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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Second Session (51-2)
2008-03-05 Daily Xml
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INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY

Ms BEDFORD (Florey) (15:25): This week we again celebrate International Women's Day, which this year's falls on Saturday. This morning, on Kaurna land, along with many of my current and past colleagues from both houses and from the federal parliament and in the presence of His Excellency the Governor Kevin Scarce and Mrs Liz Scarce, I attended the UNIFEM breakfast.

UNIFEM is the United Nations development fund for women. It provides financial and technical assistance to innovative programs and strategies that promote women's human rights, political participation and economic security in more than 100 countries. UNIFEM Australia is a voluntary organisation that supports UNIFEM's work through raising public awareness in gender and development issues, engaging governments and raising funds for selected UNIFEM projects. To the strains of I am Woman, with 1,950 women of all ages (and it was great to see groups from schools there today), women from all sorts of organisations were together for a great event. I congratulate all those involved in the organisation of the function.

Along with another similarly large crowd, I will return to the Adelaide Convention Centre on Friday for the International Women's Day lunch, where many of our women will be recognised with awards for their work in the community. I often have the opportunity to recognise women's achievements in sport, and I particularly support callisthenics throughout Australia, a sport where participation levels are probably second only to netball.

When speaking of great achievements in sport, women have been breaking records for years. Karen Rolton, South Australia's team captain, was only 18 runs short of 4,000 runs in the women's national cricket league in November last year, having already achieved this historic milestone in one-day internationals, playing in three World Cups in which Australia was victorious in two. Karen follows in the steps of many fine women cricketers, such as Victorian Betty Wilson, who recently celebrated her 86th birthday. She was the youngest in the 1948 test team in England and scored 111—the first woman to score a ton against the old enemy. She was a great role model, as Karen is now. It is true to say that sporting identities are looked up to by the community, and that is why it is so important for sporting codes to adopt best practice and take a leading role in important issues.

The AFL is to be commended on its Respect and Responsibility program, providing mentoring and advice to young footballers on a range of situations they may face during their career. A new DVD outlines how excessive drinking can lead to situations where footballers may find themselves involved in behaviour that can lead to very serious consequences. Their behaviour towards women and each other can sometimes become violent, and there is a large body of research and evidence explaining how and why this happens. Of course, it is the few who bring the many into disrepute. More importantly, however, it is how this issue is spoken about and reacted to that will see this behaviour named and eliminated.

As the Reverend Peter McDonald said in his opinion piece in The Advertiser last week commenting on player behaviour, or the behaviour of anyone involved in family violence, it does not make someone a man hater, myopic or unlucky in attracting the attention of sportsmen. It makes us concerned about the effects of irresponsible behaviour. It is a woman's basic human right to be safe, and saying no to anything should never lead to violence. Reverend McDonald rightly points out that advertising creates demagogues of sportsmen and stereotypes of women as objects of desire, inviting men to believe that they should have a higher sense of entitlement when dealing with women.

Motivated by their sense of entitlement, it is men in their intimate relationships who are perpetrators of sexual violence. This sense of entitlement can be an obstacle to following the honourable values and intentions most men have. The challenge is to move from being unrestrained to being responsible for their actions and their consequences. Building good relationships is important in all facets of our lives. Reverend McDonald talks of the three starting points: communication, the ability to listen and understand; respect, the ability to disagree without putting someone down; and empathy, the ability to walk in the shoes of others.

The media can play a great role in exposing the discourse that positions and excuses acts of violence by conflating them with issues of gender attraction because it is a way to obscure the complex questions of power relations and underlying patriarchal structures. What better example of this than the silence that surrounds domestic and family violence? With stats like one in 10 men and one in three women experiencing violence or sexual assault, we continue to have a very real problem. When any of us see it, we must know how to take action

Each of us must agitate to raise the profile of this issue, which must have touched each of our families, and make change, supporting victims and perpetrators to improve their situation and, in doing so, protect their quality of life and that of the children, who are witnesses and victims of adult behaviour and the inaction that impedes long overdue change. May this International Women's Day see us—mothers, sisters, daughters and aunts—using our influence and being empowered to make change.

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