Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration) Share this | Hansard source

As the coalition’s spokesperson for the status of women, I was delighted to co-host yesterday’s International Women’s Day parliamentary breakfast to celebrate the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day, which will fall on 8 March 2011. This was an opportunity to reflect on the amazing achievements that have been made for women and by women since International Women’s Day was first celebrated in 1911 and to reflect on how far women have progressed on the journey towards equality in the last 100 years.

In relation to women’s suffrage, Australia has had, and still has, a number of female Premiers. We have a female Governor-General. We now have a female Prime Minister and a female Deputy Leader of the Opposition, along with many female members of both the ministry and the shadow ministry. In celebrating the Australian achievements, I am reminded of a remark made by Oona King, a former British Labour MP, when she said of former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher:

I didn’t care if Thatcher was the devil; it meant so much to me that I was growing up when two women—she and the Queen—were running the country.

The significance of what we have in Australia is evident when one reflects that Kuwait’s parliament only extended suffrage to women in 2005 and by a 35-23 vote. In Saudi Arabia, women are still deprived of any meaningful representation. But, despite the many rights and privileges that Australian women enjoy, in celebrating International Women’s Day we must recognise that significant challenges remain both here and abroad.

The incidence of violence against women is still far too common with almost one in three Australian women and girls experiencing some form of violence in their lifetime. I was heartened to see that the National Plan of Action to Reduce Violence Against Women and Girls was formally adopted at the most recent COAG meeting after nearly two years since its initial announcement, and it is my sincere hope that it will have a meaningful impact. The debates that have dominated the ‘women’s’ agenda in recent times in Australia have centred on female representation on corporate boards and the appropriateness of quotas; on the gender pay gap; sexual harassment in the workplace; and the specific design of a statutory paid parental leave scheme. Whilst none of these issues is trivial, the concerns of women in so many quarters of the world are so much graver and, tragically, often have life-threatening consequences.

In China, 39,000 baby girls die annually because parents do not accord them the same medical care and attention that boys receive. In India, a ‘bride burning’ takes place approximately once every two hours. In the west African country of Niger, a woman has a one-in-seven chance of dying in childbirth. In the United Arab Emirates, the Gulf News reports that husbands have a state sanctioned right to beat their wives in order to discipline them, ‘providing that the beating is not so severe as to damage her bones or deform her body’. In Saudi Arabia, women cannot drive, vote, show their faces or talk with male nonrelatives in public. Some Saudi girls are allowed to go to school and attend university, but when they do they must sit in segregated classrooms and watch their teachers on closed-circuit television. It is reported that in Afghanistan under the Taliban regime in the late 1990s religious police forced women off the streets in Kabul and issued regulations ordering the blackening of windows so that women would not be visible from the outside. Despite the political changes that have occurred in Afghanistan, many challenges still remain. The repression of women is still alive, particularly in rural areas where many families still restrict women from participation in public life. Women are still forced into marriage and denied a basic education. There have been reports of little girls being poisoned to death for daring to go to school.

According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, every day two women are slain by male relatives seeking to avenge their family honour. Closer to home, UN Women reports that countries in the Asia-Pacific region record some of the most horrendous statistics of violence against women in the world. For example, in Papua New Guinea 44 per cent of women have experienced sexual violence in relationships, 55 per cent of women have been forced into sex against their will and 58 per cent of women have experienced physical and emotional abuse in relationships.

It is fair to say that Western society, and in particular Western women, have been too reluctant to point out and too slow to condemn the plight of women outside the West for fear that any censure of anti-female practices would be seen as culturally insensitive. It is a regrettable fact that harmful traditional practices have been committed against women in certain communities and societies for so long now that they are considered part of accepted cultural practice. In other words, excuses are made under the guise of traditional cultural practices for allowing women to be subjected to crude and unrestrained primitive practices which we in the Western world would never tolerate. One of these practices is female genital mutilation. A few years ago, Germaine Greer went so far as to argue that attempts to outlaw female genital mutilation were an attack on cultural identity and that ‘if an Ohio punk has the right to have her genitalia operated on why has not the Somali woman the same right?’ Clearly, Greer is either ignorant of, or impervious to, the purposes and consequences of female genital mutilation and the lack of choice for the young girls on whom it is inflicted.

No-one has captured the folly of Greer’s position more eloquently than Roger Scruton. In an article in the December 2010-January 2011 edition of the American Spectator he states.

Once we distinguish race and culture, the way is open to acknowledge that not all cultures are equally admirable, and that not all cultures can exist comfortably side by side. It is culture, not nature, that tells a family that their daughter who has fallen in love outside the permitted circle must be killed, that girls must undergo genital mutilation if they are to be respectable.

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You can read about these things and think they belong to the pre-history of our world. But when they are suddenly happening in your midst you are apt to wake up to the truth about the culture that advocates them. You are apt to say, ‘That is not our culture and it has no business here.’

I hold the strong view that, as women living in a free and democratic society, we have a fundamental obligation to speak out and protect the human rights of women both here in Australia and overseas. This position is recognised by UN Women Australia, which has stated:

Australia is strategically positioned and has the ability to effect substantive change for the role of women at national, regional and international levels.

UNIFEM, which is now part of UN Women, considers there to be six forms of violence against women which must be stopped. One of these forms of violence is harmful traditional practices, which includes female genital mutilation. This issue is one on which we need to stand up for the rights of women and be prepared to recognise the stark reality that female genital mutilation is being practised in Australia, notwithstanding that it is a criminal offence and not withstanding that this is a practice which we in Australia find culturally abhorrent.

Since being appointed the coalition’s spokesperson for the status of women, I have spent some time researching various areas of interest. I recognise and thank the Parliamentary Library for their efforts in providing me with various papers on women’s issues, the content of which I have relied upon in some of my observations today.

On the issue of the practice of female genital mutilation in Australia, I was astounded to learn that the Royal Women’s Hospital in Melbourne stated in 2010 that it is seeing between 600 and 700 women each year who have experienced some form of genital mutilation. I find this particularly distressing as studies show that this practice has no known health benefits and is known to be harmful to girls and women in many different ways. According to the World Health Organisation, the immediate consequences of this archaic practice can include severe pain, shock, haemorrhaging, bacterial infection, urine retention, open sores in the genital region and injury to nearby genital tissue. Long-term consequences include recurrent bladder and urinary tract infections, cysts and infertility. And we must never forget the World Health Organisation’s finding that genital mutilation doubles a woman’s risk of dying in childbirth and can increase by three to four times the chances their children will be stillborn.

Perhaps one of the more abhorrent aspects of this practice is that it is a practice that is mostly carried out on girls up to the age of 15—not over the age of 15 but up to the age of 15. An estimated 100-140 million women have experienced genital mutilation worldwide and three million girls are estimated to be at risk of undergoing the procedure every year.

This practice is without a doubt a violation of the rights of women and girls and a form of discrimination. This is not just my belief; several international and regional treaties to which Australia is a party have specifically identified female genital mutilation as being both a violation of the rights of women and girls and a form of discrimination. Given that Australia is a party to, supports or was significantly involved in the drafting of a number of these instruments and declarations, many of which specifically call for an end to this abhorrent practice, Australia is obliged to work towards the eradication of it. Other countries who are signatories to these instruments and declarations are likewise compelled to do the same thing.

In Australia, any type of female genital mutilation is clearly prohibited by specific legislation in every jurisdiction. Ideally, in practical terms, the main emphasis of intervention should be on ensuring that the procedure does not take place in the first instance. To this end, programs have been introduced in Australia that seek to educate parents and communities against the practice.

The first of these is the National Education Program on Female Genital Mutilation, which was introduced in 1995 by the then Department of Human Services and Health. The prime objectives of the national education program are to prevent the occurrence of this type of procedure in Australia through an emphasis on community education, information and support, and to assist those women and girls living in Australia who are at risk of or who have already been subjected to this type of practice. Since the introduction of the national education program, a range of strategies to tackle female genital mutilation have been implemented at a state level, according to local needs and priorities. Victoria has been particularly active in attempting to eradicate the practice, partly in response to increasing populations settling in the state from countries which are known to actively practise female genital mutilation.

My point in raising these issues today is to remind us that, whilst International Women’s Day enables us in Western society the opportunity to celebrate the many achievements of women both past and present, it is incumbent upon us to recognise that these celebrations must be more than just an acknowledgement and celebration of the rights that we in the West enjoy. We must focus attention and energy on ameliorating the less than satisfactory conditions of some women internationally.

One of the best recommendations in the UN Women Australia discussion paper circulated yesterday at the parliamentary breakfast is for Australia to ensure that our aid program pays significant attention to the education of girls and women. It is no coincidence that the areas of the world where girls are denied education and women are marginalised are very often the same countries that are mired in poverty and fundamentalism and subject to what we consider to be abhorrent practices.

There is a growing recognition, from the World Bank to the US Military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff through to aid organisations, that focusing on women and girls is the most effective way to fight poverty and extremism. There is no doubt that as Australians we should be proud of our achievements in terms of promoting the status of women in this country. However, it is incumbent on us to remember that the journey is not over and that in some countries it has only just begun.

In celebrating International Women’s Day on 8 March 2011, I wish UN Women the very best in all its endeavours and once again thank UN Women Australia for hosting the parliamentary breakfast yesterday. I recognise and applaud the vitally important work they do for women here and all over the world.