When Gillian Armstrong started out as a film director she was told women weren’t suited to the job because they could faint in the heat on location.
If a film was directed by a woman, it was common to hear that ‘the cameraman really directed it’, Armstrong said on Saturday, after receiving an honorary Doctor of Letters from Sydney University.
And while things have changed, Armstrong pointed out that just four women have been nominated for an Oscar for direction in the entire history of the Academy Awards. In fact, only one has ever won the award; Kathryn Bigelow in 2010.
For the first time in Sydney University’s history, all the honorary degrees conferred on the weekend went to women, as Chancellor Belinda Hutchinson pointed out.
Along with Gillian Armstrong were tennis great Evonne Goolagong Cawley, Westpac CEO Gail Kelly, Telstra chair Catherine Livingstone, director Kerry Schott, High Court Justice Virginia Bell, Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick and indigenous leader Lowitja O’Donoghue.
The eight recipients were leaders in our community who had inspired and enabled other women, Hutchinson said, just like some of the first women to enter the university had done a century or more ago.
While women law graduates now outnumber men, the university’s and Australia’s first woman law graduate Ada Evans was told she did not have the ‘physique’ for law and should try medicine instead. Although Evans graduated in 1902, it was 1921 before she was admitted to the NSW Bar.
Formal barriers may have largely disappeared but most of the women receiving their honorary degrees recalled moments they broke through a ceiling that was more like cement than glass just a few decades ago.
High Court Justice Virginia Bell recalled a comment from a senior public defender shortly after she was also appointed to the role.
“I want you to know I didn’t actually oppose your appointment,” he told her. ” It’s just never occurred to me women would want to do the ugly work we do.”
The ceremony was a good example of what Elizabeth Broderick described as the strong and visible leadership of women needed to change organisations.
Many of the women paid tribute to teachers and parents who had supported them and encouraged them to aim high. Catherine Livingstone remembered the teacher who nurtured in her a love of science and technology that proved to be such an asset throughout her career.
The recognition by these high profile women that parents played a major role in their success by insisting that girls have the same rights and opportunities as boys is also, of course, acknowledging that it was an unusual notion just thirty years ago.
And even today, despite much change, the basic principles of feminism do need to be repeated – although that tricky ‘f word’ was not really mentioned much during the ceremony.
Like the recent 100 Women of Influence awards, the conferring of the degrees at Sydney University was uplifting and also a reminder of why it’s so important to be clear about what is needed to ensure that special accolades for women become unnecessary.
We’ll know when that time has arrived because women leaders and their achievements will no longer be a novelty but simply par for the course. And there’ll be no need to keep holding up female role models to remind younger generations of women they really do have the opportunities their parents told them were possible.
As Deputy Chancellor Michael Spence told the audience, women make up more than half the students and the employees at Sydney University but just over a third of senior ranks.
When she accepted the degree for Lowitja O’Donoghue, Tanya Hosch, campaign director of Recognise, said Lowitja continues to lament the lack of progress for women.
“We have to catch up – there’s a lot more to be done”, was her message.
For all the steps forward made since the days of Ada Evans, and the potent success stories, the promise of equality for women is still just that.