Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to talk about the 100-year anniversary of International Women’s Day. International Women’s Day first emerged at the turn of the 20th century across Europe and North America, from the activities of the labour movement. The first National Women’s Day was held in the United States on 28 February 1909. The Socialist Party of America designated that day in honour of the 1908 garment workers’ strike in New York, where women protested against their working conditions. The idea soon spread eastwards, across to Europe. In 1910, the Socialist International held the first international women’s conference in Copenhagen. There, Clara Zetkin, an influential socialist German politician active in women’s rights, proposed a Women’s Day, to be celebrated internationally, honouring the movement for women’s rights and to develop support to achieve universal suffrage for women. The proposal was greeted with unanimous approval by the 100 women from 17 countries who attended the conference. At this time no date was selected for the day.

Stemming from the Socialist International initiative, the first International Women’s Day was observed for the first time on 19 March 1911, in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland. More than one million women and men attended rallies in those countries and demanded women’s right to vote, to hold public office, to work and to do vocational training and called for the end of discrimination at work. The date 19 March was chosen because on that day, some 60 years earlier, the Prussian king, faced with an uprising, promised many reforms, including votes for women—a reform that went unfulfilled. In 1913 and 1914, International Women’s Day also became a vehicle to protest the First World War, with Russian women observing their first International Women’s Day as part of the peace movement. It was held on the last Sunday in February. At the time, the Russians were using the Julian calendar, so the date was actually 8 March according to the Gregorian calendar.

On or around 8 March women held rallies across Europe either to protest the war or to express solidarity with other activists. In 1917, in the wake of two million Russian soldiers dying in the war, Russian women again chose the last Sunday in February to strike for ‘Bread and Peace’. Political leaders opposed the timing of the strike but women ignored them and protested as planned. The rest, as they say, is history—or ‘her story’, in fact. Four days after the protest, the Czar abdicated and the provisional government granted women the right to vote. The women’s protests in Russia are seen as the beginning of the Russian Revolution. In 1965 International Women’s Day was declared a non-working day in the then USSR in commemoration of women. We might strive to achieve that in Australia one day—a non-working day for International Women’s Day.

The first International Women’s Day rally in Australia was held at the Sydney Domain on 25 March 1928. It was organised by the Militant Women’s Movement and called for, amongst other things, equal pay for equal work, an 8-hour day for shop girls, paid annual leave and a basic wage for the unemployed. The first International Women’s Day march took place in Sydney and Melbourne in 1931. The Sydney march had approximately 3,000 to 4,000 people with banners demanding equal pay and other women’s rights. The slogans touched on more general issues as well, such as opposition to wage cuts. The Melbourne rally was smaller, with 150 women marching from the corner of Victoria and Russell Streets to the Yarra Bank, holding a banner affirming ‘Long Live International Women’s Day’. There, Grace de La Lande addressed the marchers and spoke on the need to organise women politically.

The United Nations declared the year 1975 as International Women’s Year, and it was also the year the United Nations officially sanctioned, and began sponsoring, International Women’s Day. Over the years, progress has been made on addressing women’s issues. Women’s access to education, health care, paid labour and even public office around the world has improved, and many countries have passed legislation that promises equal opportunities for women and respect for their human rights. South Australia led the world in giving women the right to vote in 1895, with Australia at a federal level guaranteeing that right seven years later.

The first woman was elected to parliament in Australia in 1921, when Edith Cowan was elected in Western Australia. The federal parliament saw its first female representatives in 1943 and the nation’s first female federal cabinet-level minister was appointed in 1949. In 1966 it was still the requirement that women working in the pub-lic service resigned once they got married—a requirement which was banished that year. The equal pay for equal work of equal value principle was recognised in 1969, and federal legislation banning discrimination based on gender was made law in 1984. Incredibly enough, up until 1984, a woman could be dismissed from her job for falling pregnant, or not chosen for a job simply because she was of prime child bearing age and could fall preg-nant at any time. Let us hope we have moved on since those days.

Australia’s first female head of a government was Rosemary Follett—a good member of the Australian Education Union, if I remember correctly. She was elected Chief Minister of the ACT in 1989. Australia saw its first female Prime Minister last year, in 2010—nearly 110 years after Federation. Another major milestone was achieved on 1 January this year, when Australia finally left the USA behind and joined the rest of the developed world and provided its citizens with government funded paid parental leave.

These are the major milestones in the fight for women’s rights in Australia, and International Women’s Day is about celebrating these achievements. Women from all walks of life have fought for these rights over many years. Yet International Women’s Day is also about ensuring that the fight for women’s rights and equality continues. Women currently make up only 28 per cent of the current federal parliament, even though we make up around 50 per cent of the popula-tion. We greatly outnumber men in lower earning in-dustries, such as aged care, child care, health and edu-cation, whereas men greatly outnumber women in higher earning industries and in management roles. Women make up 45 per cent of the workforce, yet only two per cent of CEO positions and 5.9 per cent of ex-ecutive line manager positions are held by women—the latter is actually down from 7.5 per cent in 2006. Women chair only two per cent of ASX 200 compa-nies—meaning they literally chair only four boards. Sixty-five per cent of law graduates are female, yet they account for only 16 per cent of equity partners, approximately 15 per cent of total barristers and 16 per cent of the bench in the Federal Court.

The concept of equal pay for equal work of equal value seems like such a simple and logical concept, and yet the gender pay gap is currently at 17 per cent. In monetary terms, women earn 82c for every dollar a male earns. This gap widens even more when part-time and casual earnings are taken into consideration.

What I want to do now is spend some of my last remaining time talking about what we did in the Northern Territory to celebrate International Women’s Day. In the Northern Territory this year there were many functions celebrating the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day. There was the traditional walk through the Darwin CBD organised by the United Nation’s Association of the Northern Territory. There was the Northern Territory Women’s Network and the UN Women Australia’s breakfast in Darwin and the Zonta Club’s breakfast in Alice Springs. There was the annual International Women’s Day Dinner organised by the Northern Territory Antidiscrimination Commission and the union now known as United Voice. This was held at the Cyprus Community Centre.

The Northern Territory Working Women’s Centre had a great movie night as well. Just imagine a cinema filled with women watching Made in Dagenham, a movie about the amazing women in Dagenham, England, who in 1968 decided that their sewing skills at a Ford plan should be recognised as a skill and thus paid at the same rate as the men, leading to the equal pay for equal work of equal value principle. I am not going to reveal how the movie ended—you have to go and see it. But I will say that there was a lot of cheering in the cinema when the husband of one of the female activists was left to cook, clean and tend to the children while his wife went off and fought for women’s rights. International Women’s Day is also a day to remind people that women are still not quite equal to men and that in many parts of the world we still have a long way to go.