DECEMBER 2017 219made a powerful impact that can be the start of real change ... These
difficulties we face are to share the same spirit of those faced by
countless women all over the world who struggle for the right to earn a
living, the right to be heard, and even the right to be safe from harm”.
This is how ordinary looks in our world right now: 62 million girls
don’t go to school. 15 million are illegally married each year to men
much older than them. If you filled a Toyota Tarago with the eight
richest men on the planet, that silver van would hold approximately the
same wealth as the 3.6 billion people who make up the poorer half of
humanity – the majority of whom are female. Labouring under the
guise of equality, even privileged Australian women work in a system
that advantages men and impoverish us. There are more CEOs named
Peter than there are women CEOs among Australia’s top 200 companies.
Women retire with half the superannuation of men and live for longer.
A 2015 report revealed that one Australian woman a week is killed by
aman who once told her he loved her. For women who face intersectional
disadvantage, including women of colour, women with disabilities and
trans women, the statistics are even more dire and distressing. The gap
in life expectancy between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian
women is a heartbreaking 10 years.
Yet in among this deep, dark inequality, there is also light; so very
much light. The courage of women who spoke out in the wake of
Weinstein’s exposure gives me hope. So too do the up to two million
people, most of whom were women, who took to the streets in solidarity
following Donald Trump’s election. I draw inspiration from the teenage
girls at my local high school who are campaigning to be allowed to
wear the boy’s uniform. I am buoyed by the willingness of time-poor
women I know to volunteer for causes that are close to their hearts and
to part with hard earned money so that another woman won’t have to
do without. I am proud that feminist books are among our nation’s
bestsellers. I am excited that television shows where women are able
totell their own stories are smashing the ratings.
Women can – and are – changing what is ordinary.
We should not underestimate the importance of these small moments
and the larger symbolic ones to promote real and meaningful change.
Television star Lisa Wilkinson’s alleged all-or-nothing demand for pay
parity with her co-host is a case in point. Wilkinson reportedly earned
around half of Karl Stefanovic’s pay packet when hosting To d a y. And
while one high-earning individual’s salary does not equality make,
Wilkinson’s departure from the Nine Network did put equal pay on the
front pages of our newspapers –and kept it there – for a week. There are
women who earn less than a 20th of what Wilkinson does who are also
screwed over by the gender pay gap, but they cannot risk speaking up
or asking for more. They might lose their only income source and not be
able to find another. They have no choice but to accept less. So when
privileged women like Wilkinson take a stand, they do it not only on
behalf of themselves but also on behalf of other women who cannot
afford to.
In sport, the equal pay issue has previously been dwarfed by women’s
right to be taken seriously as professionals in the first place. Yet, 2017
was truly a coming of age for women’s sport in Australia. High on the
success of the Olympic gold-medal-winning Rugby Women’s Sevens,
there was the groundbreaking launch of the AFLW in February. The
league will expand to include more teams in the coming seasons.
Footage of the thousands who were turned away at the gates from the
inaugural AFLW match still gives me chills. Those who said women
didn’t want to watch one another play sport were left eating their words
with a dash of sriracha sauce on top. Soon audiences will enjoy free-to-
air commercial network screening of the netball. Cricket sunk big
money into promoting the Women’s Ashes. Tennis continues to lead the
pack with equal tournament prize money for women and men despite
the ongoing – and stupid – discussion about three sets versus five.
Even the fashion industry, which has previously deserved no
applause and wins no awards for its contribution to diversity, is
changing. The outdated, narrow definition of beauty, which says that
only extremely thin, white, cis women can be attractive, is shifting.
Across London, Milan, Paris and New York, there were 12 transgender
models who walked the runways this year. There were also 21 women
aged over 50 and 30 ‘plus-sized’ models. Close to 30 per cent of the
models that appeared were women of colour, the highest proportion
recorded since that data has been collected. The international success
of Australian-Sudanese models Akiima, Adut Akech, Ajak Deng and
Duckie Thot, Asian-Australian Fernanda Ly and Indigenous model
Charlee Fraser has been incredibly heartening. However, we still have
a long way to go.
Australia regrettably lags behind the rest of the fashion world. Both
our catwalks and fashion magazines generally fail to represent women
in a diverse way and on the rare occasions they do, the women
themselves pay a price for being visible. It was devastating to see First
Nations model Samantha Harris speak recently about the abuse she
receives online. This repulsive intersection of sexism and racism will
only deplete when we become more forceful in challenging an
ordinary that says Australia is
white. In challenging our
ordinary, it is essential that we
make that ordinary more diverse.
In the final episode of the
television version of Handmaid’s
Tale, the protagonist, June,
becomes steely in her refusal to
accept the status quo. Dressed in
her dramatic red cloak and white
winged bonnet, she remarks that
her oppressors shouldn’t have
given the women of Gilead
uniforms if they didn’t want them
to become an army. She and the
other handmaids find hope in
their defiance. In a world where
they are rendered powerless, they use what little power they do have to
fight back. Their power comes from their common experience as women
and their refusal to be complicit in one another’s oppression. It is the
same message that Margot Robbie delivered when rounding out her
Women in Hollywood speech. “Thinking about being a woman in
Hollywood reminded me that when you take away Hollywood, we are
all just women, all facing the inequalities that being a women brings
with it,”she said. “And, what I’ve come to understand is that, though
weare unique and powerful as individuals, we are invincible when we
cometoget her.”
My hope is for Australian women to make that our ordinary. For us to
recognise the interconnectedness of women’s experience and the
importance of speaking up and out in support of one another. To make
the feminist movement more inclusive of diversity and difference and
to not rest until equality for women means equality for all women, not
just a privileged few. Feminism is on the public agenda once more. Let’s
keep it there until gender equality becomes our ordinary. ■We should not
underestimate
the importance
of these small
moments and
the larger
symbolic ones
to promote real
and meaningful
change