Every year, without fail, it happens.
International Women’s Day rolls around and somewhere, somehow, a man decides that what the day really needs is… him.
Sometimes it is a comment under a social media post. Sometimes it is a speech. Sometimes it is a carefully positioned seat on a panel supposedly about women’s equality.
This year’s theme is about Balancing the Scales by forcibly delivering equality. Which makes the reflex to insert oneself into the conversation all the more revealing.
Sometimes it is in a very small way.
Earlier this week there was a story about a new website designed to help businesses find and support female-owned companies. The idea is simple: if an organisation wants to address gender imbalance in procurement or partnerships, here is a tool that helps them do it.
Within minutes came the predictable comment: what would happen if someone spent $190,000 on a directory for male-owned businesses?
The honest answer, which I resisted typing, is that they would complain bitterly about the lack of funding.
Instead, the comment was quietly deleted and everyone moved on. Because International Women’s Day is not supposed to be a debate about whether women deserve attention for one day a year.
And sometimes the example is so big you can’t turn away, like watching a train crash.
An event listing circulated for a University of New England International Women’s Day panel and morning tea, being held at 10am this morning, Friday March 6. Three interesting and inspiring female academics were listed as speakers. And then, inexplicably, there was Armidale Regional Council Mayor Sam Coupland.
Not one of the six extraordinary female mayors we have within cooee of Armidale. Not Margot Davis, Kate Dight, Colleen Fuller, Tiff Galvin, Bronwyn Pearson, or the formidable Susannah Pearse.
Instead, a man will speak on the opportunities for women and girls.
I sent a polite email to UNE Events asking why. No response came back. Shocked, I tell you.
Perhaps it was a busy week. Perhaps the question was uncomfortable. Perhaps the answer is simply that when organisers think “local government voice”, they still default to the man.
Perhaps the question I should have been asking is to Sam Coupland: why did you accept the invitation?
He doesn’t answer my emails on any topic, so I didn’t bother, plus I know it’s a dangerous place to get between Sam Coupland and a microphone.
Ironically, the event listing promised that “by bringing together voices from law, media, local government, and First Nations leadership, we’re creating space for authentic conversation about what real, systemic change looks like”.
I sincerely doubt today’s event will include any ‘authentic conversation’ about the panel line up.
The problem with men inserting themselves into International Women’s Day is not that men cannot support gender equality. Of course they can.
The problem is that too many men still assume their role in that support must be visible, vocal, and on the stage.
Systemic change does not happen because men explain equality. Equality is not some gift that they ‘grant’ us, and then tell us all about it and how grateful we should be.
It happens when women are given the space, the microphone and the authority to speak for themselves.
The solution is not complicated.
If the day is about women’s voices, put women on the stage. If the discussion is about women’s leadership, invite women leaders.
Had that approach been applied here, the result would have been obvious. Even if they wanted to make the event about Armidale specifically, to justify the exclusion of our six female mayors and a few female GMs of local councils who could also have given a local government perspective, there was still a bunch of better choices.
Armidale is blessed with a remarkable number of accomplished female leaders, from other members of council to a plethora of CEOs and thought leaders. Any one of them could have contributed insight, experience and authority to a conversation about equality for women and girls.
The broader New England is basically run entirely by strong country women who keep everything going while men take the credit. When a town like Uralla or Bingara or Guyra becomes a boom town, it’s because a woman got on with it.
Representation is not just symbolic. The people we see speaking publicly shape how we understand leadership and whose voices we expect to hear.
When girls see women leading discussions about equality, it reinforces the message that their perspectives matter. When those conversations are still moderated or explained by men, the signal is… nothing has changed. And women keep doing the work, while men take the credit.
It is also not lost on me that the University of New England, an organisation whose previous VC racially vilified a young girl making the same point about girls seeing women like them on the stage, at an IWD event, would be the organisation to make this error. The sexism in UNE is well entrenched, has been for a long time.
Aside from the Chancellor, in itself a symbolic role, I am not aware of a single woman in the academic leadership above Dean or Head of School, and only four of thirteen members of the UNE Council, including the Chancellor, are female. There are a lot of female executive leaders at UNE… amongst the non-academic staff.
Nothing explains why Coupland accepted the invitation. Nor does it make it acceptable for two of Armidale’s largest employers and important institutions to fail on gender quality so frequently and publicly.
International Women’s Day exists because women have historically been sidelined, dismissed, belittled, left out.
The solution is simple. On the one day dedicated to women’s voices, let women have the microphone.
And gents? If you should find yourself to be so moved to actually do something about equality that’s great. But at a minimum, on this one day, just step aside and listen.
Dr RK (Kath) Crosby is the CEO of research and strategy company KORE CSR, former strategist for the Australian Democrats, and holds a PhD in political behaviour. She is also a well known migraine and health advocate, and the Publisher of New England Times and North Coast Times.
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