Women still on a see-saw of inequality
Love her or hate her, 40 years ago, Germaine Greer unleashed a brash new tome, the Female Eunuch, which was to upturn the prescribed world of women and write a new feminist creed. Some writers, such as Louis Nowra in The Monthly, have used the anniversary to vilify Greer about her age, appearance and eccentricity. It is far 
more constructive to examine what has happened to women’s lives because of her dynamism in a previous chapter of women’s history. The word “Feminism’’ has faded, but its principals have taken root in society as firmly as the backyard lemon tree and is bearing just as much fruit.
Women’s lives and opportunity have metamorphosed and there has been a profound social revolution in our lifetime. We are now a two-income society which sees 4,900,000 women in paid work compared with 5,800,000 men. Gender is no longer a barrier to success. And Germaine’s generation of feminists removed centuries of barriers to politics, power and privilege. A new breed of powerful women are now entrenched in the political landscape with Julia Gillard, as deputy leader of the Labour Party and deputy prime minister, two female state premiers and in SA, Isobel Redman is Liberal Opposition Leader. Last week was another historic step when the SA Parliament installed its first female Speaker, Whyalla MP Lyn Breuer and the nation’s youngest female parliamentarian, Kelly Vincent, aged 21, took her place as a voice for disabled people.
Nor is it tokenism anymore to have a female governor, because our No. 1 citizen is our impeccably groomed Governor General of Australia, Quentin Bryce, the first woman in the post, who served previously as governor of Queensland.
Women now are leaders in almost all spheres of industry, unions, the arts, the retail sector and defence. Women CEOs are a reality, but they are still absent in Australia’s top 500 companies and the number of women on boards is slipping and has never hit double figure percentages anyway.
Tags: domestic violence, leadership, political women
womens lives | nadine 09/05/2010
1 Comment to “Women still on a see-saw of inequality”
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By Felicity Collins, 12/05/2010 @ 9:30 am
I have been a scantily clad pin-up girl. I was abused by my father. I have been raped by strangers, and also molested when just a beautiful innocent child of nine. It’s hard not to walk around the streets and simply scream at any man who so much as casts me an admiring glance—and think how much I “hate man”. But then I remember… this is a disease. It isn’t something I can cure by shouting expletives at strangers. And it isn’t just explained in one word, ‘inequality’. Oh no, my friends, it is much more than that. It is a pattern of behaviour that we women encourage. And then we ineffectually rant, and rave. We march and cry out holding placards and giving the two finger salute, but nothing changes. For there is one fundamental problem in our thinking… we are trying to change the behaviour of others that we actually enable on so many levels… as Nadine points out.
What can we do? We can change the thoughts and behaviour patterns of ourselves. We can look at how we feel inside and we can make a conscious choice to stop the encouragement, but I warn you, that’s a deep rabbit hole to jump into—to stop all action on our own behalf that encourages this male behaviour. It is though, in the end, the only thing that will save us female and male. So women like Nadine Williams keep writing. Keep telling the story. Women like me will read it and hopefully, one day, we will make our own choice on a deeply conscious level, that we aren’t going to accept it anymore. And we will take our own small steps towards freedom. I won’t buy that magazine, and I won’t endorse that product, and I won’t turn a blind eye when my partner sneaks a peak at women young enough to be his daughter while he holds my hand when we are walking down the street. I’m 47, and I was a victim, until I changed my own thinking.