BPW Australia takes national action for women's equality – at work, on boards, in leadership. We take this mantra seriously – it is who we are and what we do.   

Women on Boards UK CEO Fiona Hathorn explains the 5 characteristics good board members need (that you won't find on the job specs). ​Non-executive board members need to understand regulatory requirements, keep companies accountable and provide sound strategic counsel. However, whereas success used to be defined by what you knew, how you work is becoming equally important.

Lisa Carlin is a specialist in organisational development. She advises that, although general strategic skills, business acumen and interpersonal skills are important, to stand out as a Board member you also need to highlight your specific specialisation and depth of knowledge in the field.

Australia is one of only three countries to reach 30% of women on boards on its top 200 listed companies without gender quotas for boards. The AICD and Australian Gender Equality Council Australia have produced a report, Towards Board Gender Parity, that details how Australia reached this milestone. 

Data from the 2021 HILDA survey confirms a fact BPW researched in 2004: women still aren’t having the number of children they say they want.

In high-income countries, there has been a long-term downward trend in the fertility rate. In 2019, Australia hit a record-low of 1.66 babies per woman.  More people are not having children, either by choice or through circumstance. About a quarter of Australian women in their reproductive years are likely to never have children.  The media generally reports this as a women's issue – more women are completing tertiary education and building careers.  But it isn’t just about the women and their choices.

BPW Adelaide launched the ThinkFertility project in 2005 and the website went live in 2007.  Our research revealed two reasons for delayed family formation that were surprisingly  common: young men and women didn’t realise their fertility diminished rapidly in their 30s, and women were struggling to find a partner who was “ready” to start a family.  The website was designed to address the knowledge gap, but it’s hard to fix the men in their 30s and 40s who say they want children – but not yet.

There was, and still is, too much hope in and reliance on reproductive technology: IVF can’t fix old eggs, or old sperm for that matter.

An election is just around the corner. Our young members have penned an open letter calling on all current and aspiring Federal Politicians to act to end gender-based violence.

With 83.7% of young people enrolled to vote, we are a pretty sizeable voting block but we need people of all ages to sign on and support us too! The open letter highlights the need to:

•              Prevent violence from happening in the first place

•              Support those experiencing all forms of gender-based violence (GBV)

•              Give hope for a real housing future for young people with safe, affordable and accessible homes for everyone

•              Support First Nations led justice

•              Fast-track gender equality at home and away

•              Urgently act on the climate crisis.

The Centre for Future Work, hosted by The Australia Institute thinktank, is focussing in 2021 on overwork among Australians, including excessive overtime that is often unpaid. The Centre’s latest report, Working from Home or Living at Work, marks the 13^th annual Go Home on Time Day – an initiative established by the CFW.

The report considers whether working from home will become the 'new normal', even after the acute phase of the pandemic passes, and what new pressures on working hours, work-life balance and unpaid overtime are unleashed by this phenomenon.

Australians work on average over 6 hours of unpaid overtime each week, amounting to 319 hours of unpaid overtime per year per worker averaged across all forms of employment. Based on a standard 38-hour workweek, this is equivalent to more than 8 weeks of unpaid work per worker per year. Extrapolated across Australia’s workforce, this implies total unpaid overtime of 3.3 billion hours per year.

And this is before the burden of women's unpaid work at home is added to the GDP.

Now in its 13^th year, Go Home on Time Day on Wednesday 17 November 2021 is a great way for employees to remind ourselves that life shouldn't revolve around work alone. Conceived by The Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work in 2009, the day is a light-hearted way to start necessary conversations in our workplaces about work/life balance, the value of time, and time theft.

Based on a national survey, the average employee in Australia loses 5.3 hours per week to unpaid overtime – or 273 hours per year. Australians worked 2.9 billion hours of unpaid overtime in 2020, worth almost $100 billion per year. That’s a windfall for employers. But it hurts family budgets, reduces consumer spending, and damages the economy. Worst of all, it makes it even harder to achieve a healthy work/life balance.

As COVID-19 affected working patterns last year, even more hours were worked without pay than in 2019 – and more hours, even paid ones, were worked outside of normal working hours. On Go Home On Time Day this Wednesday, protect yourself against time theft: go home, exercise, cook a healthy meal, spend time with your family or your friends.

Check the unpaid overtime calculator here. And if you’re an employer, use it to check how much unpaid time you’re donating to your business, and how much your time is really worth.  Pay yourself properly! You’re worth it.

Australian women have long been under-represented in the national parliament. Although our country was the first in the world to give women the right to stand for election [in South Australia], we currently rank 56^th in the world for female representation, just behind Uzbekistan, Zimbabwe, Germany and Suriname. By comparison, New Zealand is 6^th.

So why, in 2021, do we have a situation where less than one-third of MPs in the House of Representatives are women?

Researchers from Griffith University investigated whether the low numbers were due to discrimination of female candidates by voters or political parties. They found that, while Australian voters used to preference men over women at the polls, they don’t tend to anymore. Political parties, on the other hand, do.

Parties can impede women being elected by simply not putting them forward as candidates or by preselecting them to stand for unsafe or marginal seats. So they can tick the women's box and maybe meet a quota, but they’re not making a genuine attempt to create real change.

The United Nations Secretary-General warns humanity faces a stark and urgent choice: a breakdown or a breakthrough. His report Our Common Agenda advocates for action to accelerate the implementation of existing agreements, including the Sustainable Development Goals.

Chapter 2 explains social protection systems are critical to achieving the SDGs, and that humanity’s greatest resource is our own collective capacity, half of which has historically been constrained because of gender discrimination. No  meaningful social contract is possible without the active and equal participation of women and girls. Women’s equal leadership, economic inclusion, and gender-balanced decision-making are simply better for everyone, men and women alike.

The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the Global Acceleration Plan for Gender Equality point the way. I urge Member States and other stakeholders to consider five related and transformative measures:

(a) the full realisation of equal rights

(b) measures to promote gender parity, including quotas

(c) facilitating women’s economic inclusion, including investment in the care economy and equal pay

(d) greater inclusion of the voices of younger women and

(e) an emergency response plan to accelerate the eradication of violence against women and girls.

In 2011, the United Nations General Assembly declared 11 October as the International Day of the Girl Child, to recognise girls’ rights and the unique challenges girls face around the world. The International Day of the Girl Child focuses attention on the need to address the challenges girls face and to promote girls’ empowerment and the fulfilment of their human rights.

"Australia falls behind on aspects of transparency and accountability for corrective action" . One of the reasons why Australia was ranked last against 6 countries in recent global study on gender pay gap reporting. BPW Australia was one of the 80 participants across 6 countries for the study.
Read the research here Gender Pay Gap Global Study 

As the world learns to live with COVID, to emerge from the current crisis, and to “build back better”, UN Women’s new “Feminist plan” provides a visionary but practical roadmap for putting gender equality, social justice and sustainability at the centre of the recovery and transformation.

Learning from past mistakes, “Beyond COVID: A Feminist Plan for Sustainability and Social Justice” presents a vision to tackle intersecting jobs, care and climate crises.

COVID has revealed and worsened inequalities and is a reminder of just how unsustainable and fragile the world’s economies and democracies are. The crisis also provides a warning about what is rapidly coming down the track on climate change and environmental degradation. This has created both a need and an opening to rethink economic and social policies and re-evaluate what needs to be prioritised.

The plan maps the ambitious and transformative policies – on livelihoods, care, and the environment – that are needed to build a more equal and sustainable future. To get there, it calls for context-specific policy pathways, tailored political strategies, and financing. The plan identifies key levers that can create change and the actors at global, national, and local levels that need to take action to move towards this vision.