INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY

Here is the speech I gave at The Arts Centre on the Gold Coast sponsored by Women at Work to celebrate the 100th Anniversary of International Women's Day:

I’m very proud to be here today on the 100^th anniversary of International women’s day…It was women working together that brought about change in labour laws, got us the vote and supposedly, equal pay. And while we have come a long way, baby….we still have a long way to go.

But it’s very heartening here in Australia to know we have a female Governor General, a Prime Minister, State Premiers like the impressive Anna Bligh, and a rising percentage of judicial and state and federal female parliamentary representatives including many young women.

There is often a lot of speculation in the media about women in the work force, about glass ceilings, the competitiveness and bitchiness between women. I read reports of girls bullying other little girls in the playground, the cruelty of teenage girls towards one another on social networks that have led to suicides. 

But you know…I do not want to believe that this is the norm. That this is how it is now. So different to how I grew up. I think if women can support each other, unify and harness the strengths we have, then we are more than a force to be reckoned with . . . we will be more and more the driving energy behind making this world a better place.

Yes its great to get more women into boardrooms, but what we need are more women CEOs, the people making the decisions in how we affect change not only within a company and how it does business, how it treats its employees but how we can make the world healthier, happier and greener and yes, still make a profit. We do have some good female CEOs, some have been less than illustrious. We just need to have more of us in the top job.

But for a lot of women achieving the coveted executive position comes at too great a cost…and there’s nothing wrong with stepping away and making another choice. The money, the position and the power may not be worth the sacrifice of lost time with young children, the stress on a marriage and ones health. 

Where the biggest problems lies, I think is with the issue of child rearing. Women still do the bulk of it. Six months maternity leave and then the kids are in child care. And if a child is sick and has to stay at home it is most often the mother who has to take the day off work.  In the new economy women, like men, are expected to be contactable 24/7 and work very long hours. What happened to overtime? Where do you have time for kids? Women's careers get interrupted and they never really catch up. The set up for the economy is not conducive to child rearing at all. 

I grew up in an era where women still beat themselves up for not “having it all”. Being the perfect mum, wife, employee. And after a day working in the office or at home, we are expected to be sex kittens at night!

 And yet when I look back I realise it was the women role models in my life that have helped me become the woman I am today. Inspiring, talented, professional women.  And equally I look back with some horror at how things were in the days of Mad Men…yes it was like that. I worked in journalism, advertising and television  and that’s how it was. In the 1960s and also, I have to say in the 1980s. And then in the 1990s I come into the publishing world to find…surprise…that while the creative, nurturing, practical people are women, the power rests with men. 

I grew up an only child, the accidental death of my father and baby brother left my mother and I clinging to each other in a very stormy sea. We lived in a remote and magical place, Pittwater in Sydney, a boat ride to the nearest neighbour. There were no other children around except weekenders occasionally, so I made my own company. And with a dearth of books, a difficult to access library, no TV of course, the radio serials were the only entertainment in the home, so I made up stories to entertain myself. I had friends at school, but didn’t have that special after hours time to really bond with girlfriends. 

My mother, had been “just a housewife”, but was a woman with great abilities but no opportunity to develop them, was now thrust into the position of breadwinner.  What an inspiring example she set for me by launching herself into the male world of film and television to become our first female commercial TV/film director. In those days, like me, one learned on the job, scrambled up the ladder as best one could but always, always, penalised in many ways, simply by being a woman.

So it wasn’t until I started my first job . . . as a cadet on the Australian Womens Weekly, that my life changed. 

I wanted to be a writer but you don’t leave school and become a novelist…so my uncle, an ABC foreign correspondent, marched me into the Packer Kingdom and I got a job as a copy girl..running messages, making cups of tea, and exploring this strange and wonderful world of newspapers and magazines. Until the day came when I was awarded a coveted cadetship and began my training. 

The women who ran The Weekly were like exotic creatures to me, colourful, creative and very professional. Sir Frank, Clyde and Kerry Packer, did not mess with The Weekly which was very tightly run by a group of women led by legendary Editor Esme Fenston.

For the first time in my life I had girlfriends, and a group of women who mentored and mothered us. I am still friends with most of the those girls and we recently shared reminiscences of the effect those women had on us. I not only honed my professional skills as a writer and journalist but we were taught social skills. We were taught  respect and politeness and integrity when interviewing and writing about people. We were gently guided in choices we made in clothing, boyfriends, travel and career opportunities. And for the first time I had a social network of friends. Female friends with whom I socialised and we shared and we supported each other. And still do. There was no…. “be my friend and write on my wall or tweet me and never meet”. These were young women with whom I shared cups of tea, a glass of wine, a hug, and dreams with. And still do. 

Women’s friendships are a sometimes fragile, volatile, with a wonderful ephemeral thread that binds us together. We have a language, an empathy that supports, soothes, heals and restores the soul with honesty, laughter and generosity. Being with a good female friend to share triumphs and pain is very theraputic.

When I was a young woman it was an era when you left Australia to travel and conquor the world. Until you met a nice man, married and had babies. And then you gave up your ambitions to help him fulfill his…

But for me it was hard to put aside the desire to fulfill ones destiny. . . I still had the dream to write books one day.

And so it was with the support and encouragement and friendship of women that saw me take the plunge and leave a comfortable marriage to pursue that dream. I looked at some of my women friends locked in their golden cages of indulged lifestyle with wealthy husbands, home help, beautiful clothes and fabulous holidays but never truly able to be themselves, do what they wished or explore who they really were. And knew it was not for me.

Women can be judgemental, critical, scathing, bitchy, cruelly funny towards one another. Who has not gossiped about another woman….celebrity, workmate, or neighbour or relative, and not enjoyed it? But what I have learned is -  scratch beneath the make-up, reach out, confide, share and be honest with another woman and you find she is just like you and could be a friend for life. She will be there for you, no matter what. A true friend you can call upon day or night for anything and know she’ll do the same for you.

I moved alone, to Byron Bay with hardly any money but the knowledge my kids were at university, leading their own lives but were supportive of my chasing a dream. I felt I had jumped off a cliff, flown from that golden cage into ….who knew what. But what sustained me were the bonds with other women I met there who had done the same thing. Some by choice, some by circumstance, but we were there for each other. 

And so I finished my first book at one of the low ebbs in my life, but the feeling of satisfaction and achievement was immense. And, so I launched myself into the world of publishing.

And there are still battles to be won in the world of publishing for women.

Especially for female authors. I thought it was just me. I had to suffer the slings and arrows fired by journalists who all wanted to be doing what I was doing. There was the stigma of being marketed as a fluffy lightweight romance writer because I was blonde and had worked on TV as a presenter. If only they knew the drudgery of breakfast television. Rising at 3am to go to work…and do you know I used to squeeze fresh orange juice for my sleeping second husband AND iron his shirt before falling out the door to go on TV! Then I’d film, edit, research and produce segments for the next days show, fall into bed at 10pm. To rise again at 3am and do it all again. I did this madness for 8 tough years, before taking the plunge to see if could do what I always wanted to do. But to the media I was marketed, promoted and written about as an ageing, blonde, ex-TV host who was approaching forty and over the hill so had decided to dash off a little book.


It is still a traumatic, wearying, difficult, challenging, mysterious process to write a novel. And the fact this year I will have produced 20 bestselling books in 20 years, each selling more than the last, is scarcely acknowledged.

Female authors who wish to be taken seriously use pen names, or their initials, so the book appears to have been written by a man. Male authors are reviewed more than female authors. And it is their BOOK which is reviewed, not how old they are, what they are wearing, where they live and how much make up and jewellery they are wearing. Male authors receive more awards and accolades than female authors. A fact. Not necessarily because they are more deserved than female authors. Male authors are simply taken seriously because they are men. I’d like to shoot whoever penned the phrase “chick lit.”  Look at Bryce Courtenay, Matthew Reilly, James Patterson…oh the list  is endless, but one could say they write “dick lit” …popular commercial, entertaining reads. But they are treated with a lot more respect than female authors who are lumped in the category of beach reads and airport fiction.

I can only say to those who dismiss what I do is that they have obviously never read my books. I write about the environment, about Vietnam veterans, about family relationships, heritage and belonging, Aboriginal culture, Australian identity. And as you will discover in my next book – women’s friendships. I have three heroines, one in her eighties, one in her forties and a 19 year old who all meet under different circumstances in a very unusual place…a small town in the opal fields.  It’s been rewarding researching this book. Because it’s also about ageing…. And isn’t that a whole other can of worms! I’ll talk about that another day.

But in spite of all that’s happened to me, the choices I’ve made for better or for worse, the successes and the failures, I wouldn’t change a thing. What happens to us, how we deal with all these events makes us the person we are. I had to learn to not only understand myself, but to like myself, trust myself and be prepared to go it alone. 

I am in awe of what women achieve under all manner of circumstances. 

I have loved sharing my journey with the men in my life, my children and my family. But as they all go their own ways, as they should, and do, what keeps me joyful, keeps me stimulated, keeps me going….is the friendship of women. The friendship of women like you.

Thank you.