Most Australians, especially women, understand how pervasive sexism is, according to new polling by Essential Research.
This week more than a thousand respondents were asked how much sexism and discrimination against women occurs in workplaces, the media, politics, advertising, sports and schools.
In every arena, except schools, more than half of those asked believed there was a lot (in schools, it was still 44 per cent).
The polling broke down the results by gender, and tellingly, more women than men thought a lot of sexism and discrimination occurred in each of the fields.
Clearly Australians, especially women, are frequently seeing sexism and discrimination occur in public arenas, and many women must be feeling it firsthand.
Appallingly, sexism has reared its ugly head time and time again in what has been a shocking start to the year for women in 2016.
A federal Liberal Minister and the now former general-secretary of the NSW Labor Party were forced to resign over sexual harassment allegations.
Another federal Liberal Minister has referred to a journalist as a “mad f..ng witch”; a sexist, violence-promoting ‘pick up artist’ seminar has taken place in Sydney; a sports player has ignored a journalist’s questions and instead on live TV repeatedly asked her out; and we’ve learnt ANZ celebrated a top appointment at a strip club.
What’s more the federal Liberal Government is still failing to address sexual abuse in immigration detention; has not reversed its funding cuts to women’s refuges and legal centres, and wants to make women pay for pap smears.
With Australians seeing politicians and others in the public eye so often failing women, the poll results are perhaps not surprising.
The poll also asked respondents whether men or women were more respected, or equally respected, in a range of professions.
Despite women now graduating universities in higher numbers than men, across most of the professions included in the poll more than half of respondents believed men were more respected.
Most people thought men were more respected in construction, the military, politics, sport, finance, and law. For doctors and journalists, more than a third thought men were more respected.
The only profession in which most people thought women were more respected was nursing.
It appears Australians believe out-dated stereotypes about the types of work men and women can and can’t do are persisting.
The good news to take from this poll is that there is widespread community awareness and acceptance that sexism and discrimination across a range of professions and public arenas exist.
I believe there are also many Australians out there, who are prepared to stand up and call out sexism, which is essential to finally achieving gender equality.