Mehreen Faruqi (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today Diversity Council Australia released groundbreaking research on the experiences of culturally and racially marginalised women in leadership, and it contains disturbing findings. Code-switching and white-adjusting to adapt their behaviour closer to whiteness are a sad reality for culturally and racially marginalised women.

Eighty-three per cent of women reported experiencing pressure to act, look and sound like existing leaders—who are often white men. Seventy-five per cent of women reported that others assumed they worked in a lower status job and treated them as such. Eighty-five per cent of women felt that they had to work twice as hard to get the same treatment. Sixty-one per cent of women reported experiencing racism at work in the past two years, while 48 per cent experienced sexism at work over the same period. I can relate to many of these intersectional experiences. When racism and sexism intersect it is visceral, and it is damaging. Yet it is denied and ignored, and women of colour keep being marginalised in workplaces. Australia has a blind spot where racism is concerned.

The Diversity Council notes that for many in Australia, particularly those experiencing racism, the current language of 'culturally and linguistically diverse' is outdated and problematic. The council found that many women prefer the term CARM—culturally and racially marginalised—over CALD as it is more accurately capturing their experiences.

Terms like CALD have had their day. They bunch together people whose experiences are very different under the same label. They might sound nice but can make invisible the people who face racism on a daily basis and the harm that it causes. To have a meaningful conversation about building an antiracist Australia, we have to tell it like it is: race and racism are used to marginalise people, and its impacts on women are compounded. This has to change.