We had just come from an inspiring, beautiful evening – the Women’s Agenda Leadership Awards. An evening of brilliant women being celebrated for their achievements, for overcoming the structural barriers we all face, and for being leaders in their fields.
I was honoured to give the keynote and was asked to speak about my career, my unlikely trajectory and the sexism I have faced along the way in my legal career, the ‘imposter syndrome’ that I am often asked about, and about my book about violence against women and girls with Dr Keio Yoshida, How Many More Women: How the law silences women.
When I stood up to speak, I didn’t expect to tell so many stories about what I had faced as a woman in the law – or to express so much anger and exhaustion about it. The sexual harassment, and the discrimination, I have faced as a woman in the law. As a woman from regional Australia who went to public school, who no one ever expected to become a lawyer or a Rhodes scholar. Who has been mistaken for the secretary; told so many times “you don’t look like a lawyer”; dismissed, objectified and belittled in so many ways in my career.
Even now.
I explained why I don’t like the term ‘imposter syndrome’ because it pathologises us; it individualises and isolates our experience and makes it our problem, rather than being about the very real structural obstacles blocking our way, particularly when we are in rooms where women haven’t been before.
I talked about the epidemic of violence against women, which is another serious structural barrier to equality. About how my grandmother’s work running domestic violence refuges had inspired me to write the book – how the statistics are getting worse, not better, how I feel a responsibility to continue my grandmother’s legacy and fight for change, and why we need to protect women’s speech and our right to be free from gender-based violence.
I surprised myself when I spoke about how tired and angry I am about it, and how much we have to keep fighting for this to change. Acknowledging my white privilege (which is not a conversation that happens enough in Australia), I asked people to try to imagine how much harder this is for women of colour.
I found my own speech confronting, being in a room of women and men there to celebrate and support women, because I was publicly expressing emotions I hadn’t acknowledged enough in myself.
Watching all the remarkable women being celebrated, I was invigorated. Thrilled to see the diversity I saw among the nominees and on the podium. I marvelled at the achievements of these inspiring women and just wanted to hear more about their work and their life stories.
After the awards, we shared stories and contacts, built new friendships and took photos together. It was uplifting and exciting.
And it was safe.
The safe space it was explains why I was able to express that emotion and vulnerability – and I am glad I did because afterwards I had so many women, particularly women of colour, come up to thank me for saying it, and for how they heard themselves in my words.
But then we went to the hotel bar.
I immediately clocked them when I walked in to join my friends and the Women’s Agenda team: Three men. Clearly drunk. On the table next to us. Looking me up and down the moment I walked in.
My guard went back up.
What men don’t understand about women’s experience is just how much of our energy is expended being alert to the risk of men and managing our interactions to stay safe. Whether it is managing men at work who might take an unwelcome interest in us, or strange men invading our space without invitation and without our consent, or managing the general risk of physical or sexual violence.
We have to be friendly, but not too friendly; guarded, but not so assertive he will see it as rejection – because God forbid, we bruise his ego and face retribution. Work and opportunities can be lost – and far worse.
I sat and chatted to my friends and colleagues. I watched them from the corner of my eye – watching me, egging each other on to approach me. It still astounds me how often men forget that we have peripheral vision.
I went to the bar to buy a round of drinks. The entire time I felt their gaze. I turned and watched them lean over to each other and gesture over to me. In truth, it didn’t matter to them that I saw it.
I was staying in the hotel, and I made a mental note not to walk to the elevator alone.
Welcome back into the world we have to navigate.
And it got worse.
As I tried to have a conversation with the event organiser, one of these men decided it was time to approach me. He walked over, interrupted our conversation uninvited, and shoved his hand in mine.
Politely, I looked up at this man towering over me and greeted him.
Nice, but not too nice. Guarded, but not too assertive. I told him I had been speaking to my friend, who he had just interrupted. She asked him to leave us to our conversation.
He looked offended by our request but got the message and went back to his friends.
But they clearly didn’t like that.
I watched them discuss me and what had just happened but tried to focus on my conversation with the brilliant young woman in front of me—a young lawyer in my field. I wanted to offer mentorship, and I was trying to give her my focus, time and energy.
But leering in the background were these three, intoxicated men. Their energy entitled and aggressive. I wondered what they would do next. I made another mental note to identify a hotel staff member to ask them to make sure I got into that elevator safely – and alone.
We all tried to continue our conversations and hoped they would just go away.
And then it got worse again.
One of the men bundled up the newspaper he was carrying and started hitting his friend with it. He then swung it around and hit the young woman I was talking to, squarely in the back of her head. She was startled, as was I.
I grabbed her by the hand and checked she was ok. She nodded. That was it.
“You just hit my friend and that is unacceptable”, I said forcefully, pointing at him.
He said he didn’t mean it, taken aback I had confronted him about it.
His friend leapt to his defence, telling me to leave it alone: “it was nothing”.
We collectively gasped at their lack of awareness and how quickly they minimised violent behaviour.
One of the event organisers told them they had been invading our space all night, without our consent.
Indignant, we were told to “relax” as the perpetrator reached out to rub the back of the woman he’d just hit, rather than apologise. Visibly uncomfortable, she shrugged his hand away.
A collective sigh in disbelief came from our table.
“I will not ‘relax’ when it comes to men hitting or touching women without consent: it’s assault”, I said.
“The privilege”, replied one of the men, incredulously.
In a way they were right: it is a sign of my privilege and power that I now feel able to call men out for such public displays of violence.
“We aren’t woman beaters”, he continued.
I pointed out that he had, in fact, just hit a woman.
“So, charge us”, he goaded.
This caused many of the women at the table to chuckle into their drinks.
I was staggered by their audacity; to stand in a bar, literally hit a woman in the head in front of 20 witnesses – and dare us to try to bring criminal charges. And the sad thing is he was probably right to be confident – most men do get away with it.
Hotel security finally came over to intervene. It took three male hotel security staff to get them to leave. They protested that they were being discriminated against – “why are those women allowed to stay?”
“If ever we needed a reminder of why we do what we do!” I exclaimed, and we all laughed, keen to break the tension.
As we debriefed about what had just happened, I discovered that these men had repeatedly touched women at our table, despite polite requests to stop. It was a sobering experience – on a night like this, to be so immediately reminded of the reality of violence against women in our society and how normalised it is.
We hugged and had one last group photo before turning in for the night.
Even though those men had been walked off the property and were nowhere in sight, I made sure to stay with the young woman I had been speaking to until she was safely in her car.
And I watched over my own shoulder as I got into the elevator.
Then I walked up to my room, and I wrote this down.
Because I am tired of it. And I am tired of people not seeing this or understanding what it is that we face every single day as women. This is not the first time I have experienced it, and it won’t be the last. The behaviour of those three men exemplifies how disrespect towards women, and disrespect towards women’s requests and needs, creates the space for more harmful acts of gendered violence.
The fact is that rates of violence against women are getting worse, not better. One in three women will suffer sexual violence; one in four domestic violence – which is why UN Women describes it as the most prolific human rights abuse. We wrote our book because we want this to change – and it must.
And the push for change starts with speaking about it.