The 2015 Australian of the Year Awards were historic. For the first time ever women won awards in all four major categories; family violence campaigner Rosie Batty, children’s author Jackie French, deaf advocate Drisana Levitzke-Gray and social entrepreneur Juliette Wright were each recognised.
The prestigious Australia Day 2015 Honours List, revealed at the same time, however, provided less reason to celebrate. This year women comprised 33.7% of the Australians honoured.
It represents a 2% increase from 2014 and a 7% jump from 2013 when women received 26% of the accolades. And this is despite repeated calls for greater gender balance over the past few years.
In January 2011 Our Community and the Women’s Leadership Institute Australia started a campaign to boost the number of women honoured. Together they published a report called Advancing Women: Women and the Order of Australia, highlighting the “largely unrecognising problem in the distribution of awards in Australia” and proposing change.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics indicates that over the past 12 years, the highest proportion of women recognised in these awards – 35.7% – took place in 2003.
Ten years later this had dropped by nearly 10% to the extent that in 2013 the newly-Knighted chairman of the Order of Australia Council Angus Houston specifically called for a more equitable representation among the awardees.
In February last year The Age published an opinion piece by founding chairwoman of the Women’s Leadership Institute Australia, Carol Schwartz, outlining five strategies for tackling the imbalance.
The Council for the Order of Australia can only consider and make recommendations based on the nominations it receives from the community. One explanation oft turned to when discussing the underrepresentation of women in our honours list is that fewer women are nominated.
Factually, this is correct.
A spokesperson for Government House confirmed that 862 nominations were considered in relation to the Order of Australia this year, of which 275 were for women. Last year 281 female candidates were nominated compared to 670 men.
But Schwartz argues this disparity in nominations is revealing in itself.
“This is partly because as a society we place less value in the areas that women have tended to dominate; partly because a large number of nominations come from areas – churches, business, sports – where women still struggle to be heard; and partly because we have all become unconsciously conditioned to see men as more worthy of awards.”
Britain, the country whose award system ours is modelled on, provides a persuasive counter-argument to anyone who believes equal representation is unattainable.
On the final day of 2014 the British Government revealed its New Year’s Honour list for 2015. Of the 1,164 people who received an award, 579 were women, which means women accounted for half the awards. And it’s not the first time.
In 2014 women outnumbered men in the awards for the first time and women received 47% of the awards in 2013.
By contrast, in 2003 women only accounted for 34% of the honours in Britain. Put another way, it was over a decade ago that Britain surpassed a proportion that Australia is still struggling to reach in 2015.
The question becomes this. Are women in Britain more worthy of awards than women in Australia? Or is Britain better at recognising the achievements of women than Australia?
Like Australia, Britain has specifically focused on the topic of female representation in its awards. Unlike Australia, however, they have managed to translate that focus into results. If Britain can do it, why can’t we?
It’s not enough on its own but please consider nominating any of the fabulous women you know who make a contribution to our society for the awards next year. There are many practical tips here on how to do so.