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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 3 Hansard (7 March) . . Page.. 730 ..

MS DUNDAS (continuing):

security and a better quality of life. As symbols, bread and roses sum up much of what women have been struggling for for well over 100 years. To take it literally, there are still millions of women worldwide and in Australia for whom coming home to a fresh loaf of bread and a vase of roses just once would be an amazing, if only brief, respite from the grind and ugliness of everyday poverty.

Over the last 100 years women have struggled for more than economic security and quality of life. We have struggled for recognition as valid human persons, for the right to determine the course of our own lives and for genuine respect and all that that brings with it. These are not easy things to symbolise, but there are perhaps good reasons for this. What we are working for is not just better material conditions. It is about women's inner experience of dignity and self-respect and how we can change the world to support this. It is about men's inherent attitudes to women and how we can improve these.

This gives us just an indication of how amazing the women's movement has been. Women who have been told and shown in every facet of their lives that they are not worthy of real respect, with everything around them subtly and not so subtly opposed to them expressing themselves as fully legitimate persons, have had the dignity, compassion and courage to stand up and to demand respect. Against the blind inertia of systemic oppression women have had to construct their own positive view of what it means to be a woman and then to change hearts and minds. And we are still doing it.

On 25 March 1911, just one week after IWD was observed for the first time in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland, over 140 workers lost their lives in a fire in a shirt factory in New York City. These workers were mostly women. This tragedy could have been avoided, but the working conditions made it impossible for these young women to escape the blaze. Doors were locked to prevent workers from taking breaks. No functioning fire exit was provided. One of the things, besides the lives, that were destroyed in this fire was a sign tacked to the wall. It read, "If you don't come in on Sunday, you need not come in on Monday."

How frustrating and saddening that millions of women worldwide, including women in Australia, still work in sweat shop conditions today or do outwork with no protection and little reward. Arguably government policies are doing less and less to prevent this disturbing practice.

Here in 2002 we are celebrating some very important events. It has been mentioned that it is 100 years since non-indigenous women in this country gained full suffrage. Speaking to the Commonwealth Franchise Bill in 1902, Senator Fraser noted:

That, I must admit, was one of the nicer comments. The suffragettes were seen as women out to sap the very foundation of a nation. It was believed that women having a vote would demean them and even give married men two votes. How wrong these people were.

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