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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 3 Hansard (7 March) . . Page.. 726 ..

MS GALLAGHER (continuing):

And the suffragettes did agitate until franchise was achieved. They struggled to obtain equal rights for all women in the public sphere, using the vote, education, domestic labour and employment rights to raise the demand for social emancipation and social justice.

As part of this process, people involved in progressive political parties and organisations have attempted to cajole and persuade their political colleagues to recognise the demands of women. The ALP has been involved in this process for some time now. Prime Minister Gough Whitlam chose International Women's Day 1974 as the time to announce that the government was preparing an official program for International Women's Year. From Whitlam's intervention in the 1970s to the Hawke legislation of the 1980s to the victory of affirmative action at the national conference in 1994 to the work of the ALP in the ACT, we have a lot to celebrate with the women of the world in advancing women's rights, which are of course human rights.

The ALP achieved the first female leader of a state or territory in Rosemary Follett. We have had female Speakers and we currently have female representation for the ACT both locally and in the House of Representatives and the Senate.

The legislative agenda is very important to the women's movement today. The Sex Discrimination Act and the Racial Discrimination Act 1983 allowed the marginalisation of women in the private sphere, such as the workplace, to be brought into the public. Reforms to the criminal code have done much to empower women in domestic violence situations, but clearly more can be done here. The anti-choice laws of the ACT and other states and territories have to be abolished and women given full reproductive control over their bodies.

Tomorrow is International Women's Day, so it is essential that we consider this MPI in the context of women's issues internationally. With global issues prominent in Australian politics today, we have to use our position in Australia to support the institutions of global civil society which help women in less advantaged positions. This involves strengthening and improving United Nations institutions which relate to women.

To conclude, I would like to provide the Assembly with some facts and figures released recently by APHEDA, Union Aids Abroad, to put some of what I have said in context. Seventy per cent of the world's absolute poor are women, and this proportion is increasing. Nearly two-thirds of the world's 876 million illiterate are women. A woman's lifetime risk of dying from maternal causes is one in 16 in Africa and one in 65 in Asia, compared to one in 1,400 in Europe.

Women account for almost half of the 32.4 million adults currently living with HIV/AIDS and of the 12.7 million adults who have died from the disease. In countries with high HIV prevalence young women are at greater risk of contracting HIV than are young men.

Where women are in paid employment, generally they receive lower pay than men in most countries for the same work or for work of the same value. Physical and sexual abuse affects millions of girls and women worldwide yet is known to be seriously under-

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