Published: 10 November 2023
Last updated: 5 March 2024
We need much more research into its corrosive economic impact, the leading feminist said in the annual Colin Tatz Oration, presented by The Jewish Independent.
Domestic violence needs to be recognised as one of the key impediments to preventing women from achieving equality and economic independence, the leading feminist and author Dr Anne Summers told a Sydney audience on Tuesday night.
In an address titled From Women’s Liberation to Gender Equity: A half century on: are we making progress?, Dr Summers said “it’s not just tax policies, childcare policies, parental leave policies and the gender pay gap that are keeping women out of the workforce. It’s also individuals, almost exclusively men, and they are using violence to do so.
“This violence may well turn out to be a barometer of our success in achieving gender equality. It is a far more integral measure of our progress that we had previously imagined,” she told the audience at Sydney’s Bondi Pavilion, in the fourth annual Colin Tatz Oration, presented by The Jewish Independent.
In a wide-ranging speech that addressed whether women have “become less ambitious or are just adjusting to reality”, Dr Summers noted that the women’s movement had made substantial progress over the past 50 years.
“There are no longer legal impediments to any ambition we might harbour. We have very high levels of education in this country. There are few jobs we cannot aspire to (even if we have trouble getting some of them). The lives of women of my generation are infinitely better than those of my mother’s let alone my grandmother’s.
Our employment rate is not only lower’s than men’s. It is lower than women’s was 20 years ago.
“Surely, we have made good progress. And yet. Our employment rate is not only lower’s than men’s. It is lower than women’s was 20 years ago.”
Dr Summers spoke in detail about the impact of tax, child care parental leave and the gender pay gap in holding back women from achieving equality and equity (“equity means taking account of the fact that we don’t all start from the same place and that sometimes we need to be treated differently in order to enjoy equality”).
