Page 782 - Week 02 - Thursday, 10 March 2011
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In the ACT an example of a standout program transforming the lives of women is the Canberra Rape Crisis Centre. The CEO, Veronica Wensing, has devoted much of her career to breaking the silence and supporting women to heal. As we all know, violence against women has certainly not disappeared. However, culturally I believe we have made some progress around the unacceptable nature of violence and assault.
Across the country there have been improvements, with early intervention and prevention, with additional work required in support after the event. In the ACT I am happy to report that there has been a significant improvement in the cohesion of services. The wrap-around process now sees the police call the Canberra Rape Crisis service after every assault. I thank local women like Veronica for devoting her working life to supporting women of the ACT and surrounds and raising the profile of sexual assault and working to stamp out violence against women.
One hundred years on, however, where are the lives of women at? Sixty per cent of the 1.4 billion people currently living in poverty around the world are women. Of the 130 million children who are out of school, 70 per cent are girls. One in three has been physically or sexually abused. Complications from pregnancy and childbirth kill 500,000 women a year, and 99 per cent of these deaths are in developing countries. And in many parts of the world, women still are unable to show their faces, vote, own land, earn an income or gain an education.
In Australia the snapshot is of course much better but still reveals a 17 per cent pay gap or $1.5 million over a lifetime. But I do want to acknowledge that, in the ACT, in the ACT public service things look a lot brighter. And the minister did table yesterday an update on where we are up to with gender pay equity. And I thank the minister for that. It was in response to a motion that I put before this Assembly for International Women’s Day last year.
The profile does show, and I am pleased that it does, that the pay equity gap in the ACT public service has reduced to 3.3 per cent. This report includes a comprehensive gender analysis and it will now be a permanent section in all future workplace profiles. I would like to thank the minister for following that through, doing that good work, the public servants who worked on it and the public service commissioner, Catherine Hudson. It is an important piece of work and I am pleased that it will now be updated regularly.
If you go back to the Australian snapshot, 34 per cent of women fill positions in the Senate, 24 per cent in the House of Representatives. Thirty-six per cent of women hold senior public sector management positions, while only 12 per cent do in the private sector. Women hold 34 per cent of director positions on government boards but only nine per cent do on private boards.
Today we have heard calls for quotas on female representation on boards. This is an issue that should be looked at via cultural support programs that demonstrate what these decision-making bodies are missing by not having female representation.
As the statistics of where we are at continue, we find that many women, too many women, have suffered violence and we need to really have a look at this issue of violence. In the events that I have been to this week, it certainly has been highlighted
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