Plenty of awards, not many women receiving them

After the criticism over the past few years, by both men and women, as to why women have not comprised about 50% of recipients for Australian honours, it was with great disappointment that I read the list of 2014 awardees. This year women make up only 31% of the Australia Day honours list and of the eight AC recipients, only one was a woman.

The chief executives of Australia have set themselves the goal of achieving 50% of senior positions filled by women by 2023. There is no reason why we shouldn’t all be doing the same for our honours.

It’s not that we don’t agree that the under-representation of women is a problem. The chairman of the Council for the Order of Australia, Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, said last year that he wanted a more equitable gender balance. If the numbers were balanced and equitable, they would be about half and half. And if anybody thinks that fewer women are eligible for honours than men, I’d like to see them stand up in public and defend that position.

There are, of course, excuses. Honourees tend to be older, and if you look at prominent 60 or 70-year-olds you are looking at a population from a male-dominated era.

Also, fewer women are nominated — this year 281 women compared with 670 men. 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.

But these are, nonetheless, excuses, as can be seen by the fact that this year Britain finally crossed the line. In the country that invented the system, 51% of this year’s awardees are women.

If they can do it, I don’t see why we can’t. On this measure, we are about where Britain was in the year 2000. It is not beyond us to be able to catch up.

If even the chairman of the council can’t manage to get the figures to balance, then there are most likely structural issues involved. Let’s fix them.

1. Start with the council itself. If we really want to redress the imbalance, let’s make sure the council is 50-50 men and women (if not, why not?) Each of the eight Australian states and territories have nominees to the council; only the Northern Territory has nominated a woman. That needs to change. When the position of chair becomes vacant, let’s hope a woman gets that role, too. These things matter.
2. Let’s bring the rules out into the open. I have immense admiration for Geoffrey Rush, and I’m sure he deserves his AC, but why wasn’t Jacki Weaver up there with him rather than down among the AOs? What are the guidelines? Let’s see them, let’s debate them, and let’s get the inconsistencies out.
3. Let’s all rethink how we view the society we live in. Who’s doing the work that really matters; who’s reaching outside their paid employment to make a significant contribution to our nation. I am certain once we do that we will find more women to nominate.
4. The 50-50 target should flow through to everyone. All nominations committees within organisations and corporations, working tirelessly to ensure their best contributors get the recognition they deserve, should put forward equal numbers of men and women.
5. If they can only come up with two women, then they should only nominate two men – and then have a think about how to tackle all of the reasons why there aren’t more women on their list to start with.
6. On my list of actions, this is a big one, but it is one that would get us to a position of parity with Britain straight away. If — and it’s a really big if — there were only 212 women on the Council for the Order of Australia’s list who deserved awards, then only give 212 awards to men. Nobody is entitled to an award as of right and nobody can complain if they don’t get one.

An equal distribution would make a strong statement about gender equality and have real benefits for the position of women in this country. Let’s just do it.

This piece was frst published at The Age. It is republished here with permission.