International Women’s Day
EXTRACT FROM
PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES
HANSARD
Ms SHING Eastern Victoria
MEMBERS STATEMENTS
Thursday, 8 March 2018
International Women’s Day
Ms SHING (Eastern Victoria) (10:10:25) — Today is International Women’s Day. As so many of us know and as so many of us will speak about today, we have come some way towards identifying and acknowledging the persistent gap that exists in the way in which we access services, the way in which our voices are heard, the way in which we seek recompense for our paid work and the way in which we seek recognition and visibility for our unpaid work. Today is the day when we have an opportunity to do more than we are required to do, to do more than simply speak about the role models that we have — the women who have shaped us into what we are today or how we might be tomorrow — and to actually commit to wholesale change that matters to the women who fight every single day to be heard.
Today is an opportunity for us to consider ourselves not as farmers’ wives but as farmers; not as nurses who are relegated to positions of assisting but as doctors and surgeons; as women who make choices around the professional options and opportunities that we pursue; and as women who have rights — and should have better rights — to access education, to access opportunities to sit around a boardroom table and to access opportunities to close the pay gap that currently exists at 17.3 per cent. It is also an opportunity to do more to make sure that our longevity and our ongoing unpaid work in the community do not go unrecognised for the remaining 364 days of the year.