The Conversation: International Women's Day.
Today is all about celebrating the achievements of women as we mark International Women’s Day. But it is also a day where we acknowledge the work that remains to be done to achieve gender equality.
We need only look to the last few weeks for evidence of this.
There's plenty still to be achieved. New research, for instance, shows that flexible work arrangements designed to help people achieve a better work-life balance can actually be damaging to a woman’s career. One of the ways to change that, according to The University of Melbourne's Leah Ruppanner and Jordy Meekes is to encourage more men to take up flexible work arrangements.
Jordy Meekes also outlines research that provides a partial explanation as to why women are less likely to be employed than men. They are more choosy about their hours and commuting times. Until men shoulder a greater share of the work at home, it's easy to understand why.
Universities also missed a huge opportunity to improve the gender balance in 2020. As Victoria University, Melbourne Australia's Marcia Devlin writes, Australian university leaders are still nearly three times more likely to be a man than a woman, and professors are nearly twice as likely to be male.
And we still need to correct decades — centuries even — of gender bias in medicine and medical research. Women’s health has too often been considered a niche area — even though it involves roughly 50% of the world’s population.
Finally, if our parliament is full of men who ignore, belittle and disrespect women, and women who enable these men, it is because we, the voters, have put them there. But we can also vote them out, writes Michelle Arrow.
With everything that's going on it's ok to be angry. Rage is politically potent, and useful. But to make the most of it, according to Macquarie University's Michelle Arrow we need not only to get angry — we need to get organised.
