her. This was my first real taste of violence. My first experience of losing someone that close to me and as I'm sure it's obvious to you, but wasn't so obvious to me at the time, was an incredible turning point in my life. What I didn't see at that time was this one event significant enough in its own right, would mark one of the turning points in my life, and would take me on a journey of both great isolation as I alone discovered who I was and what I valued, but also togetherness as I've walked with others that would teach me about humanity, strength, and optimism. These are the traits that I both remember and loved most about Australia and the people who populate it — humanity, strength and optimism.

Just four months following the death of my sister, my father was assaulted. He was punched twice in the face, collapsed at the scene and was rushed to hospital where he was diagnosed with a subarachnoid haemorrhage, or bleeding in the brain. Now 2012 was an extraordinary year. In many regards, two events stand out for me in particular. One is that we reached our highest heights with Felix Baumgartner skydiving from an astonishing 24 miles above the Earth. And we also explored the depths of our ocean, with James Cameron being the first man to reach the Marianna trench, over 35,000 feet deep and a figure unattainable anywhere else in the ocean.

This day, nearly 13 years, since the death of my father, I still stand in wonderment of how we can and take our people to the edges of space and the depth of the oceans, and yet the mechanics of the human brain and in particular, how to heal it largely remain a mystery to us. On the 18th of November, 2000, just four months after my sister's death, my father's life support was turned off and he passed away as a result of his injuries. He was 49 years old, a father of three, his youngest being my brother who was just 13 years of age and a recent grandfather of an 18 month old.

I've always maintained that you never finish a book on a bad chapter, and the same can be said for our lives. You might tend to have complete control over the events in your life, but you are ultimately the author and narrator of your own story. We all choose where it goes next. For me, I wanted to write myself as the heroine of my story, not the victim. I wanted my life to tell a story of a young woman who experienced tragedy and yet rose above that to create the best life that she could, in a nation where opportunities are endless and where you go next is limited only by your own imagination.

Leaving a solid career in human resources. I journeyed into the victim support and advocacy area. Over the next decade, I worked with literally thousands of families who were bereaved through homicide. Many people I speak with outside of this field expressed to me how depressing this must be and how hopeless. To be honest, it's been anything but. There's nothing more inspiring than seeing another person standing strong in the face of adversity.

I've supported a man whose only two grandchildren were murdered, as at 80 years of age, he started a fundraising group in his local town of Emerald in Queensland, and every Friday night worked the pubs and clubs raising thousands of dollars to support children's causes. I've stood by the side of a mother of a murdered son, as the offender approached her to offer a teary apology. The strength that must have taken for him to make those dozen steps across the courtroom floor and to ask for her forgiveness is something that many of us can only imagine. And the courage that it took on her part to hug him and to say, I forgive you, formed a memory that made a lasting impression on me. As I decided that day, that if she could forgive that act, then there was nothing I couldn't work through.

Our nation's history and present are peppered by stories, just like these. Australia breeds resilience. On the one hand we're a nation with incredible gifts. We're a wealthy nation. In fact, one of the wealthiest nations in the history of the world. We're blessed with growth and opportunity and we are fortunate enough to have leaders in this country who convert these gifts into prosperity for many. But we're also presented with challenges. No one could forget days in our nation's history, such as the black Saturday bushfres in 2009. Over 300 fires burned through Victoria's heartland, affecting 78 communities and taking the lives of 173 people. Or the 2011 Queensland floods, affecting 70 communities and over 200,000 people. Thirty five lives were lost, and three quarters of the state was declared a disaster zone. These events, as catastrophic and devastating as they are, bring out something in the Australian people. Where other nations loot, panic and take advantage of the population's vulnerable, Australians are arguably at our most admirable in the face of adversity. The Red Cross Victorian Bushfire appeal received an unprecedented $378 million in donations, which is around about the equivalent of every Australian donating $20. it was the largest single charitable appeal in Australian history. Whilst more than 55,000 volunteers registered to clean up Brisbane alone during the 2011 floods with thousands more simply turning up, compromising their health and safety to help a stranger in need. It's no wonder with feats like these, that Australia consistently ranks as the world's number one nation on the World Giving Index.

I love that Australians don't take ourselves too seriously, that we believe in second chances, particularly when there's sports involved, and that we celebrate and aspire to be people of substance, rather than those of fleeting fame. (For those that dunno, that's the Kardashians.).

I love that we're encouraged to challenge the status quo, that we recognise that amazing things happen on the fringes. In 2007, I was honoured to become the first victim and youngest person to be the CEO of the Queensland homicide victim support group. One of the areas I wanted to tackle was society's attitudes around violence. At the time I and others were frustrated by the lack of voice and discussion given to the topic and what we could do to address it. For example, people being encouraged by our local city council, to ring up and dub in your neighbours if they breached their water restrictions, yes, you could have someone king hit from behind in Brisbane's entertainment, precinct, and not one witness would come forward. Further to that. I was concerned that this apathy towards violence was reflected in our criminal justice system in many ways, but notably through the 'accident excuse'.

The 'accident excuse' forms an integral part of Queensland's criminal code. In fact, it's in many criminal codes throughout Australia, and holds that a person cannot be criminally responsible for an event which occurs by accident. Critically. It asks jurors to consider whether the outcome from an act of violence, was reasonably foreseeable to the ordinary man. I first encountered this section of the legislation in 2002, during my father's manslaughter trial. The jury presiding in our case were asked how foreseeable was it that the two punches dealt to my father would result in a fatal outcome. On medication, and to my surprise, the jury reached a consensus that it was not foreseeable, that two punches could result in death and they delivered a verdict of not guilty with the offender walking free from court. I then encountered the accident section of the law soon after becoming CEO of the homicide group, where during the first 12 months, two cases, which proceeded through court were found to be not guilty because of the accident,excuse. Both cases involved seemingly minimal acts of violence, one or two punches, and in both cases juries determined that death was not a foreseeable outcome to the ordinary man.

These outcomes clearly had a devastating impact upon the surviving family. Imagine for a moment, not only losing someone you love suddenly and through violence, but then being asked to accept that even though the offender committed a criminal act when they assaulted the victim, because they didn't intend to cause death, and because to the ordinary person death isn't foreseeable, that offender now walks free from court.

It was this sense of injustice that led myself and others to do two things. The first thing was the lobby government to review and change the legislation surrounding the accident excuse. The second was to start an education campaign targeting our young people particularly, reminding them about the consequences of just one punch.

The One Punch Can Kill campaign was our solution to that social problem and has since been supported by the Queensland government. I know it's saved lives. I've had young people approach me to say how they place One Punch wristbands on their hands to stop them fighting with their peers. And it's also led to a national discussion around violence, its consequences, and what we can do to challenge the Australian norms, which support it.

Since embarking on this advocacy path, I've challenged politicians, spoken openly in the media against judges' decisions and implored people to raise our expectations of lawmakers. I've had incredible media support and, largely, community goodwill towards the campaign. In other countries throughout the world, I would've been lucky to make a headline. Whilst in some countries, as a woman protesting or challenging the laws, I would've been shot.

Late last year, I started a new project called Project 24, which aims to unite Australian women towards greater safety outcomes for other women, both nationally and globally. In just a few short months we've raised a considerable sum for our first project, a domestic violence shelter in the Solomon Islands.

And it was another great reminder of two things.

One is the beauty and the necessity of freedom. Australian nationals are born into it. We inherit it for no reason other than we were the lucky ones who happened to have Australian parents. And I reluctantly admit that many of us probably take it for granted. Whilst researching for Project 24, I was gutted by some of the stories I read, where women side of Australia were victimised often purely because they were women. I read of children under 10 years of age being sold as child brides, and of a woman who was gang raped only to be told by a judge that she was too old and ugly to be sexually assaulted. For these women, freedom is an aspirational concept, something to be desired, but never achieved. One of the greatest things I love about Australia is the freedom to be a woman, to be a young person, to speak my mind, to create waves and to create change without fear.

The second reminder I've had whilst working on Project 24 and the final point of my conversation with you is the impact that one person can make in the world. I grew up in a working class suburb in Tasmania, where most of my peers didn't graduate beyond year 10. Teenage pregnancy was the norm and unemployment was high. Despite two loving and hardworking parents, I spent my early years conditioned to believe that this was the future I had to look forward to. I've spent my adult life since challenging that deep-seated belief, expecting more of myself and believing that anyone no matter their origins can create a life they're proud of.

I love that in Australia, a small town Tasmanian girl who left home at 16 years of age and failed year 12, isn't typecast as a failure. That she could go on to complete a bachelor degree. And most recently her masters. That she can become the CEO of an organisation, that she can lobby and change the law, and change the way others view victims of crime. That one day she'd be recognised nationally for this and end up travelling Australia, speaking with communities about violence, whose opinions are published through the media, develops a career as a presenter and speaker, and most recently had dinner with Prince Charles and Camilla! That's me.

You can't really see it, but it is me!

Only in Australia. It's on this note, I'd like to sincerely thank the Australia Cay Council, its sponsors and supporters, for recognising the work of this small town Tasmanian girl, amidst the amazing work that's brought to your attention each and every year. I spoke earlier of meaning. You've given my life a whole new dimension of meaning, and I'm forever grateful that you saw and believed in me. So to the council supporters and sponsors, thank you very much.

I'd also just like to throw in a shameless plug for women. We are still always looking for women to join Project 24, to help us in our fundraising efforts to improve the safety and quality of life for women globally. So if there's women out there that would be interested in joining a good team, that's how you can get in touch with me. And if anyone wants to contact me directly, it's my details. So on that note, I'd like to thank everyone for listening. I hope it encourages you to consider the meaning that you attached to being Australian and have an awesome lunch.

Thanks very much.

Sally Capp: 'Is Melbourne a good city for women?' International Women's Day - 2020

8 March 2020, Melbourne, Australia

Happy International Women’s Week everyone!

It’s been 109 years since the first International Women’s Day was celebrated and, more than a century later, there’s still plenty of unfinished business we need to discuss today.

I would like to begin by acknowledging that we’re gathered on the traditional land of the Kulin Nation, and I pay my respects to elders past and present.

Modern Melbourne is built on 60,000 years of continuous Aboriginal history – that is a breathtaking thought, and awesome in the true sense of the word.

In this week, I pay special tribute to our female elders past and present and emerging female leaders. Their stories are an essential part of us and must be remembered as we grow.

Melbourne has been praised for nearly a decade as one of the world’s most liveable cities. But is this the case for women? Is it a good city for women?

I would love to be able to say that Melbourne is the world’s most liveable city for women.

But first we need to do a few measurements.

Let’s start with the question: what’s good for women? Because what’s good for women will be good for Melbourne.

First of all, financial security:
Do women have access to good employment opportunities in our city?
Pathways with choices and promotions?
Do we earn enough to pay for essentials, to be independent at any age?

Equally important: personal wellbeing and security.
Do we feel safe and respected in our city?
Can we move about free from abuse and harassment?
Is our community supportive of us, regardless of our age, race, religion, sexuality or disadvantage?

If we’re as good as we think we are, then we have a story worth sharing with the world.

If not, we need to put women at the centre of our thinking and figure out the gaps, blind spots and failures. And that story might be even more worthwhile sharing with the world.

Let’s put our city to the test. I love a challenge.
Every woman in this room already knows the report card is going to be very mixed.

My story

I’ll give an entirely personal perspective to start with.

I have grown up in Melbourne with every advantage. A loving family, a good education, great employment opportunities, networks of friends.

You couldn’t wish for a luckier life. When I got cancer in my 30s, I had the best doctors and health system in the world to look after me. Very bad luck and very good luck – I came through it - and I don’t take much for granted these days.

With all of these advantages, a lot of opportunity has come my way. Don’t get me wrong - there’s been plenty of sexist behaviour and some structural barriers along the way, but not enough to cripple my sense of self or halt my momentum.

So for thousands of middle class women with dreams, ambitions and a solid work ethic – Melbourne is a city rich with possibilities, unquestionably a good city.

But I have more recently begun to see that we are not a perfect city.

Almost to two years to the day, the opportunity came my way to throw my hat in the ring to become Lord Mayor of Melbourne.

Politics was not something I had anticipated or contemplated before.

I campaigned and won - and in my excitement, turned up to work three days early – but that’s another story.

I’d never been inside Town Hall before. The first thing I noticed was the gargantuan portraits of Victorian gentlemen adorning the vast corridors and stately rooms of our civic centre. Lord Mayors of the 20th century were more humbly displayed in photographs.

The headcount was very telling. Out of 104 portraits, 101 were men. Just 3 were women women, including me. Three, white, middle class women. Over 177 years, women have led this city for a grand total of 4 years. It’s hard to believe I’m the longest serving with less than 2 years under my belt.

So straight away we know there’s a massive gap in Melbourne’s political and civic fabric.

I’m ashamed to admit I’d never heard of Lecki Ord or Winsome McCaughey, our first 2 female Lord Mayors in 1987 and ’88 respectively. Why didn’t I know their names? Why didn’t I know their stories? I rang them and invited them to Town Hall. No one had invited them to Town Hall or called on their civic expertise since leaving office.

These two women played a pivotal role in modernising Melbourne at the time when our city was suffering from a population deficit. Melbourne in the mid-‘80s was a drab and empty place, hollowed out once workers left for the day and headed home to the suburbs.

Lecki and Winsome implemented Postcode 3000, a policy to attract people back to the centre. They transformed our city. Now we are vibrant, exciting, industrious – voted the world’s most liveable city for nearly a decade. The pulsating centre attracts residents from all over the world. Within the decade Melbourne will be Australia’s biggest city. Their vision and leadership should be celebrated, but unless we tell their story and mention their names, Lecki Ord and Winsome McCaughey’s legacy is invisible. It is lost.

I knew so little about the female movers and shakers of Melbourne from just 30 years ago, I wondered what other wonderful women were missing from our collective memory. Plenty as it turns out – in the short version of Melbourne’s history - and the long version - our 60,000-year Aboriginal history.

If we do another headcount of statues and monuments around the city of Melbourne, there are 23 men and 2 women - Queen Victoria is one of them.

On Swanston Street alone, we’ve got Matthew Flinders, Burke and Wills, Sir Redmond Barry, 3 businessmen and a bronze dog named Larry LaTrobe.

So where are the women? Did they sit idly by with their parasols chatting about the weather as men built the city? At this point, the name Madame Brussels is often trotted out. She gets a lot of attention for running a small business at the top end of town, a popular service provider for men, and good on her. A laneway is named after her. It’s a colourful cameo, but who were the real stars of the era?

Unfortunately, women have been discounted or erased as city shaping leaders in the story of Melbourne.

So I’m going to tell you some of their stories today.

Stories are important

From the 1850s, Melbourne grew from a small town to a city of more than half a million people in just 10 years in the rush to our famous goldfields. It was thirsty work all that prospecting, and Melbourne was a city of pubs and inns. At least 50 percent of them were owned by or licensed to women. Publicans, by law, had to live on the premises. Authorities believed women would run “a more orderly house” and have a calming effect on drunk patrons. It was a golden opportunity to get ahead for widows, deserted wives and working class women without an education.

Running a business, in any era, requires grit and the women were hard at it from day one. Food, beer, wine, champagne and lodgings – it was rough and ready but it set the foundation for modern Melbourne’s extraordinary food and wine scene. Our pub culture was the beginning of our modern tourism industry and women played a founding role. How about a monument, a mural, a painting – these enterprising ladies should be celebrated.

Our second city-shaping hero is Vida Goldstein. Not long after Australia became a unified nation in 1901, our young country became big news across the world when the vast majority of Australian women won the right to vote and – even more shocking - the right to stand for election.

Melburnian Vida Goldstein was the driving force behind that hard-won change.

She was revered internationally as the leader of the “votes for women” movement and invited to the Oval Office by US President Teddy Roosevelt because he “wanted to see what an enfranchised woman looked like”.

He met a tall, intelligent, witty woman, passionate about issues affecting “mothers, wives and children” to quote Vida. In other words, serious economic and social policy. She addressed Congress and travelled to the US, the UK and Europe on speaking tours. When she came home, she was among the first four women to stand for federal Parliament. She lost, and tried 4 more times, without success.

But each campaign, she fired up the national conversation about wage equality, about the right to be safe and free from violence in the home, about women’s rights in general and women’s responsibility to step into the political arena: all issues that are still top of our agenda today in the fight for respect and gender equality.

A hundred years on we’re still having the same discussion. Either Vida was way ahead of her time or we are taking too long to make change.

In 1907, Justice Henry Higgins handed down one of the most important judgements in Australia’s modern history. The Harvester case established the right to a basic minimum wage for every worker – another bold reform that gained international headlines.

Melbourne historian, Professor Clare Wright has unearthed evidence that it was Vida Goldstein who provided the detailed research on living standards which underpinned this judgement. It famously found that a “fair and reasonable wage” should be enough to support a wife and 3 children in “frugal comfort” based on the cost of clothing, food, housing and other essentials. That certainly sounds like Vida’s work.

Vida died in 1949, without tribute or recognition. There’s a park bench dedicated to her in Portland where she was born. In the 1980s the electorate of Goldstein was named after her – but it’s not something that captures or promotes her story. This lady needs her story in lights.

Our third leading lady is Zelda. Fast forward to 1969 and working women are fighting for equal pay.

Zelda D’Aprano was 40 years old, a dental nurse who had had a range of jobs in factories, hospitals and now as a clerk at the Meatworkers Union. In all of these jobs Zelda had been paid a fraction of her male co-workers’ salary. In all of these jobs she’d asked for equal pay and found herself sacked on more than one occasion for her impertinence.

In 1969 the Court of Arbitration was hearing an Equal Pay test case brought by the Meatworkers Union, Zelda’s employer.

She said: “There we were, the poor women, all sitting in Court like a lot of cows in the sale yards, while all the men out front presented arguments as to how much we were worth. I felt humiliated, belittled and degraded, not only for myself, but for all women.”

Technically, the case did deliver equal pay. The court ruled that equal pay would apply where a woman was doing exactly the same work as a man - on the basis that cheaper female labour might cost a man his job.

It was the most hollow of hollow victories. In the meat industry, as in most industries, there were no or very few women doing exactly the same work as men. Qualified women were relegated to support roles and, in the public service, required to resign upon pregnancy.

Zelda, fed up with being polite and ladylike, chained herself to the doors of the Commonwealth Building the next day, in protest.

She said “I was convinced that genteel meetings at the city square would never achieve anything. Women would have to fight for what they wanted.”
A policeman asked her how she felt about being the only woman prepared to protest like this, in other words, wasn’t she embarrassed?

She told him: “…today it was me, tomorrow there will be two, then four women, and it will go on until all women are demanding their rights.”

And she was right. She was joined by other women fed up with the gap in wages and respect.

Zelda’s radical protest made the news. Guess what happened next? The union sacked her for being too outspoken.
She went on to lead the women’s liberation movement in 1970s Melbourne, encouraging women to be bolder and more activist. They made a point of paying only 75% of the tram fare because women earned 75% of men’s wages. They organised pub crawls to protest against a law that only allowed women to drink in the ladies’ lounge. They organised the first pro-choice rally in 1975.

She said: “Almost all people, given the circumstances, can perform heroic deeds.”

Zelda was inducted into the Victorian Honour Roll of Women in 2001 and died a couple of years ago.

Statues are important

I think Zelda deserves a statue. I know what you might be thinking ... statues are a bit quaint, old fashioned, a place for birds to do their business.

But actually statues, monuments, plaques and pictures in public spaces are important, because storytelling is important.

Social researchers and historians tell us that these visual representations of leaders and trailblazers influence the collective psyche of a community. In simple terms they are storytelling devices, singling out which people and events are important and worth knowing in the history of our town. They signify authority, respect, reverence, credibility, importance and gravitas.

When only men and male deeds are given civic and cultural visibility, there is an impact on women. Unconscious bias seeps in.

The more women are represented publicly, the more authority and respect they receive. This permeates through society, right through to the way women are viewed and how they view themselves, how they perceive their own actions and value their own lives, including within their own homes.

I wonder, if we close the respect gap, will it help close the wage gap?

The pay gap

That brings me back to the question of why the pay gap is still so wide, 13.9% nationally, 50 years after Zelda’s “radical” protest?

Here we are, men and women, still having the same conversation. In 2020, women are earning around a thousand dollars less per month than men, on average full-time earnings.

Before telling others to get onto it, I thought I’d better check the progress of my own organisation, which brought in a raft of gender equality policies in 2015.

The stats tell me the City of Melbourne is a good place to work if you’re female.

As of February 2020, 60% of our employees are women - that’s more than a thousand employed at the City of Melbourne.

Just over half our management team is female. Just over half of our executive team is female. So in terms of seniority and remuneration, women are thriving in this organisation.

Our pay gap, last reviewed in 2018, was 3.9%. With so many women in senior roles, that gap might have closed completely now.

There are some gender imbalances. Male dominated areas include:
▪ Technology Services (70% male)
▪ On-street Compliance (65% male)
▪ And Capital Works (59% male)
but all have improved in their ratios over 5 years. Only Infrastructure, with 70% men, has gone backwards

Female-dominated areas feature:
▪ Community Services (94% female)
▪ And customer relations (71% female)
Only Property Services has flipped from male to female dominated with 56% women in 2020.

The respect gap

The City of Melbourne also has a set of about 10 policies designed to close what I call the ‘respect gap’.

• We participate in numerous public events supporting the elimination of violence against women, provide training to support employees who have experienced family abuse and we offer 20 days paid leave a year.

• Our sexual harassment policies and codes of conduct are clear. However the legal system needs to be brought up to speed to meet community expectations.

• Paid parental leave is de-gendered, recruitment panels are gender balanced, all roles are flexible.

• We measure the gaps in our pay equity and we pay an extra $500 per year in super contributions for women, to recognise the significant imbalance.

I think understanding and closing the ‘respect gap’ inside and outside all of our workplaces could go a long way towards making our community safer, fairer and more encouraging for all women.

But how much wider are these gaps for women who don’t have access to the well-protected, well paid jobs in government or larger corporates and established institutions or industries? For women who didn’t have the advantages that I had growing up in Melbourne?

What does the wage and respect gap mean for the women I see sleeping rough in our city? Has the wage and respect gap led them into a state of their homelessness? The answer is yes - we know that family break-up, violence and low paid work are all factors for women experiencing homelessness.

What about migrant women facing language barriers or racial prejudice?

What about young women making ends meet in casual jobs and shift work?

Is Melbourne a good city – a good employer, a thoughtful, inclusive community, a caring and safe environment for these women?

Does anyone here know the name Lady Gladys Nicholls, one of our leading Aboriginal activists?

From the 1940s to the 1970s, her community work around the inner city, especially caring for young, homeless, destitute Aboriginal girls was legendary and should not be forgotten.

Lady Gladys at least has a statue, our only local woman. Arm-in-arm she stands in bronze with her husband in the Parliament Gardens. She was cherished by the community.

Our Aboriginal women were not even counted as citizens until 1967. They have faced systemic disadvantage on a crushing scale. Are we a good city for them yet?

The way forward

I believe the Melbourne I represent wants to be a better city for all of these women. We are not perfect, but if we understand where the gaps and failures are, we can do a lot to consciously create opportunity and a fair go, so no woman is left behind as our city grows and prospers. This is my ambition.

When I think deeply about our priorities as a council, I want to embed a strategy that says you are welcome here, you are safe here, you can find a job here, you can relax and enjoy yourself here - and you will be respected here.

Everyone belongs in Melbourne. I want women to feel that this is a good city for them.

Leadership is important. I urge all of you to use your platforms and networks to push the conversation harder, to disrupt and create a new status quo so that it serves all women fairly.

Today I want you to return to your organisation, your community clubs, your own family and think about the stories large and small that deserve to be told about women – your mothers, grandmothers, aunts, daughters and friends. Some will be personal stories and others will be yarns about the accomplishments or agony of others.

I’ll finish today with a modern story unfolding before our eyes. The AFLW is a beautiful expression of the change I’m talking about. A man’s game no longer, women have taken to the field, and it’s a level playing field that includes all women, with no barriers of race, language, sexuality or class in the way.

It’s wonderful that the next generation of kids have some 300 women running around in club colours providing role models and inspiration. There’ll be new stories and legends – and already there’s a prototype for a statue - Tayla Harris kicking sky high in Federation Square, kicking sexism out of the park.

The AFLW is a very Melbourne creation. I think it embodies our values as a city. It is proof that Melbourne can be a very good place for all women.

Conclusion

Vida, Lady Gladys, Zelda, Lecki, Winsome and Tayla: thank you for being bold, radical, unflinching and determined.
Your words and deeds have helped Melbourne women - and men - find their voice. Unafraid and unashamed, you showed us how to speak up. You shaped our values and our city. You made this a better place, a fairer place for everyone.
We’re not perfect, we’ve got a way to go but we know how to make change and that’s your gift to us. On International Women’s week 2020, we salute you.

Clare Wright: 'Discord in voices, female voices, are still seen to belong to wicked witches and evil stepmothers', Breakthrough '16, VWT - 2016

25 November 2015, Melbourne Town Hall, Melbourne, Australia

Thank you so much, Anna. What a great looking stage we’ve got here, hey? And I have to say that the view from the stage looking down is extraordinary as well. Thank you all for coming out, it’s an amazing day. In keeping with the spirit of reconciliation I’d like to start by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we gather today. The Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation, and pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging. I recognise that this has always been a place of discussion and debate, and I recognise that Aboriginal sovereignty has never been ceded.

I’m going to start today with a confession….my confession is that I have no idea what’s going on on the screen right now. Aha, lets try that again. Thank you, I assume Marie Claire is one of the sponsors of Breakthrough?

-Laughter-

Oh hello, there we go. I want to start today with another confession; I am a surfy chick. Sure I might have cheered along with the rest of my 12 year old friends when Debbie and Sue took their board out into the water at the end of the 1981 version of Puberty Blues, but my feet remained on dry land (third confession; not very good at PowerPoints). My feet stayed firmly planted there, even when I fell in love with a surfer when I was 19. From the safety of many a rocky headland, many a windswept beach, I have watched that man. Now our teenage sons ride those waves, those glorious, exhilarating waves. Our 11 year old daughter has just started to go “out the back” with her brothers. She’s much braver than me, but I’d like to think that I know a thing or two about waves. Here are some of the things that I know.

Waves are mainly a product of wind. The greater the winds force, the bigger the wave. Secondly, the friction created by wind on water forms a travelling circular mass of energy, and this is called swell. When swell reaches the coast, waves break in sets. Then the backwash from waves hitting the land returns the water and energy to the ocean. Force, friction, energy, swell, backwash. No wonder the international feminist movements peak achievements have been described through the metaphor of waves.

First wave feminism is defined by Wikipedia as “a period of feminist activity and thought that occurred within the time period of the early 20th century, throughout the world.” This is the time extending over at least six decades, and many more in some countries, where women fought for their right to be franchised. Their legal entitlement as citizens, under the democratic principal of “no taxation without representation”. This was a political revolution.

Second wave feminism, is Wiki-defined as, “a period of feminist activity and thought that first began in the early 1960’s in The United States, and eventually spread throughout the Western World and beyond. Now this is the time when women, now largely included in the civic body, protested the right to control over their corporal bodies. The personal, was now political. This is the era of women’s lib, the sexual revolution. Personally, I tend to think of these two key historical periods as the two V’s. First wave feminism was all about the vote, and second wave feminism was all about the vagina.

Now this is a crude short hand to be sure, both waves of activism campaigned for gender equality across a range of issues. But there is more to women’s history than these twin peaks of paradigm shifting success. Of course there is. To assume otherwise would be like saying that World War One and World War Two existed in isolation, with modern history devoid of any other instances of armed combat. Clearly, movements for social change, like international conflicts exist along a continuum. But can I ask you this, how much do we know about the history of women’s political activism in Australia? I’ll put this question to you in another way; did you know that there were women behind the rickety fortification of the Eureka Stockade, on that fateful morning of the 3rd of December in 1854? An event we all learned about in school?

Or that British troops opened fire that day on a white civilian population, which unmistakably included women and children. Killing at least one woman. Or that women were central to the community rebelliousness that cumulated in the event that we have come to know as the birthplace of Australian democracy? Did you know that the Women’s Christian Temperance Union actively supported the stalwart men and women who carried out the Pilbara pastor strike of 1946 to 1949? The longest running strike in Australia’s history, sometimes known as the Blackfella’s Eureka. And did you know that one of the most active participants in the Australians civil rights movements was Faith Bandler, an Indigenous woman from Murwillumbah who served in the Australian Women’s Land Army before becoming a full time activist in the 1950’s?

Bandler lead the campaign for reform that cumulated in the successful 1967 referendum to remove racially discriminative clauses from our constitution. Well, probably not, and that’s because there are more ways to silence inconvenient truths. Like the fact that women have historically protested, organised, networked, and advocated for their sex, their families, their communities, and their country. There are more ways to silence truths than by denying women access to the vote, to education, to legal autonomy, or indeed to knowledge of our own history. It is no accident that erasing women from history is one of the mechanisms used to ensure the visibility and viability of patriarchal structures of dominance and control. If knowledge is power, it’s fundamentally disempowering for women if their stories remain secreted in the archives, or confined to academic circles or local knowledge.

How can we know what we are capable of accomplishing, enduring, resisting, overcoming, if we don’t understand how women before us have negotiated their lives? This is another great Australian silence. A silence that perpetuates the myth of exclusive male agency and male potency, and by implication, presumed historical absence from the places and events of nation building, also provides the rationale for male privilege and male entitlement today.

Just because you didn’t learn about it in schools, doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen. I now want to give you some examples of women acting in ways that were adversarial, confrontational and risk taking. That is, acting in ways that if performed by male protagonists, would be considered to show leadership and valour.

The 19th century female factories in New South Wales and Tasmania for example, where an estimated 9,000 convict women worked for no pay, to manufacture commodities like spun wool, cotton and linen. On which the new colonies relied for both domestic use and export. In 1827, the women declared that they’d had enough. A riot at the Parramatta female factory over a cut in rations and poor conditions is considered to be the first industrial action staged by women in Australia. Fun fact: when the Parramatta female factory was closed 21 years later, the building was reassigned as a lunatic asylum.

Then, there are the women of the Cascades factory in Tasmania, who in 1838 staged their own version of the Misogyny Speech. The inmates of this forced labour camp were being lectured on morality by a visiting preacher. A witness recorded what happened next: “Growing weary of his cant, the 300 women turned right around and at one impulse pulled up their clothes, showing their naked posteriors, which they simultaneously smacked with their hands, making a loud and not very musical noise.” I reckon this may have been Australia’s first example of a flash mob, or maybe twerking.

Now another rowdy woman was Fanny Balbuk, a Noongar woman born in 1840. Fanny was prominent in her day for protesting against the occupation of her traditional lands south of Perth. Daisy Bates, who met Fanny in the 1930’s, wrote that “to the end of her life, she raged and stormed at the usurping of her beloved home ground. Through fences and over them, Balbuk took the straight track to the end. When a house was built in the way, she broke its fence palings with her digging stick and charged up the steps and through the rooms.”

Now, at the height of a miners strike in Plunes in 1876, an unnamed woman was also raging and storming. This time, against scab labour employed by the mine. A contemporary later wrote, “nearby was a heap of road metal, and arming herself with a few stones, a sturdy north of Ireland woman without shoes or stockings mounted the barricade as the coaches drew up. As she did, she called to the other women saying, “come on you cousin ginnies! Bring me the stones and I will fire them!” Forth confession, I can’t do an Irish accent. When a policeman raised his gun at the woman, she lifted her shirt, bared her breasts and spat, “shoot away and be damned to ya! Better be shot than starved to death.”

Let me introduce you now, to Ellen Young. An educated English woman who had a different tactic for making herself heard. Ellen was the member of a Ballarat mining community, who witnessed first hand the grievances of the diggers in 1854. She wrote directly to governor Hotham to state the diggers case, as well as penning fiery letters to the editor of the Ballarat times to mobilise grassroots support. In one letter, she provocatively declared, “we, the people, demand cheap land, just magistrates to be represented in the legislative council; in fact, treated as the free subjects of a great nation.” These were fighting words.

In 1917, anti-war campaigner Adela Pankhurst was jailed for her role in inciting riots at the height of the general strike that had crippled wartime Melbourne. Working class women had shouldered a disproportionate amount of the economic burden of war, with food rationing and other austerity measures. The riots that happened just a few blocks away from here involved ten thousand women and their male supporters, rampaging through the CBD smashing shop windows and destroying property. This was not one night of mayhem, but the sustained series of orchestrated attacks on the political and commercial elite.

Now you could write a whole history of women chaining themselves to things.  Take Zelda Fay D’Aprano, an orthodox Jewish woman who left school at 14. Zelda spent most of her life fighting against the injustice she witnessed on the factory floor. When the meat workers union lost a test case for equal pay in 1969, Zelda chained herself across the entrance to the commonwealth building in Melbourne. She was cut free by police, only to lock herself to the arbitration court gates three days later. Then there’s Merle Thornton and Rosalie Bogner, academics of the University of Queensland, who chained themselves to the foot rail of the “male only” public bar at The Regatta Hotel in Brisbane in 1965. Their actions sparked a wave of copycat self-incarcerations in Australian pubs.

Perhaps police could blame Muriel Matters, for the sudden demand for bolt cutters. Muriel was an Adelaide born suffrage campaigner. After South Australia became only the second jurisdiction in the world where women had won the right to vote in 1894, following New Zealand in 1893, Muriel went to England to help spread the gospel of female enfranchisement. In 1908 Muriel chained herself to the grill of the ladies gallery in the House of Commons. The grill was built to obscure the view of women of parliamentary proceedings. The whole grill had to be cut away, with Muriel still attached to it, before a blacksmith could release her. Muriel was latter sentenced to one month in Holloway prison, where British suffragettes famously staged hunger strikes and were force-fed.

Another Muriel, Muriel Henney campaigned for equal pay for Australian women for over 50 years. Muriel was a convent-educated girl from Richmond, who saw wage inequality as the major obstacle to the achievement of equal opportunity status for women. She died in poverty on the 19th of May 1974 (my fifth birthday as it happens) just one week after the wage case granted equal minimum wages to men and women.

My favourite feminist, Vida Goldstein, did not die in poverty but certainly obscurity at the age of 80 in 1949. Vida was born into protestant squattocracy, but went on to spearhead the suffrage campaign that saw Australia become the first nation in the world where white women won equal political rights with men. That is the right to vote and to stand for parliament. She travelled to America to represent Australia and New Zealand at the first international suffrage convention, and there she was greeted with a rock star reception.

Zelda D’Aprano, by the way, is still alive today, she’s 98, and I happened to see that there was a tag for her outside so I hope maybe she’s here. Let’s not forget too the hundreds of women’s organisations that have not been outwardly feminists, but have been instrumental in changing the conditions of daily life of women in this country. I’m thinking here of the Australian Women’s National League, the Country Women’s Association, and the Housewives Association just to name a few. All of these nominally conservative organisations have in one way or another advocated for improvements to the status of women and girls.

So apart from making for a nice slideshow, does knowing anything about these women and their actions make any difference to the price of fish? Well I think it does, and this is the reason why. We have a lost heritage of women’s political activism in Australia, in this country. An activism that had its roots in popular mass movements that included both men and women. Men and women have both historically stood together on common ground. What did Ellen Young say? “We the people, too, loudly profess our mutual commitment to notions of fairness, justice and autonomy.” Women have consistently and courageously defended the right to free speech, to freedom of assembly, and to freedom of the press as well as to women’s rights and human rights more generally. This collective historical memory is important for present and future democratic activism and change. Creating change, real game changing change is hard work, as we’ve certainly seen, as Ann demonstrated in the American election campaign.

If we understand that Australian women, as well as men, have been historically vigilant and hardworking, might not that inspire more of todays women to honour the legacy of those actions? But more than that, to know that women acted in ways that were anti-authoritarian, rebellious, and designed to kick up a stink makes a difference because it reminds us that, as the folk singer Glen Tomasetti sang, “it rarely pays to be too polite, girls”.

The lost heritage of female activism that had its roots in popular mass movements also matters because discord in voices, female voices, are still seen to belong to wicked witches and evil stepmothers. Whiners and wowzers, what was the latest incarnation of that? Fright bats, or nasty women. Not female diggers, mates, and outlaws, our national larrikin icons. We need to understand women’s relationship to citizenship in order to affirm their sense of entitlement to participate in public discourses and occupy key cultural spaces.

I’ll give you one example of how historical consciousness, the female strategies for social change, might work on the ground. Now I can find no evidence to suggest that the women, who marshalled the now famous Monster Petition for women’s suffrage in Victoria in 1891, drew inspiration from the memory of earlier female activism to bolster their cause. In this action, women collected 30 000 names in six weeks, responding to premier James Munro’s promise that if the women of Victoria could demonstrate that they actually wanted the vote, he would introduce a franchise bill. The Monster Petition was the largest yet put before an Australian colonial parliament, although Victorian women didn’t actually win the vote until 1908.

Now the symbolism of the Monster suffrage petition was recently invoked when a group of 12 prominent Australian women organised by Judith Pratt and Mary Crooks, and led by professor Fiona Stanley, started the Monster Climate Petition. The Monster Climate petition called on the Federal Parliament to join in bipartisan action on climate change. Following in the footsteps of the 1891 suffragettes, over 70 000 pen and ink signatures were collected, mainly by women, in just over six weeks. Making the petition the fourth largest to be introduced to the Australian House of Representatives. Now the petition, as we can see here, was presented to parliament on the 3rd of December in 2014. Coincidentally, the 160th anniversary of the Eureka Stockade.

If women were included in our public narratives of mateship, sacrifice, solidarity and service, might not that breed respect and empathy across the gender-divide? And if we wrote some new narratives of reconciliation, healing, and responsibility and care, might not that bode well for our collective spirit? Our environment, and our planet alike? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that women have always done great deeds for virtuous reasons in the past. Women have been colonisers, racists, and enablers of oppressive class structures that limit the lives of other women. But I do believe that gender equality is achieved when we recognise that women to have been agents in the past. That women to have been shapers of their own and others destinies. In other words, that women to have made history. The only way we will understand that we can make history today is when we fully appreciate just how much impact we have made in the past. And as I hope I have demonstrated, we have our own hero’s to guide our path and give strength to our arms. We have Ellen, we have Vida, we have the Muriels, we have Murel, Zelda, and Fanny. We have faith. We are all standing on the sturdy shoulders of those who have come before us. Some giants, some totems. And some of those shoulders don’t just happen to belong to women, there is nothing incidental or accidental about the platforms they’ve provided. Women deliberately, carefully and creatively built the edifice of their political and civic contributions of who we are today.

In 1869, when Vida Goldstein was born, it would seem absurd that any woman would ever be able to vote. By her death in 1949, women in almost 100 countries had been franchised, and Vida herself stood for parliament five times. I was born in 1969, and even a century after Vida, I can hardly dare to imagine what women will achieve for gender equality in my lifetime. I honestly quiver in excitement at the prospect.

The limitation for the wave metaphor, in framing women’s historical impact, is the implication that those two momentous movements, first and second wave feminism, surged, peaked, then pleated out and disappeared. This process would describe tsunami’s, not waves. Waves keep on coming, the inevitable, relentless result of friction and energy. Waves never stop rolling in, because there will never not be force and friction, energy, swell, and backwash that will pull us back into the deep. Waves build, they crest, and they subside. And then they build again. What’s more, you need the wind, the oppositional force to create a wave. As any surfer, or surfy chick knows, if the wind is going with the wave, the energy is dissipated and all you get is slob. In the face of opposition, women like waves will continue to rise, break, and rise again. The cause of gender equality, like the ocean, is bigger than me, or you, or all of use in this room today. It is certainly bigger and more potent than the break walls and sandbags of male privilege. No wonder the institutions, instruments and practitioners of gender discrimination, have been and still are afraid. They should be afraid. There is a wall of living energy hurdling towards them.

It seems to me that we, the people, have three options in the face of such a threat to our sense of mastery and control. We can duck under, hoping that we can dive deep enough to avoid the turbulence before the next wave breaks. We can misjudge the take off, squib at the last minute, and get wiped out by our ignorance and cowardice. Or we can get up, stand up, and enjoy this most wild ride called freedom. Thank you.

The Breakthrough 16 event was organised by the Victorian Women's Trust. This speech was reposted from VWT website with permission. Clare Wright is a documentary maker and award winning author and historian who won the Stella Prize for 'The Forgotten Heroes of Eureka'. She has other speeches on Speakola, including 'Epic Fail' about post natal depression.

Related content: This Breakthrough 16 speech by economist Richard Denniss was delivered at the same event. It's about the mistaken beliefs that hold women back.

Richard Denniss: 'Money. Power. Freedom', Victorian Women's Trust, Breakthrough - 2016

25 November 2016, Melbourne Town Hall, Melbourne, Australia

Richard Denniss is the Chief Economist at the Australia Institute. This is a speech unpacking the three big lies holding women back. It is republished with permission of the Victorian Women's Trust. Donate here for the advancement of Victorian women.

Ah thank you very much; it’s an honour to be here. Congratulations to Mary and everyone else who made this happen. I must say I was just talking to Clare [Wright] about her fantastic speech, that we were all privileged to hear, and I didn’t have time to point out to her that I was shocked and even a little disappointed because in that whole history of how women had tried to improve matters in Australia and globally, I didn’t hear any mention of economic modelling.

-Laughter-

No talk of submissions, parliamentary inquiries, a collection of the evidence base required to transform public policy. It’s probably because it’s not necessary or true.

So I want to talk today about how it is that a society as rich as Australia could for a century, for more than a century, overlook the needs of half of its population. I’m going to talk a little bit about the economics, and then we’ll end with the politics. But I just want to start with a true story. A couple of years ago I was invited to speak at one of these retreat type things that executives go to, to learn more about themselves. I often get wheeled in to be confronting, I don’t know why I get offered this role but they always latch on to it. Anyway, I was sitting there in this small group of people, about 15 or 20 people, mainly blokes but a few women. They’re all talking about career and work life balance, and how hard and stressful it is to be so rich.

-Laughter-

Oh you don’t understand the anxiety some of them go through, until they meet me. And I said, you know, people never realise when you’re setting them up, so I asked a few leading questions.

“Who here uses pay rises and bonuses to motivate their staff?”

“Oh yes, yes, yes, very important.”

“And who here thinks that if you’re recruiting new staff that, you know, the better salary you offer the higher quality of candidates that you select?”

“Oh yes, yes. Very important, get the incentives right.”

And I said, “Has anyone here got kids in childcare?”

A few hands go up. I said, “So how does it feel that your kids are being looked after by some of the lowest paid people in the country?”

-Applause-

You’re not going to like how this ends.

-Laughter-

Because I said, “You know, if you accept that you need good pay and good conditions to attract good staff, you must be alarmed that your kids are being cared for by some of the lowest paid people in the country?”

And one bloke, now I credit him for this because he was honest, he said, “Richard, I feel good about that.”

I said, “Why’s that?”

He said, “Well, I don’t want the people caring for my kids to be motivated by money.”

I said, “What, you don’t want them to be cared for by people like you?”

-Laughter-

You can see why I like my job, can’t you?

-Laughter-

And to his credit, he said, “Yeah, that’s exactly what I mean.”

That’s what you’re up against. That’s what you’re up against. The inequality in the Australian labour market is not some accident. It’s not some undiscovered problem that is yet to percolate to the top of the political agenda because of the lack of evidence. A lot of powerful people in Australia are entirely happy with it. That, is what you’re up against.

So what I want to talk to you about today, I want to tell you a story of lies and deception. It’s not Game of Thrones; it’s the Australian policy process. So basically I want to spell out what I think are the three big lies that are used to not cover up, but silence, they’re different. The three big lies that are used to silence our public debate when it comes to issues of gender inequality in Australia, and one big truth. Now you’ll hear lots of statistics over the course of the next couple of days, only a handful from me, but all of the statistics will pretty much lead you to the same observation. A girl born in Australia today, unless things change radically, will earn a lot less money in her lifetime than her brother. She will retire with less income, and less wealth than her brother. She will be more likely to suffer violence than her brother. This is the Australia we have built, and all of the statistics just keep telling us that this is true. The question is; will we do something about it? That’s what’s up for grabs, and that’s what’s exciting about being in a conference called Breakthrough.

Now of course inequality has many dimensions; gender is but one of them. But an inequality that effects more than 50% of the population, is a different kind of inequality, it’s a choice. You can’t pretend that there’s any form of oversight. You can’t pretend that there’s some form of transition or accumulation explanation. And often, if your Facebook feed looks anything like mine, you’ll see countless debates about “Was Trump elected because he’s a racist?” “No, no, it’s because he was sexist.” “No, no, it’s because he paid attention to the working class.” The reality is that it might be bits of all of those things and that when we try to divide things up into one and only one explanation, we end up with smaller and smaller, less powerful groups. What Donald Trump did with his racism and his sexism and his talk of class and his talk of everything, was build an incredible support base. But each of his supporters disagree with other supporters on many things, for those of us who oppose him, we have to understand that about ourselves as well as about them. But again I do think that gender inequality, while it’s not the only form of inequality in Australia, is a fundamentally important one if, and this is a big if, IF we want to build a better country. Again, there are plenty of people that like it just the way it is.

Now I know you’re excited to be here listening to a bloke talk about economics. I know there’s not enough of that in your lives, and credit to the organisers for wanting to fill that gap for you.

-Laughter-

But I can at least assure you that unlike most economic presentations you’ve heard; there will be no PowerPoint from me. I think power corrupts and PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.

-Laughter-

You can’t tell a good story, or, I can’t tell a good story without a point. So back to the big lies, the first of the three big lies is that inequality in Australia, gender inequality in Australia, in some way reflects some form of choice. That women are making the wrong choices, and because they’re making the wrong choices they get bad outcomes. If only women would make better choices, some of their inequality might go away. Let me just quote the great economic thinker David Koch.

-Laughter-

In a story entitled, perhaps I should say essay, “Why women need to take control of their super”. It talks about how women earn less than men. It talks about how women have a lot less money and super than men. Then he offers up some advice. I’ll skip through the advice quite quickly.

Step one, consolidate your funds, and don’t have multiple superannuation funds. Because if women consolidated their funds, that would solve the gender pay gap, wouldn’t it?

Look around, take advantage of government contributions, and let us know if you find any just for women. He didn’t say that bit, I added that. There are no women-centric government contributions to make up for the incredible disparity between men and women’s balances.

Maybe participate in salary sacrifice, he urges. Because let’s face it, low paid women have got so much money left over, having paid the rent.

Seek advice, maybe from people like David.

-Laughter-

Again, is this really gender specific advice to help overcome the structural difference between men and women’s incomes? And then step five; focus on your career. Quote, “Don’t be afraid to negotiate fairly when the time comes.” He says to the childcare worker, to the cleaner. “Negotiate fairly”, he says. Not even hard. He concludes that taking control of your super, “control”, taking control of your super by following these five steps, is a simple but powerful way towards gender equality in this country.

Now, I hope you’re a little bit angry, because I’m about to make you very angry. Please listen carefully and understand that this comes from a desire to help. If, and this is a big if, you want to close the gap between women’s superannuation balances and men’s, if that was your goal, then under the existing rules I will give you four bits of advice. It might sting a little, but my advice would work.

Step 1) Don’t go into the caring professions. Don’t. You will never, ever, match men’s super if you “choose” low paid work.

2) Don’t take time out of the labour market to care for children. If you understand the genius of compounding interest, you’ll know that the more you put away when you’re young, the more you’ll have when you’re old. So if you “choose” to take five or ten years out of the workforce to care for kids, don’t come and complain later when your super balance is a little low.

3) Don’t take time out of the workforce when you’re older to care for your parents, or your partner’s parents. Don’t do that.

4) And this is the summary one; be a man.

-Laughter-

We invented superannuation. It’s the last vestiges of the male breadwinner harvester man model. It works well, for well-paid people like me who don’t take lots of time out of the workforce. And to tell the ladies to shop around? Get your low fees, like superannuation is a bargain like a pair of shoes that if you look hard enough you will find, is obscene. But it is not an accident.

So the first lie is that inequalities in Australia are somehow reflective of bad choices. Now when of course we say bad choices, we mean choices that don’t look like choices that blokes typically make.

Lie number two; oh we need more evidence. We need more evidence. We can’t make big policy changes until we acquire the evidence. Sure, we’ve seen inequality for 100 years. Sure, we’ve seen other countries around the world have managed to address it. But we need more evidence. We don’t want to be rash. Wouldn’t want to act hastily, except of course if you’re Barnaby Joyce. I kid you not I’m going to urge you to emulate Barnaby a bit later, so don’t laugh too hard.

At a joint press conference with the Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, the Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce was talking effusively of the need to build a new dam in Queensland. And he said, and I’m quoting verbatim, “We need to get yellow things pushing dirt around, so we can get this country moving.” “Yellow things pushing dirt around”, said the Deputy Prime Minister. When quizzed by a journalist as to whether perhaps the yellow things weren’t pushing dirt as fast as he might like because the dam that he wanted built was yet to even prepare a business case he said, and I quote “Are the Queensland government fluffers? Or doers? Are they going to get stuck in? Are they gonna have a go?”

Must be fascinating to sit in cabinet these days. Someone comes along and says;

“Oh I’d like to spend a couple of hundred million dollars of tax payers money on a dam.”

“Yeah have a go! Get stuck in!”

Someone says, “Oh is there a business case for that? Is there any evidence to suggest that that’s a good dam?”

“What are you? A fluffer or a doer?!”

Yet, I’m glad you’re laughing, because that money is not going to be spent on domestic violence shelters for women. It’s not going to be spent doing anything to address low paid work in the publicly funded care sector. That money is going to the “doers” that are “pushing the dirt around” and that are “getting stuck in”. No one is sitting around asking for highfalutin business cases and evidence and stuff, because when you’re powerful you don’t need evidence. Evidence is what you tell powerless people to go and collect, to keep them busy, to come up with an obscene veneer for your inaction.

The third big lie is that we, in Australia, cannot afford to tackle these sorts of problems. That even if we could agree that we needed to spend a lot more money not just to make sure that kids got better childcare, but that carers got a wage that could pay the rent, and even allow a salary sacrifice or two, can’t afford to do it. Well let me be clear, you sit here today in one of the richest countries in the world in one of the richest cities in one of the richest countries in the world, at the richest point in world history. Australia can afford to do anything it wants. What it cannot afford;

-Applause-

Thank you. What it cannot afford to do is everything that it wants, and that’s what politics is about, deciding what’s important and what’s not. We can afford to do anything, but we cannot afford to do everything.

Last year the federal government spent around $430 billion dollars on goods and services and transfers, $430 billion. It gave away a further $130 billion in tax concessions, tax expenditures. So all up, federal government policy alone is shifting $560 billion a year. 1%, one per cent of $560 billion is $5.6 billion. $500 million would be 0.1%, 0.1% of government spending last year. Only an economist can say this, but $500 million is rounding error. It’s rounding error, you wouldn’t find it if you went looking for it in the national accounts. You reckon you guys could get $100 million for domestic violence crisis centres across the country? You reckon? Barnaby could get the yellow thingies pushing dirt around mate, get the country moving.

We are one of the richest countries in the world, but making us feel poor, making you feel poor, making women’s groups feel that there is some shortage of money is central, central, to the political strategy of the people who are winning. When I say the people who are winning I mean the people who are happy with things as they are, who have no intention of closing the gender pay gap or anything else. And I can prove this, that they have no intention of doing it, because we went to the last election promising, this government went to the last election promising $50 billion in tax cuts. That’s what a crisis they think the shortage of funding for childcare, aged care, and domestic violence policies is. That when faced with a choice between spending money on it or $50 billion in tax cuts, they went for the tax cuts.

They also found $50 billion for 12 new submarines, to replace the 6 of which we haven’t used yet. Because you can’t be too careful, can’t be too careful. And sure they were only going to cost $30 billion when we were going to buy them from overseas, but to create Aussie jobs, we’re going to spend $50 billion to build them in marginal seats in Adelaide. Because the current government that was adamant that there was no need to build them in Australia because it would be cheaper to buy them from overseas, was even more adamant that winning an election was more important than saving $20 billion. When powerful people want money they get it, when powerless people want money they’re told to collect some evidence.

So the big lies are all victim blaming, let’s be clear. Women are disadvantaged in the labour market and the income distribution because they make bad choices; that is blaming the victim. Women have failed to change policy in ways that would address these disadvantages because they haven’t collected enough evidence; is victim blaming. And we’d love to help, we’d love to help, oh we’d so love to help. It would be a priority to address gender disadvantage in Australia, but if we gave more money to women’s groups we’d have to take it from other people who need it more than you. And make you feel greedy for asking. Those are the three big lies that dominate and have dominated for decades, the economic lies that sit underneath the political comfort with entrenched inequality in Australia.

So what, if anything, are we doing to do about it? When I say we I mean Australia, and it’s an if. It’s not obvious that we’re keen to fix this problem. It’s not obvious that George Christensen wants to see abortion law reform in Queensland. It’s not obvious at all. So IF this group of people, or another group of people, wants to fix this, what are we going to do about it? Well my first bit of advice, I’m shifting now from the bizarre economics that we cannot do anything about it to the politics of what could we do about it, well the first bit of advice I’d give is to be like these conference organisers and think big. It’s actually easier in politics to solve big problems than small ones sometimes, because you can unite a larger group of people and you can cut through the processes and excuses that are used to divide and conquer. Division is death in politics, and it’s easy to divide desperate groups by playing them off against each other.

I have a confession to make; I sometimes lie to my children. I know you don’t, I’m a bit worried about the person sitting next to you though. My kids would love me to take them to Disneyland; they really want me to take them to Disneyland. I couldn’t think of anything worse. So I lie to them, and say we cannot afford to go. I’m comfortably middle-class, I’m very well paid by community standards, and I’m certainly paid a lot more money than cleaners and childcare workers. We could afford to go to Disneyland, but I can think of a dozen better things to do with the money. But I don’t debate with my children about what my priorities should be. I just lie to them; tell them we have no money. But that’s not how democracy is supposed to work. It’s all right because I’m a parent; I’m not an elected representative of the family. But your elected representatives lie to you; they lie to you and say that we cannot afford to do things. And what they meant to say is that we don’t want to. We don’t want to, we don’t want to spend more money on your priorities, we choose not to. Go away.

But it’s actually more polite to lie, isn’t it?

“Oh you’re a priority, that sounds tragic, I’d love to help, if only there was some money.”

“Could you get some money?”

“No, I’ve got tax cuts to give.”

This is not an accident. So IF my kids really wanted to put pressure on me. Well, so step one, understand that it’s one of the richest countries in the world. The notion that we, “cannot afford” to solve something is ridiculous. What we mean to say is that we would rather do something else. Democracy is designed to resolve those fights. IF my kids were to figure this out, they might come at me hard, “Dad, we’ve figured it out. We’ve found your bank balance. We know you’re well paid. We want to go to Disneyland.” They’ve got no chance, one of them loves Harry Potter, and one of them loves Disneyland.

“Hey kids, you choose, do you want to go to Harry Potter World or Disneyland? You choose. Fight amongst yourselves.”

That would never work would it? You would never be able to divide people by saying, “What do you think we should do? Should we be spending more money on childcare? Should we be spending more money on aged care? Should we be spending more money on paid parental leave? You choose. You choose. You all sort it out among yourselves and when you can agree on the one thing you want, come clap your hand and I might give it to you.” I’ve never heard The Business Council pushed on whether they want industrial relations reform or corporate tax cuts. If they were pushed, they would refuse to answer. They’d say, “You don’t understand economics.” That’s pretty funny, because no one does. “We need all of it. We need a package deal of reforms. We need industrial relations reform. We need it to be easier to sack our workers. We need lower tax cuts. We need free trade agreements. We need all of it.”

“Which is your priority?”

“All of it!”

They never divide, they never undermine each other. You never hear one business leader saying, “Oh I’d take the tax cuts and I’d give up on the push for higher reform if I got my tax cuts”, because powerful people unite. They don’t allow themselves to be played off, like hopefully my kids will one day. So, times up, it’s flashing, never accept the false choice. The big truth, the big truth, and the big opportunity, is that there are so many lies. But the big truth is that tackling gender inequality isn’t a women’s problem, it’s an Australian opportunity. Good lobbyists ask their government for some money, great lobbyists find some money for their Minister to solve their problem. Great leaders build a new country that’s big enough to fit their ambitions in. Go build a bigger and better Australia. Thank you very much.

Thanks to the Victorian Women's Trust for allowing speech to be republished. Visit their site.

Sheila E Widnall: 'Digits of Pi: Barriers and Enablers for Women in Engineering', National Academy of Engineering - 2000

Sheila Widnall was the first woman to head a branch of the American military (air force). She is a professor in aeronautics and astronautics and first woman to serve as chair of the MIT faculty. The video above is not the famous speech below.

2000, National Academy of Engineering, USA

In a recent seminar with faculty colleagues, we were discussing the information content of a string of numbers. The assertion was made that the quantity of information equaled the number of bits in the string, unless you were told that, for example, the string was the digits of Pi. Then the information quantity became essentially one. The additional assertion was made that of course all MIT freshmen knew Pi out to some outrageously large number of digits. I remarked that this seemed to me like a "guy" sort of thing, and I doubted that the women at MIT knew Pi out to some large number of digits.

This got me thinking whether there are other "guy" sort of things which are totally irrelevant to the contributions that engineers make to our society but that nevertheless operate to keep women out of engineering. These "guy" things may also be real barriers in the minds of some male faculty members who may unconsciously, or even consciously, tell women that women don't belong in engineering. I have recently visited university campuses where that is still going on.

Let me make a strong statement: If women don't belong in engineering, then engineering as a profession is irrelevant to the needs of our society. If engineering doesn't make welcome space for them and embrace them for their wonderful qualities, then engineering will become marginalized as other fields expand their turf to seek out and make a place for women.

So let me give you Sheila Widnall's top 10 reasons why women are important to the profession of engineering:

10. Women are a major force in our society. They are self-conscious about their role and determined to be heard.

9. Women are 50 percent of the consumers of products in our society and make over 50 percent of the purchasing decisions.

8. To both men and women today, a profession that does not have a significant percentage of women is not an attractive career choice.

7. Women are integrators. They are experts at parallel processing, at handling many things at once.

6. Women are comfortable in fuzzy situations.

5. Women are team builders. They inherently practice what is now understood as an effective management style.

4. Engineering should be and could be the twenty-first century foundation for all of the professions.

3. Women are a major force in the professions of law, medicine, media, politics, and business.

2. Women are active in technology. Often they have simply bypassed engineering on their way to successful careers in technology.

1. Women are committed to the important values of our times, such as protecting the environment, product safety, and education, and have the political skill to be effective in resolving these issues. They will do this with or without engineering. They are going to be a huge force in the solution of human problems.

Trends in our society indicate that we are moving to a service economy. We are moving from the production of hardware to the provisions of total customer solutions. That is, we are merging technology and information and increasing the value of both. What role will the engineering profession play in this? One future vision for engineering is to create the linkage of hardware, information, and management. It seems to me that women are an essential part of this new imperative for the engineering profession, if the profession is to be central to the solution of human problems. Another possible future for engineering is to be restricted to the design of hardware. If we do this, we will be less central to the emerging economy and the needs of our society.

The top 10 reasons why women don't go into engineering:

10. The image of that guy in high school who all of the teachers encouraged to study engineering.

9. Poorly taught freshman physics.

8. Concerns that a female with the highest math score won't get a date to the prom.

7. Lack of encouragement from parents and high school teachers.

6. Guys who worked on cars and computers, or faculty members who think they did.

5. Lack of encouragement from faculty and a survival-of-the-fittest mentality (e.g., "I treat everyone badly" attitude or constant use of masculine pronouns describing engineers).

4. Lack of women faculty or obvious mistreatment of women faculty by colleagues and departments.

3. Bias in the math SATs.

2. Lack of visible role models and other women students in engineering.

1. Lack of connection between engineering and the problems of our society. Lack of understanding what engineers do.

These issues of language, expectations, behavior, and self-esteem are still with us. Until we face them squarely, I doubt that women students will feel comfortable in engineering classrooms. No, I'm not talking about off-color stories, although I'm sure that goes on. I'm talking about jokes and innuendo that convey a message to women that they're not wanted, that they're even invisible. It may be unconscious, and it may come from the least secure of their male classmates or teachers—people whose own self-esteem is so low and who lack such self-confidence that they grasp for comments that put them at least in the top 50 percent by putting all of the women in second place. Also, many men express discomfort at having women "invade" their "space"; they literally don't know how to behave. When I was a freshman advisor I told my women students that the greatest challenge to their presence at MIT would come from their classmates who want to see themselves in at least the upper 50 percent of the class.

These attitudes are so fundamental that, unless they are questioned, people just go about the business of treating women as if they're invisible. I remember one incredible incident that happened to me when I was a young assistant professor. I was teaching the graduate course in aerodynamics with a senior colleague, and I was to give the first lecture. So I walked into class and proceeded to organize the course, outline the syllabus, and give the first introductory lecture. Two new graduate students from Princeton were in the class. One of them knew who I was. The other thought I was the senior professor's secretary and was very impressed at my ability to give the first lecture. I think you can all see the intellectual disconnect in this example. It never occurred to this student that I might be a professor, although I'm sure I put my name and phone number on the blackboard. So he thought there were two professors and one secretary. I did in fact eventually become a Secretary—but that is another story.

I once got a call from a female faculty colleague at another university. She was having trouble teaching her class in statistics. All of the football players who were taking it were sitting in the back row and generally misbehaving. If she asked me for advice on that today I don't know what I'd say. But what I did say—that worked—was that she should call them in one by one and get to know them as individuals. This evidently worked and she sailed on. Today she is an outstanding success. I doubt if many male faculty members have had such an experience. But this clearly was a challenge to her or she wouldn't have called me. I believe that all women faculty members have such challenges to their authority in ways that would never happen to a man. Students will call a female professor "Mrs." and a male professor "Professor." I told one student that if he ever addressed Sen. Feinstein as Mrs. Feinstein, he would find himself in the hall. If it is happening to women faculty members, I'm sure it is happening to women students, this constant challenge to who they are.

Attitudes That Impact Effectiveness

We all have unconscious attitudes that impact our effectiveness as educators and cause us to negatively impact our women students. I remember one incident when I was advising two students on an independent project—a guy and a gal (the gal was the better student). We were meeting to discuss what needed to be done and I found myself directing my comments to the guy whenever there was discussion about building, welding, or cutting. I caught myself short and consciously began to direct my comments evenly. I went to my departmental colleagues and said: "This is what happened to me. If I'm doing it, you surely are." Do male faculty members welcome the appearance of female students in the classroom? Do some resent having to teach women and feel that their departments are diminished somehow when women are a significant fraction of their students? You might think so when you notice the low percentages of women among the engineering graduate students, when the selection of candidates is more clearly controlled by such biased male faculty members.

And then there is the issue of evaluation and standards. I don't think that we as a profession can just sit by and evaluate women to see if they measure up to our current criteria. We have to reexamine the criteria. As an example, one of my faculty colleagues, whose daughter was applying to MIT—thank God for daughters—did a study of whether admissions performance measures, and primarily the math SAT, actually predicted the academic performance of students, not just as freshmen but throughout their undergraduate careers. He did this differentially for men and women and got some surprising and very important results. He found that women outperform their predictions. That is, women perform better as students than their math SAT scores would predict. The effective predictive gap is about 30 points.

Thus the conditions were set to change admissions criteria for women in a major way. The criteria for the math SAT for women were changed to reflect the results of the study. In one year, the proportion of women students in the entering class went from 26 to 38 percent.

And it worked! We have been doing this for close to 20 years now and the women have performed as we expected. Women are now about 50 percent of the freshman class.

"Critical-Mass" Effects

Along the way, we have identified some very important "critical-mass" effects for women. Once the percentage of women students in a department rises above about 15, the academic performance of the women improves. This suggests a link between acceptance and self-esteem and performance. These items are under our control. I am convinced that 50 percent of performance comes from motivation. An environment that truly welcomes women will see women excel as students and as professional engineers.

At this point, all of MIT's departments have reached this critical mass. Women now comprise 41 percent of the MIT undergraduate population and outnumber men in 3 of the 5 schools and 15 of the 22 undergraduate majors. The women are still outperforming the men.

At MIT, women are the majority in four of the eight engineering courses: chemical engineering, materials science and engineering, civil and environmental engineering, and nuclear engineering. With the possible exception of Smith College, which is starting an engineering program, I have not heard of another engineering department anywhere in which women are a majority of the undergraduate students. Women are 34 percent of the undergraduates in the entire MIT School of Engineering.

Anyone who has taught in this environment would report that it has improved the educational climate for everyone. We in aeronautics see it in our ability to teach complex system courses dealing with problems that have no firm boundaries.

The top 10 reasons why women are not welcome in engineering:

10. We had a woman student/faculty member/engineer once and it didn't work out.

9. Women will get married and leave.

8. If we hire a woman, the government will take over and restrict our options.

7. If you criticize a woman, she will cry.

6. Women can't take a joke.

5. Women can't go to offsite locations.

4. If we admit more women, they will suffer discrimination in the workplace and will not be able to contribute financially as alumni. (I kid you not; that is an actual quote.)

3. There are no women interested in engineering.

2. Women make me feel uncomfortable.

1. I want to mentor, support, advise, and evaluate people who look like me.

So how do we increase the number of women students and make our profession a leader in tackling tough societal problems? What do we need?

Let me give you my list of the top 10 effectors:

10. Effective TV and print material for high school and junior high girls about career choices.

9. Engineering courses designed to evoke and reward different learning styles.

8. Faculty members who realize that having women in a class improves the education for everyone.

7. Mentors who seek out women for encouragement.

6. Role models—examples of successful women in a variety of fields who are treated with dignity and respect.

5. Appreciation and rewards for diverse problem-solving skills.

4. Visibility for the accomplishments of engineering that are seen as central to important problems facing our society.

3. Internships and other industrial opportunities.

2. Reexamination of admissions and evaluation criteria.

1. Effective and committed leadership from faculty and senior administration.

Technology is becoming increasingly important to our society. There may be an opportunity to engage media opinion makers in communicating opportunities and societal needs to young girls. I don't believe that the engineering profession alone can effectively communicate these messages, but in partnership we can be effective. These issues are important for our society as a whole, not just for engineering as a profession.

However, we do have a good bit of housecleaning to do. We must recognize that women are differentially affected by a hostile climate. Treat a male student badly and he will think you're a jerk. Treat a female student badly and she will think you have finally discovered that she doesn't belong in engineering. It's not easy being a pioneer. It's not easy having to prove every day that you belong. It's not easy being invisible or having your ideas credited to someone else.

What I want to see are engineering classrooms full of bright, young, enthusiastic students, male and female in roughly equal proportions, who are excited about the challenge of applying scientific and engineering principles to the technical problems facing our society. These women want it all. They want full lives. They want important work. They want satisfying careers. And in demanding this, they will make it better for their male colleagues as well. They will connect with the important issues facing our society. Then I will know that the engineering profession has a future contribution to make to our society.

Emma Watson: 'But my recent research has shown me that feminism has become an unpopular word', United Nations - 2014

20 September, 2104, HeforShe campaign, United Nations HQ, NYC, USA

Today we are launching a campaign called for HeForShe. I am reaching out to you because we need your help. We want to end gender inequality, and to do this, we need everyone involved. This is the first campaign of its kind at the UN. We want to try to mobilize as many men and boys as possible to be advocates for change. And, we don’t just want to talk about it. We want to try and make sure that it’s tangible.

I was appointed as Goodwill Ambassador for UN Women six months ago. And, the more I spoke about feminism, the more I realized that fighting for women’s rights has too often become synonymous with man-hating. If there is one thing I know for certain, it is that this has to stop.

For the record, feminism by definition is the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities. It is the theory of political, economic and social equality of the sexes.

I started questioning gender-based assumptions a long time ago. When I was 8, I was confused for being called bossy because I wanted to direct the plays that we would put on for our parents, but the boys were not. When at 14, I started to be sexualized by certain elements of the media. When at 15, my girlfriends started dropping out of sports teams because they didn’t want to appear muscly. When at 18, my male friends were unable to express their feelings.

I decided that I was a feminist, and this seemed uncomplicated to me. But my recent research has shown me that feminism has become an unpopular word. Women are choosing not to identify as feminists. Apparently, I’m among the ranks of women whose expressions are seen as too strong, too aggressive, isolating, and anti-men. Unattractive, even.

Why has the word become such an uncomfortable one? I am from Britain, and I think it is right I am paid the same as my male counterparts. I think it is right that I should be able to make decisions about my own body. I think it is right that women be involved on my behalf in the policies and decisions that will affect my life. I think it is right that socially, I am afforded the same respect as men.

But sadly, I can say that there is no one country in the world where all women can expect to see these rights. No country in the world can yet say that they achieved gender equality. These rights, I consider to be human rights, but I am one of the lucky ones.

My life is a sheer privilege because my parents didn’t love me less because I was born a daughter. My school did not limit me because I was a girl. My mentors didn't assume that I would go less far because I might give birth to a child one day. These influences were the gender equality ambassadors that made me who I am today. They may not know it, but they are the inadvertent feminists that are changing the world today. We need more of those.

And if you still hate the word, it is not the word that is important. It’s the idea and the ambition behind it, because not all women have received the same rights I have. In fact, statistically, very few have.

In 1997, Hillary Clinton made a famous speech in Beijing about women’s rights. Sadly, many of the things that she wanted to change are still true today. But what stood out for me the most was that less than thirty percent of the audience were male. How can we effect change in the world when only half of it is invited or feel welcome to participate in the conversation?

Men, I would like to take this opportunity to extend your formal invitation. Gender equality is your issue, too. Because to date, I’ve seen my father’s role as a parent being valued less by society, despite my need of his presence as a child, as much as my mother’s. I’ve seen young men suffering from mental illness, unable to ask for help for fear it would make them less of a man. In fact, in the UK, suicide is the biggest killer of men between 20 to 49, eclipsing road accidents, cancer and coronary heart disease. I’ve seen men made fragile and insecure by a distorted sense of what constitutes male success. Men don’t have the benefits of equality, either.

We don’t often talk about men being imprisoned by gender stereotypes, but I can see that they are, and that when they are free, things will change for women as a natural consequence. If men don’t have to be aggressive in order to be accepted, women won’t feel compelled to be submissive. If men don’t have to control, women won’t have to be controlled.

Both men and women should feel free to be sensitive. Both men and women should feel free to be strong. It is time that we all perceive gender on a spectrum, instead of two sets of opposing ideals. If we stop defining each other by what we are not, and start defining ourselves by who we are, we can all be freer, and this is what HeForShe is about. It’s about freedom.

I want men to take up this mantle so that their daughters, sisters, and mothers can be free from prejudice, but also so that their sons have permission to be vulnerable and human too, reclaim those parts of themselves they abandoned, and in doing so, be a more true and complete version of themselves.

You might be thinking, “Who is this Harry Potter girl, and what is she doing speaking at the UN?” And, it’s a really good question. I’ve been asking myself the same thing.

All I know is that I care about this problem, and I want to make it better. And, having seen what I’ve seen, and given the chance, I feel it is my responsibility to say something.

Statesman Edmund Burke said, “All that is needed for the forces of evil to triumph is for good men and women to do nothing.”

In my nervousness for this speech and in my moments of doubt, I told myself firmly, “If not me, who? If not now, when?” If you have similar doubts when opportunities are presented to you, I hope those words will be helpful. Because the reality is that if we do nothing, it will take seventy-five years, or for me to be nearly 100, before women can expect to be paid the same as men for the same work. 15.5 million girls will be married in the next 16 years as children. And at current rates, it won't be until 2086 before all rural African girls can have a secondary education.

If you believe in equality, you might be one of those inadvertent feminists that I spoke of earlier, and for this, I applaud you. We are struggling for a uniting word, but the good news is, we have a uniting movement. It is called HeForShe. I invite you to step forward, to be seen and to ask yourself, “If not me, who? If not now, when?”

Thank you very, very much.

Daomay Keo made this short film using the words of Emma Watson's speech

Deb Verhoeven: 'Has anyone seen a woman?', Digital Humanities Conference - 2015

2 July, 2015, Sydney, Australia

Deb Verhoeven used this slide to make the speech.