Wednesday, 8 March 2023

 Sonja TERPSTRA (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (10:01): I also rise today to make a contribution on this International Women’s Day. Whilst it is a celebration of all things women – that is great – I also want to just raise the flip side, and I think I also did this last year. It is around this time of year that I know I and many of my female colleagues get invited to breakfasts that none of us can attend, because we have children and we need to get them off to school in the morning. These things are always organised at times that we can never get to or that we have to make childcare arrangements for, and not everyone has the benefit of having childcare arrangements. Sometimes people cannot afford it; sometimes people actually do not have family around them to be able to help them with the children. So it is great that we have these days, but we have got to make sure that these days do not become tokenistic and that we actually see real action. I spoke about the organisation of things at times that women cannot get to, but also more importantly in the workplace we have got to keep doing the work, keep our foot on the pedal and make sure that women are in places where there is real power. It is not enough just to be at the table; we have got to make sure that we are in those rooms where real power exists and we have the opportunity and the ability to be included – and not only included but making the decisions for women of all backgrounds, whether it is, as Ms Shing commented earlier, neurodiverse women, women with disability, women of colour. I just make this contribution on International Women’s Day to remind us that we have got more work to do.