In a rather fun and fortuitous turn of events, after the NAB Women’s Agenda Leadership Awards lunch finished last Thursday, I found myself in a cab heading for Sydney’s international airport. I was headed to Singapore for the inaugural Women’s Empowerment Journalism Awards hosted by Diageo. Just two weeks earlier I had received an email from the organisers that I had been selected as a finalist in the Journalist of the Year category. It was unexpected and exhilarating in equal parts.
A few days earlier I had been in the audience listening to the IMF managing director Christine Lagarde field questions on everything from tax evasion to sustainable economic growth to equality. Afterwards I wondered, more than momentarily, whether establishing a career in law, like she had, might be a better foundation from which to try and procure real change.
It wasn’t exactly a nagging thought but it was on my mind; the email advising me of my selection in the Women’s Empowerment Awards jolted me out of it. Change requires all sorts of people, doing all sorts of things, and commentating on the issues affecting gender equality is one of them. Being able to do that is a privilege, albeit one I wish wasn’t quite so necessary, and being recognised for it is a thrill.
Best of all, even with short notice, because my parents-in-law had just a few weeks earlier organised to take our daughters for a few nights, I was actually able to attend the ceremony. Better still my mum, who has a busy career herself, was willing and able to join me.
The NAB Women’s Agenda awards were fitting preparation. On Wednesday evening we hosted a small cocktail event for the finalists, judges and winners from the past year. One of last year’s winners, Megan Dalla-Camina, and MC Angela Priestley, both spoke persuasively about savouring the moment of being a finalist. Winning is an added bonus but being recognised as a finalist was no small feat and something worth enjoying. Having the opportunity to meet and mingle with their fellow finalists was a valuable part of the whole process. It was sage advice I bookmarked for myself.
On Thursday evening, as I sat on the plane headed for Singapore, I tried to savour the moment. It wasn’t difficult. How many times in my life could I expect to experience a moment like this? If it’s only once I’ll still count myself extraordinarily lucky.
On Wednesday evening Angela also encouraged each of the finalists to give some thought to what they might like to say if they were named as the winner. Winning my category was always going to be a long shot; not because of false modesty on my part but because each of the other finalists were established journalists with impressive credentials who had each told important stories to empower women.
But I let myself wonder, for a moment, what I might like to say if, against the odds, my name was announced. It wasn’t. The award went to a most deserving recipient, Sumnima Udas, a CNN reporter in Delhi for her reports in the aftermath of the horrific gang rapes which took place in India and made world news in 2012.
Having given it some thought on the plane, and then sitting at the dinner, pinching myself to even be there, listening to the speakers and finalists share their stories, my thoughts about what I would say crystallised. This is what I wanted to say.
It is almost impossible to talk about the issue of gender inequality in the Asia-Pacific region holistically. The picture for women throughout this region varies significantly depending on the country of a woman’s birth and the country in which she lives. The challenges and opportunities for women in India are vastly different to those in Australia and are different again for those in China, Korea, Singapore, Nepal, New Zealand and Malaysia.
As the judge and Room-to-Read founder John Wood said – in this regard we are all at the whim of life’s lottery. As women who live in this region we are not united by the severity or the nature of the inequality that stems from our gender. But we are united by the fact that inequality impedes all of us. And while there might not be a single solution to gender inequality I do know that ambivalence poses the most substantial threat to changing that.
Ambivalence that gender inequality exists or that it matters, is one way to ensure it flourishes. If we want to tackle inequality, in whatever form it manifests, we must commit to challenging that ambivalence and the status quo. Every single day. We know that inequality – in the home, in the workplace, in families, in society – thrives when it is unchallenged. And that is why journalism that seeks to empower women matters.
Whether it’s writing a story about those who are defying gender expectations, like the first female engineer to become a construction manager in China or how sport has mobilised a group of Indian women to overcome some of the barriers of their gender.
Whether it’s a respected broadcaster, like CNN’s Ellana Lee, standing up and speaking honestly about how it’s taken her 40 years to have her and her female relatives included in her own family tree, against tradition in South Korea.
Whether it’s broadcasting stories of those who are suffering because of inequality, like the girl slaves in Nepal or photographing the gritty reality of the places where China’s women work.
Those stories matter because they shine a light on the problem and they make ambivalence just a tiny bit harder to maintain, even if only for a single person, for a short period of time. Collectively, however, the potential impact is far greater than the sum of those parts.
If I had won I wanted to ask every person in the room to do what I asked of you a little over a week ago; to become ambassadors for gender equality. To use every opportunity they have, and every opportunity they make, to spread the word and make ambivalence around gender inequity harder to accept.
The WE awards themselves were actually a product of exactly this thinking, albeit proffered by someone more eminent than myself, Aung San Suu Kyi, in a slightly more eminent setting than even this website, the 2012 World Economic Forum. It was there that the president of Diageo Asia Pacific, Gilbert Ghostine, heard Suu Kyi challenge the business community to unite and raise the importance of the education and empowerment of women. It sparked Plan W, the company’s initiative to empower women, from which the WE awards sprang.
As a direct beneficiary of this initiative it will no doubt seem self-serving to thank and recognise the company’s efforts but I will regardless. Because in the realm of gender equality and diversity we need more than mere lip service. We need companies to invest money both internally and externally recognising, celebrating and validating the importance of equality. Diageo has my admiration for their work.
Along the same lines, the occasion, in combination with the NAB Women’s Agenda Leadership Awards, gave me cause to consider my own employer. So in another thank you which is bound to seem self-serving, I’d like to thank Private Media because if it weren’t for them being willing to invest in this important issue Women’s Agenda wouldn’t exist.
In Singapore I was asked several times which media organisation I was associated with. When I explained that I work for a relatively small, independently-owned media company in Australia the response was invariably a version of astonishment. Independent media companies are hard enough to come by, let alone one that invests in a platform for gender equality.
In the end the WE Award winners came from CNN, Time Magazine, Reuters, Al-Jazeera and the South China Morning Post. You can imagine why, just being involved and having the chance to meet those journalists, I felt like a winner, without actually winning a thing.