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NFAW GENDER LENS : SEPTEMBER 2022
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- NFAW Annual Press Club Dinner: Save the date!
- October Federal Budget on the Horizon
- Jobs and Skills Summit update
- Pamela Denoon Event: watch online
- Equity Rights Alliance Summit
- A Tribute to Suzanne Bellamy
- Recommended Media reads
- NFAW: A Bequest towards Female Empowerment
- Diary Date: Social Policy Committee “Shaping Policy
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Message from NFAW President, Jane Madden
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Since our last edition just after the election of the Albanese Government, there has been a stronger focus on the role of women in the Australian economy and society more broadly. NFAW is delighted that October’s federal budget will include a return to comprehensive gender analysis of spending and policy promises by Treasury – for which we have long advocated.
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Finance Minister and Minister for Women, Katy Gallagher also sought to have the position of women in Australia – including barriers to workforce participation, the gender pay gap, and career advancement challenges – embedded in each stream of this month’s Jobs and Skills summit. NFAW was invited to the departmental and Ministerial consultations leading to the event and our partner, Equality Rights Alliance, attended the summit itself.
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Much discussion centred around ways to improve women’s workforce participation, the importance of supporting and investing in the care sector, and how workplaces can become better and safer for everyone. As many would be aware, this was the first time the Australian government had hosted a jobs summit since 1983 and among 97 delegates then, there was just one woman present (Susan Ryan). This time, more than half of the delegates at the summit were women, including in very significant roles.
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The opening address of the Summit was by CEO of the Grattan Institute Danielle Wood who highlighted u the gender-segregation in the workforce, and the concentration of women in lower paid work. She spoke about the massive opportunity Australia has when it comes to the untapped potential of women’s workforce participation.
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“I can’t help but reflect that if untapped women’s workforce participation was a massive ore deposit, we would have governments lining up to give tax concessions to get it out of the ground,”. Amongst recommendations, she noted that high-quality, low-cost early education and care is necessary to unlock participation from women who would like to work more but who are side-lined by substantial cost hurdles. The full text of this excellent speech is here https://grattan.edu.au/news/think-big-a-new-mission-statement-for-australia/
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NFAW is encouraged that the summit was much more than a “talk fest”. One of the welcome outcomes of the summit from NFAW’s perspective is an update to the Fair Work Act, which will include stronger access to flexible working arrangements and unpaid parental leave. The Government also committed to work with the early childhood sector, including philanthropic foundations, to create a whole of government approach to improve early childhood development and education. The full list of outcomes which set the scene for next month’s Budget can be found here: https://treasury.gov.au/sites/default/files/inline-files/Jobs-and-Skills-Summit-Outcomes-Document.pdf
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However, to remind us of how much needs to change, the Chief Executive Women’s 2022 CENSUS released this week at their annual conference provides an urgent wake up call to corporate Australia. The progress on women reaching the most senior leadership roles is going backwards. At the current rate, it will take 100 years for women to make up at least 40% of all CEO positions on the ASX300.
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And in another area, the results of Australia’s first mandatory workplace gender equality audit are in, with 300 of Victoria’s public sector organisations participating and contributing to some powerful sector-wide insights. The audit reveals that even in the public sector — where 66 per cent of the workforce is female, according to this audit — gender pay and leadership gaps continue to disadvantage women. Men were found to have taken home an average $19,000 more than women over the 2020-21 financial year, thanks to the 15.6 per cent pay gap that was uncovered. Meanwhile, women were 50 per cent more likely to say they had experienced sexual harassment than men, although making formal complaints is still rare.
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Clearly so much to de done on multiple fronts. As we gear up to assess the Albanese Government’s first Budget, NFAW will be looking to see how the financial commitments underpin some of the expressed desires to improve equality. Stay tuned!
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Jane Madden
President | National Foundation for Australian Women (NFAW)
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BOOK NOW
Annual NFAW Dinner at The National Press Club Canberra
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Tuesday 8 November, 2022
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Minister Amanda Rishworth, Minister for Social Services will by this year’s keynote speaker at the NFAW Annual Dinner on Tuesday 8 November at the National Press Club in Canberra. Amanda who is a member of Federal Labor’s Cabinet as Minister for Social Services was previously Shadow Minister for Early Childhood Education and Development and Shadow Minister for Youth. Prior to that she was Shadow Minister for Veterans’ Affairs and Defence Personnel.
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Amanda graduated with a Bachelor of Psychology Honours from Flinders University and a Master’s Degree in Psychology from Adelaide University. After graduating, Amanda practised as a psychologist working with General Practitioners in the delivery of mental health care to the community before entering politics. Amanda lives in Hallett Cove with her husband Tim and their two young sons, Percy and Oscar.
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(For NFAW Members to receive the membership price, enter ‘111’ into the membership number section.)
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Ticket pricing: $89 members and $129 non-NFAW members
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Ticket cost includes drinks, canapes, main, and dessert
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Bookings via National Press Club
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Sponsors of tables welcome.
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Pamela Denoon Event: Watch online Now!
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You can now watch this wonderful night online
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Thanks so much to the film crew, Zhenshi, Ashley and Rob for documenting this event! To Zhenshi for organising the film crew, and Piers Douglas at Canberra Institute of Technology for loan of the film equipment. And thanks to Ché Baker for editing the program.
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A Tribute to SUZANNE BELLAMY a wonderful feminist, activists, artist and independent scholar
22.09.1948 – 20.O6.2022
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SuzanneBellamyNational Library, 2019
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A special friend of the NFAW we share this tribute to Suzanne Bellamy with thanks to writer Julia Ryan, June 2022
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Suzanne's defining experience came in 1969 when she attended the first meetings of Women’s Liberation in Sydney while a university student. She embraced radical feminism and joined the collective publishing the first Women’s Liberation newspaper Mejane, then Refractory Girl. Suzanne later wrote All the ideas which exploded out of early Women’s Liberation in student days continue to grow and fuse and morph into (my) life and work, direct action and radical form, ecology and sustainability, creating post-patriarchal consciousness during difficult changing times, holding comic joy and the creative as sacred energies.
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Born and raised in Parramatta Suzanne was from a working-class family. Her mother worked as sewing companion for the wife of the headmaster of King’s College: Suzanne recollected as a pre-schooler accompanying her mother, allowed to play with the well-dressed dolls of the daughters of the house. Her much older sister, Doreen, took her on adventures: ‘Don’t tell Mum’. Cherishing her Parramatta origins Suzanne remained a lifelong Eels supporter. She attended Macarthur Girls High where she particularly loved the Latin class run by an old scholar, Normanton Rawlings. She won a Commonwealth Scholarship to Sydney University, graduated with Honours, and began a doctoral thesis on Russian women revolutionaries. ( CLICK HERE TO READ MORE)
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In 1974 Suzanne began an academic career at Macquarie University, teaching Women’s Studies and Politics. As national convenor of the first Women and Labour Conference, 1978, Suzanne pioneered the series of scholarly conferences which put women’s studies on the academic map. Among her many projects at that time Suzanne worked on all three Australian Women’s Commissions, the Coming Out show, the Awful Truth show, and with Bessie Guthrie, the Child Welfare Campaigns which led to the closure of the Parramatta Girls Home. When Bessie died Suzanne organised a huge feminist funeral, and kept the ashes for many years, finally burying them at Mongarlowe.
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Academe proved too narrow for Suzanne’s burgeoning interests and talents, and she began exploring the arts, beginning with pottery. She left the university in 1979 to work full time as a studio artist and independent scholar/writer and began exhibiting artwork from 1981. In the 1980s she fulfilled a long-held dream by moving to the country, to an old farm in the Bredbo – Jerangle district. From there Suzanne wrought ceramics, ran exhibitions, wrote papers for women’s conferences and found time to attend a lino-print course at Cooma TAFE. Later she learned bookbinding at Braidwood. A lifelong diarist, Suzanne’s journals included details of her artistic and intellectual processes are beautifully bound and now reside at the National Library of Australia.
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In the 1990s Suzanne moved to Mongarlowe where Doreen and Bob helped erect her studio home along Northangera Rd. From Mongarlowe Susanne formed bonds with the Braidwood district community who provided immense support in her later life. While occasionally exhibiting elsewhere in 1994 Susanne began a tradition of Open Studio weekends to coincide with the annual Braidwood Festivals at the end of November. Friends and supporters came, some from afar, to enjoy the unique flavour of the studio, eat the good food, drink tea, wander the banks of the creek and make purchases.
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Suzanne developed a multi-disciplinary and multi- media approach to some of her work. The Lost Culture of Women’s Liberation – the pre-Dynastic Phase 1969-1974 provides a popular example.
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The Lost Culture show, presented many times in Australia and the United States, has been acquired by the National Library of Australia. Russ Herman’s film of one of Suzanne’s presentations of the show can be enjoyed on YouTube. Suzanne began travelling to the United States in the 1990s initially to attend the Minnesota Women’s Music Festival where she worked as set painter and graphic artist 1990-94. Long a devotee of the works of Virginia Woolf Suzanne joined the International Virginia Woolf Conference and began attending their annual events overseas. She ran exhibitions and shows at the Woolf conferences and was artist-in-residence at Smith College during the 2003 event.
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In June 2004 she was a Featured Presenter at the Woolf Conference at the University of London in Bloomsbury, with a jazz visual text improvisation called Am I Blue?, a word and visual painting interpretation of three Woolf experimental short fictions about war with large canvas paintings as set. In 2011 she was Keynote Presenter at Glasgow University’s International Woolf Conference with a set canvas, libretto and production of the Pageant from Woolf’s Between The Acts. Her canvas Woolf and the Chaucer Horse was acquired by the University of Glasgow.
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Woolf and the Chaucer Horse, Suzanne Bellamy 2011
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After 2016 Suzanne contributed to the annual Woolf conferences by Zoom. Ten days before her death she presented her artwork ‘Shakespeare’s Sister’ in the segment ‘Who’s afraid of William Shakespeare? –Woolf Reading the Bard’, at the 31st Annual International Virginia Conference held at Lamar University, Beaumont, Texas. The Lamar Conference featured one of Suzanne-s designs as its signature logo.
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31st Annual International Virginia Woolf Conference
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Virginia Woolf and Ethics
June 9-12, 2022
Lamar University
Beaumont, TX, USA
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Art created and donated by Suzanne Bellamy
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Suzanne’s Woolf studies led her a 1942 Sydney University Master’s Thesis on Virginia Woolf by Nuri Mass, and she reconnected with the University to write a PhD Textual Archaeology: A contextual Reading of the 1942 Nuri Mass thesis on Virginia Woolf,. She continued writing the thesis through the earlier years of her illness, submitting in 2018; then awarded not only a PhD but the prize for the outstanding thesis in Australian Literature. During the Black Summer of 2019-20 Suzanne’s Mongarlowe property was threatened thrice by bushfires, saved each time by local firefighters. Suzanne evacuated temporarily as each fire approached, then after the devastation fed the stricken wildlife and raised money for the firefighters through her international online network.
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In 2020 Catherine Dyer interviewed Suzanne for the documentary film on Women’s Liberation in Australia, Brazen Hussies.
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Suzanne’s acute, insightful contributions proved a feature of the film and she spoke on the Panel at the Canberra launch of the film at the Dendy theatre in 2021. Suzanne kept working till the last week of her life. The creation of ‘Shakespeare’s Sister’ for the Woolf Conference was only one of several large, bright, complex paintings she completed in her studio home. Her last journals will join their companions in the National Library.
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Doreen, who had planned to outlive Suzanne, fell ill earlier this year and died in May. In Doreen’s last weeks the sisters talked daily on the phone, and although Suzanne was too weak to attend Doreen’s Blue Mountains funeral, friends kept her company on the day with open communication with Doreen’s children and grandchildren.
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Suzanne kept going in her studio home till her last days when she could no longer keep the iron stove going or make a cup of tea. She delighted in the warmth and tea provision of the friendly Braidwood hospice, where friends kept vigil. She left us in good spirit: she felt it was time. The loss of this significant creative spirit, formidable intellect and great friend is immense. The last words go to Suzanne…
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I have chosen and attempted to explore as independent a path as possible living inside patriarchy, engaged with community and pushing the boundaries. I have no regrets except I wasn’t very good at relationships, but I found that the Art of Friendship is infinitely more important. This last phase of my life feels so rich in connections with now and memory, an experience that no one prepared you for, fascinating and not at all sad.
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I now have the answer to my universal question. ‘How Many Pots Does One Woman Have to Make?’’ Lots.
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I am most proud of having been part of a brilliant powerful cohort of women over many decades here in Australia and other countries, whose time has been working vision and ideas in diverse ways and forms to bring change to the unbalanced misogynistic state of our beloved planet Earth. Now it’s the time of a new inspired cohort and I wish them well in punching a hole in the membrane of history as we did. If it turns out that I have any influence out there in the land of the great spirits I will do my best. I have always worked for spirit, which has a deep personal meaning for me and not needed any reality beyond my brain’s lovely imagination. I was gifted this by my ancestors and also by the mimetic cluster I was privileged to find as a young woman. If has been a great thrill and privilege to spend this time on Earth, and I have loved it all.
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Spirit Boat - Suzanne Bellamy 1990s
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Acquired by National Foundation for Australian Women
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NFAW Annual National Press Club dinner - Sponsors wanted!
The NFAW Annual Press Club dinner is held in November each year, and again this year NFAW has an exciting speaker to inform and inspire you.
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Prior to, and at, the event on Tuesday 8 November, the sponsors will be acknowledged in the programme, on the website of the National Press club, the website of NFAW and in invitations which are being widely circulated across Canberra and nationally. At the dinner, the sponsors can have a display, table banner/s, acknowledgment in the programme, and ample opportunity to exchange information and any publicity material with all participants. (Participants invited will include government representatives, members of NFAW, health and community organisations.)
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Please share this information with your networks and contact Kate Gunn on 0411 466080 if you are interested in supporting NFAW.
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NFAW MEDIA CORNER – a good read.
- https://probonoaustralia.com.au/news/2022/03/gender-lens-investing-can-drive-profit/
- https://smartygrants.com.au/help-sheets/gender-lens
- https://onimpact.com.au/the-power-of-investing-in-women-through-a-gender-lens/
- Podcast: https://genderinstitute.anu.edu.au/conversation-wendy-mccarthy
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