2020 Blindsight

It came as a shock a week ago to learn that the government that has established such a good record inputting women into Cabinet and the Ministryhad neglected to achieve anything remotely resembling gender balance in the selection of people to chair sessions at the forthcoming 2020 Summit.

As we all know, the government announced that ten men and just one woman would comprise the Australia 2020 Summit Steering Committee. That one woman was of course the stellar Cate Blanchett, an admirable actor but not necessarily qualified to represent the entire female population of Australia at this event.

There was a surprisingly strong and angry reaction to this news. It became a big story in the media and put the government on the back foot in an area where it had tried to demonstrate its equality-promoting credentials.

Some commentators, including some women, have predictably tried to write this whole thing off as a storm in a teacup, as an oversight, as having no relevance to what is likely to be an ineffective gabfest.

Catherine Harris, the former head of the Affirmative Action Agency and the woman who led the public outcry about this, told me last week that she felt “sick to the stomach” when she read of the Committee’s composition.

I know exactly how she felt because I had a similar reaction. I did not feel angry or outraged. I felt utterly dismayed – and a little sick.

Sadly, we have become accustomed to having our history ignored or distorted; we know that our present is still subject to discrimination, violence and enduring double standards. But, we could console ourselves with the hope that at least the future would be different.

Then the government plans a huge event to discuss the future of Australia and women are almost entirely excluded from the running of the event, and are nowhere to be found in the agenda of topics being discussed.

In other words, we are not even going to have a say in our own future. That is why Cathy Harris felt sick, and why I did too.

The media loved this story. Finally, it had something to embarrass the government. But this did not mean the media was in agreement with the women who complained. Rather, the treatment of the story was as sexist as the story itself.

Catherine Harris was invariably portrayed as the mother of Kevin Rudd’s press secretary, rather than as the hugely successful businesswoman and former bureaucrat that she is. The front-page story in The Australian on February 27 was headed “Mum’s the word on Rudd talkfest”.

This reminded me of the notorious headline that appeared in the Melbourne Herald (back when that still existed!) in 1975 as the government-sponsored International Women’s Year Women in Politics conference was about to get underway: “Mum’s the word as the big yak yak begins”.

Plus ca change, as the French say.

Let us hope that this blunder by the Rudd government will be an early wake-up call that it needs to be mindful of gender balance when making appointments. Obviously, it did not occur to the men who signed off on the Committee list that there was anything wrong with it.

The default position of too many men – still, after all these years – is that you appoint people like yourselves, middle-aged Anglo men, to run things. Until men become sensitive to what is wrong with this, some kind of formal advisory and scrutiny mechanism needs to be in place to ensure this does not happen again.

I remember when I worked in Paul Keating’s office as an advisor on, among other things, women that I constantly had to remind the boys to include women when making appointments. It is a thankless job, because we are seen as nags and we are often resented. Trouble is, if we don’t – who will?