REBECCA WHITE, ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGEING:
This International Women's Day I'm calling on people to nominate a woman for an Australia Day Award. What we have every year are fabulous women doing extraordinary things across our community. That might be helping in the canteen at the footy club, supporting a small business, it could be working in our schools or working in our hospitals, but we're not nominating them for recognition. And this is a problem because here in Tasmania this year when we announced our Australia Day Awards, just three were women out of the 21 recipients. And this is a trend we're seeing across the country. This year just 27 per cent of recipients were women for Australia Day Honours. And there is no good reason for that because women are just as capable and are doing just as many extraordinary things as men, and this is not just about recognising women who are doing amazing things like becoming an astronaut. It's about recognising women who are doing small things every day to make our community a stronger and better place. So I'm calling on everybody this International Women's Day to jump online to gg.gov.au and nominate a woman for an Australia Day Award. It's a really easy process and it could really change the life of a woman who is recognised.
And to that end, I'm joined today by Jackie Brown, who's a member of our community who was recognised in the Australia Day Honours Awards in previous rounds, and is an example of somebody who's worked incredibly hard in our community for decades now, supporting young students as they're learning about agriculture and encouraging them to pursue a career and following their passion, and she does it incredibly well, and I'm very proud to be able to introduce her to you so she can share her story and also share how it helped to open more doors for her once she was recognised.
JACKIE BROWN, AUSTRALIA DAYS HONOURS AWARD RECEIPIENT: Opening doors is what the award did for me. It was not only just personally I felt so proud and honoured and it was marvellous, but the amount of people and the range of people that I was able to meet and speak with, that really broadened my learning experience and it meant that I met so many other men and women that I could introduce to my students as visible role models, particularly the women. One of my platforms was that with agriculture being such a male-dominated industry, we needed more women to have a look at what the opportunities were in agriculture and to use the women who had been honoured as examples and role models of what you could achieve or opportunities that were available, that was great.
I think one of the things I'm most proud of is that as I went towards retirement, there were classes of agriculture students that were absolutely 50-50 girls and boys. We've got five fabulous female agriculture teachers in the state and three agronomists, as well as all those other young women that are participating in some aspects of rural industry. You’re never too old to learn and it gave me a platform to speak, to broaden my impact. It gave me contacts, networks. It was just fabulous. So it's really important. I was horrified when I looked at the statistics that Rebecca's been talking about. I can't imagine why I never noticed before that women were so poorly represented.
JOURNALIST: I mean, you did say there's no real good reason why the ratio is so far off. Is there anything that you might be able to lean towards? Are people just underestimating women?
WHITE: That's a really great question. I mean, there's no explanation for why women aren't better represented in the awards system. But what we see through the data is that fewer women are nominated and that's where the problem starts. We see through the data that 70 per cent of men nominate another man but also 30 per cent are women nominate a man for an award. So what I'm calling on people to do today on International Women's Day is to think about a woman in their life or in their community and nominate them because there are great women doing great things and for some reason we're not recognising that.
JOURNALIST: And what would that mean to you to see these great women getting nominated? How would that feel to you?
WHITE: There are lots of people doing things very quietly just helping our community become stronger and better and it's so nice to be able to recognise them because it gives them confidence to keep doing that but also rewards them for all of that effort. If we want people to continue to put their hands up or to continue to step forward or open doors for other people it's really vital that we recognise them and recognise them not only for their own endeavours but also the role models they can be for other young girls and women in our community. So it is transformative. It can really change lives. And it is about acknowledging that women and men are equal and we should see them equally represented in our award system.
JOURNALIST: You've come up through a rather male dominated field and you've had success and been rewarded for that. You noticed a pretty big change, 50-50 in these classes. What's that like compared to when you started?
BROWN: It's amazing. My first student that went to Burnie TAFE that was then to do agriculture after she'd left school was the only female student. I was the only female agriculture teacher when I started in Tasmania. And when we had the meetings of agriculture teachers now, half the teachers are female. They're certainly much better represented in that sort of 30-year span.
JOURNALIST: And what do you think has changed in that time?
BROWN: I think women have just been more visible. We've got some amazing Tasmanian women that have made huge steps forwards in agriculture as well as those women being recognised that are the women working on the farm and supporting their rural communities. So I think we need more of that. I really, like Rebecca, can't imagine why these women aren't recognised, in particular those women that do little things for decades that have a huge impact.