Kate Lundy (ACT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Yesterday, 8 March, we celebrated International Women’s Day. In past years, for International Women’s Day I have highlighted the disadvantages, discrimination and underrepresentation often faced by women. I have spoken of some of the problems of women in other countries and of the courage and leadership shown by women such as Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma, Malalai Joya, now forced out of the Afghanistan parliament and still facing constant death threats, and Zilla Huma Usman, the Pakistani cabinet minister assassinated in 2007. The oppression of outspoken women such as these continues in many countries, as attested by Dr Hamidah Marican, this year’s International Women’s Day speaker at Canberra’s UNIFEM lunch last Friday.

In Australia we tend to rely on UNIFEM Australia to focus on the international needs of and opportunities for women. UNIFEM is the United Nations Development Fund for Women and it provides financial and technical assistance in more than 100 countries for innovative programs and strategies that promote women’s human rights, political participation and economic security. Dr Marican, the executive director of the Malaysian organisation Sisters in Islam, spoke of some of the programs and organisations which can help to redress the lack of opportunities for women. She champions the development of underrepresented groups and ‘talent pools’, including women in the workplace.

In Australia, of course, we cannot be complacent. We still have a way to go before we can claim that equal opportunity exists for women everywhere. The review of the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Act 1999 consultation report, released on 15 February this year, found that women’s earnings remain persistently lower than men’s and that Australia lags behind many other developed countries in women’s workforce participation rates. In participation in education and training, the report found that women continue to be overrepresented in areas of study linked to lower earning industries, while men continue to be overrepresented in areas of study linked to higher earning industries.

Today, for IWD, I would like to focus particularly on the opportunities we have in Australia for empowering women in two areas I am passionate about and interested in. They are quite disparate. One is sport and one is information and communication technologies. Both of these are areas in which women in the past have tended to be underrepresented and sometimes undervalued. This has certainly changed. Through both sport and ICT, women have had opportunities to develop their skills, confidence, networks and support.

Last week I was privileged to be invited to address CeBIT, the largest IT event of the year, held in Hanover, Germany, to outline the Australian government initiatives in ICT and our policies in respect of open government and Government 2.0. As someone who has been engaged in the Australian parliament’s debate and policy development with regard to IT on pretty much every committee relating to telecommunications and IT since I was elected in 1996, I was very proud to be able to say for the first time that ICT is at the top of the Australian political agenda. Obviously, incredibly important flagship policies like our National Broadband Network, the work of the Government 2.0 Taskforce, the Digital Education Revolution, the reforms taking place in ICT procurement and the ICT reform program across government, and the very important Powering Ideas policy, which outlines the research agenda for the 21st century, all combine to put a significant profile on the incredibly important issue of how technology impacts our lives and how we can put technology to work for our society and our economy. These are all parts of the Australian government’s focus on recreating Australia as a high productivity, innovative and digitally enabled economy. As I have said many times, I am extremely proud of how this set of policies will progress social equality and provide opportunities for groups that would otherwise endure continuing disadvantage.

Australia is the 12th largest ICT market globally and the fifth largest in the Asia-Pacific. The use and development of ICT underpins all industry innovation and sits at the heart of modern business and modern government. More than ever we need an ICT-literate workforce, and we cannot afford to neglect to train and employ women in these jobs. We know that in Australia men outnumber women significantly in information technology professions. In 2009, for example, men represented 78.6 per cent of IT graduates, and women, 21.4 per cent. Yet the median salary reported for both male and female IT graduates was the same, indicating opportunities for equal pay in this occupation.

Early ideas that women were not attracted to mastering IT skills and considered many of these occupations ‘boring’—I cannot believe this myself—have been overturned for generation X and generation Y, in part owing to the fascinating social networking sites that are available and the social dimension of working within the technology field. Perhaps surprisingly, the fastest growing segment using social networking, the application of new technologies, is women between the ages of 55 and 65 years. So do not be fooled into thinking this is some kind of youth focus. Women of all generations are interested in the social application of technology.

Government 2.0 represents, above all, engagement and interaction—it relates to the interactive web as opposed to the transfer of information that we have seen in traditional form onto the web. This is a transformation of the way government delivers services to, and engages with, its citizens. It represents two-way communication between government and the community, politicians and their constituents, and will change the way we do democracy in Australia.

With fewer women than men in the parliament—but a growing number—it has sometimes been difficult for women’s concerns to be given equal weight. Government 2.0 should help women redress the imbalance—at least that is my sincere hope. The development of interactive sites of benefit to women specifically has educated increasingly more women in the benefits and necessity of ICT. One example is BCK Online, a personalised, interactive portal to meet the information needs of Australian women with breast cancer. I know that there is a growing group of women who find themselves completely fascinated by the tech. To the female geeks of Australia, I shout: thank you for you commitment to a very demanding sector but one that can only benefit from your presence.

The Canberra Day holiday, yesterday, coincided this year with International Women’s Day, and I will now turn my comments to sport. We had a Sport for Women Day planned as part of the Canberra Festival. The planned activities focused on encouraging improvement in fitness and participation in physical activity. Sport has provided some wonderful role models of achieving women, and I cannot resist mentioning the success of the Canberra Capitals basketball team in winning their 7th WNBL championship this weekend. There was the high-profile presence of Lauren Jackson, and I note that the ACT Chief Minister has committed to building a statue of her. As we have a history of recognising our sporting stars in football codes, so we will be doing with Lauren Jackson in basketball. I also offer my congratulations to Carrie Graf and all of the Canberra Capitals. The Capitals have been highly successful even in the absence of Lauren Jackson but I have no doubt that her presence spurred on the team spirit and Canberra’s enthusiasm for supporting this most successful women’s sporting team.

As with involvement in information and communications technology, sport provides a platform for women to develop their skills and confidence and their ability to operate in a team. International Women’s Day provides a glorious platform for the celebration of women’s achievements in both sport and ICT. I think we have wonderful examples in both. (Time expired)