Wednesday, 21 June 2023

Gender equality

Natalie HUTCHINS (Sydenham – Minister for Education, Minister for Women) (16:16): I rise to grieve for those opposite’s lack of commitment to promoting women through supporting targets and affirmative action quotas. They use ‘merit’ as a blocker. Well, can I say I am so proud to be part of the government here. Across Victoria I am supporting women from grassroots communities, women running for preselection in all levels of government, women on boards and chief executives to smash through the glass ceiling, to break down the barriers and achieve better outcomes for all of us, because when you have more women at the table, you make better decisions, you create better policies for all women.

I am very proud to be part of a government that has a Victorian caucus of 54 per cent women and 64 per cent women around our cabinet table, but what does that mean in practice? What does that deliver for Victorian women? Well, it certainly delivers better gender equality. Women have a voice, they have access to power, and it means that there are more viewpoints, they are better represented and better decisions are made for women across everything in government and that government does. I know those opposite are probably grieving themselves over the fact that there are more women on our front bench than they have in the Liberal Party elected over there. Yet their party still resists the discussion around putting more women in through targets or supporting more women to smash through the glass ceiling, to smash through those barriers, those systemic barriers that we know hold women back.

When you have more women policymakers at the table, women have more opportunities, whether it be through free TAFE, through breaking down those occupational barriers that exist, through getting more women into male-dominated industries, through supporting women in industries and sectors like teaching and care, through making sure that they are paid well and treated well, through ensuring women who suffer from family violence have the support they need or through giving women better access to health care, like IVF, like fertility treatment, like acknowledging that endometriosis is a real issue that so many women grapple with, because of the efforts of this government.

The Victorian government’s recognition of gender equality is about making cultural and structural change real. It makes a difference to our policies and our politics, just as the government is doing with our gender responsive budgeting and our new gender equality strategy and action plan that is to be released in the next few months. As many people would know, we have a lot to be proud of. We are advancing women’s rights in Victoria, and we are leading the way in the nation. We have had the introduction of the Gender Equality Act 2020, a first of its kind here in Victoria, which embeds gender equality measurements across the public sector, branching out into the local government sector and universities. We have embedded gender-responsive budgeting and also supported a range of programs to support greater female participation in the workforce and in leadership, including some specific programs that are being backed by this government for women of colour to advance into leadership positions and also for First Nations women to be able to do a dedicated program in women’s leadership that is culturally respectful and sensitive.

We have also supported the establishment of Respect Victoria, an agency dedicated to stopping family violence before it starts and working with our community to improve respectful relationships. And of course we have our achievements with prevention campaigns and acute family violence support services like the Orange Door network. These sorts of things do not exist currently in other states. Victoria is leading the way, and these achievements are improving visibility, cultural change and outcomes. But we know there is more we can do.

Our key election commitments around women are something that I know everyone on this side of the house is proud of. Our commitment around free pads and tampons in up to 700 locations across the state is built upon the work we have done already in providing free pads and tampons into our school system. We know that there are some universities that have also got involved in this and are leading the way in helping us to improve girls’ and young women’s access to sanitary products, making sure that their health needs are put first, making sure that we can roll out these necessities into public places. Sanitary products are not a luxury, and women and girls should be able to access these products when they need them, wherever they need them. They should no longer involve women not being able to go into public places out of fear of menstruation starting. As I have said before, quite frankly, if men needed these, they would be everywhere – they would be just like toilet paper in terms of supply. So this initiative is going to be especially important to women who are the most vulnerable in our community – homeless women, women suffering from poverty. Making sure that they have access to these products is a very, very simple step that this government is taking.

We understand that all women have their own unique backgrounds and experiences, including, unfortunately, high levels of discrimination and oppression, and we must consider this in everything we do. This will be clearly evident in our new gender equality strategy, which will be released shortly, a strategy that places a strong intersectional lens on meeting the needs and outcomes of women and girls across the state at every stage of their lives. This inclusive mindset has been important and valuable to our work here in Victoria. And as I and many of our cabinet members have said here in Parliament, equality is not negotiable in Victoria, and the rights of transgender Victorians are not negotiable here in Victoria. As Minister for Women, I proudly stand up for all women, and that includes transgender women. They will be recognised in this strategy.

I recently had the privilege of unveiling the fifth of the six statues that we have committed to to make sure that women are seen in this state. I hate to present the facts in this way. The reality is that there are over 500 statues erected to men in this state, and only 11 to women. Unfortunately there is probably closer to about 20 of horses and dogs. We need to correct that. Our government has been taking this on proudly, erecting six new statues to bring that figure up. One of those statues is the Zelda D’Aprano statue erected at Trades Hall that I got to unveil with Julia Gillard. The statue of Zelda reminds us of the struggles that have happened in the past around pay equality, when she chained herself to the Commonwealth building as a single-person protest against unequal and unfair pay and the treatment of women in the workforce. Zelda’s statue reminds us how far we have come, but it also is a reminder to us of how far we have to go. She inspired many of us to take up the fight for gender equality, and her statue, which sits opposite the Eight-Hour Day statue, will continue to do that, just as the other statues are that we have unveiled in making sure that women’s achievements are visible here in Victoria.

The statue of the three Kurnai women in Drouin has drawn so much inspiration from the local community and helped to heal old divides of racism. These three women have stories of resilience, of connection and of respect, and that was seen so much on the day that we unveiled these statues in Drouin. A statue of Vera Scantlebury Brown has been placed in Linton. She is a wonderful woman in Australia’s history that has not been celebrated nearly enough, and I hope that this statue will continue to keep her legacy and name alive. She was one of Victoria’s first female surgeons, one of the first women to graduate from our universities with both a medical degree and a surgeon’s qualification, who went off and funded herself to go across to work in London during the First World War as a surgeon. She never got the opportunity to wear epaulets, even though she certainly contributed to the cause and returned to Australia off her own bat to continue to practice as a surgeon and also to take up the cause and the fight for women and children. She took up the very first female role as a lead public servant here in Victoria and headed up the maternal and child health services, which was a volunteer service back when she took over and became the wonderful department that we have today. What an amazing woman.

We have also unveiled through the support of Sport and Recreation Victoria a statue to Sharelle McMahon, a champion Victorian and Australian and international netballer, which sits in the Olympic Park precinct, and of course a statue to the infamous and fierce woman Stella Young. Her statue continues the legacy that she started in fighting for disability advocacy and rights. She championed equal education and strengthening of our society for people with disabilities. I am so proud of our public art program and its recognition of powerful women all across Victoria, and I look forward to more to come.

I also just want to mention another fantastic program, called Finding Her, that our government has partnered with Her Place Women’s Museum on, and that is, again, a map, an interactive map, to identify women who have achieved so much in Victoria’s history and be able to go to the locations where they made a difference in their working lives and their volunteering lives or the locations where they were born right across Victoria, recognising the achievements of rural women, regional women and women from the city who have made a huge contribution but not been written into the history books to the same level as men in this state. This Finding Her application I highly recommended for people to have a look at. This is a great piece of history.

We are all part of building a better future for women and girls here in Victoria, and I am proud to be a minister and a part of a labour movement that respects and stands up for the rights of women and also champions more women into our parliaments – here in the state Parliament, federally and of course in local government as well. We need to ensure that the girls of today are empowered to be the women of tomorrow regardless of the colour of their skin, their religious beliefs, their cultural upbringing or where they live. We deserve equality.