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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2015-06-16 Daily Xml
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Women's International League for Peace and Freedom

The Hon. S.W. KEY (Ashford) (15:21): In 2015 the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) celebrated its 100th anniversary. I know you are aware of this, Deputy Speaker, because you and I had the opportunity to attend the 100-year anniversary conference that followed the congress this year in The Hague. I understand that there were at least 20 people from Australia at the conference which was entitled 'Women's Power to Stop War'.

In 1915 at the first conference, over 1,300 women from a diversity of cultures and languages came together at The Hague during World War I to study and make known how to eliminate the root causes of the war—very admirable aims, I would say. They had originally organised the gathering to strategise on universal suffrage in Berlin but found that the beginning of World War I put an end to that. I understand that in 1915 at the international conference Muriel Matters was the only Australian in attendance, and the image of Muriel Matters was there again in the 2015 conference.

WILPF has worked for a long time for peace. Jane Addams, for example, WILPF's first international president, was personally received by US President Woodrow Wilson after the congress. He hailed the ideas she brought from The Hague and the conference and adopted nine of them as part of the 14 points for the World War I peace negotiations. Ms Addams received a Nobel Prize for her work in peace. Emily Greene Balch, another WILPF activist and international secretary, was the second WILPF member to receive a Nobel Peace Prize in 1946.

I have been looking at the Nobel Peace Prize, because one of the exciting things about this conference is that there were women Nobel Laureates at the conference, and I thought it was very interesting because you do not hear a lot about women Nobel Laureates. I think most of us know about Marie Curie who was the first woman in 1903 to receive a Nobel Prize and also again in 1911. We were very blessed to have Leymah Gbowee from Liberia, who was awarded a Nobel Prize in 2011. Her citation says, 'for…non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women's rights to full participation in peace-building work'.

We also had Shirin Ebadi from Iran who, in 1997, was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts for democracy and human rights, focusing especially on the struggle for the rights of women and children. Then we go on to find out that there are a number of other campaigns that the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom have been involved in, and I understand that in 2014 the organisation itself was awarded a peace prize because of the work it had done over the years.

You look at the statistics and I must say that they are a bit hard to work out. My understanding is that in 2014 there were 863 Nobel Prizes and Nobel Memorial Prizes awarded and 22 organisations acknowledged, including WILPF, as I just said, as well as organisations like the Red Cross. However, out of that at least 863 only 44 women were actually awarded those prizes, and it is a bit disappointing to see that those numbers are still fairly miserable in relation to men. Looking up the sorts of prizes that have been awarded, women have certainly done well in the science area but they were also recognised for their actual contribution to peace.

In South Australia we have a very active Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and I remember very clearly that they were involved in a number of campaigns to try to get people to think about what peace means and how we can achieve it.

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