International Women’s Day @ St Hilda’s
By Clementine Dernelley
For International Women’s Day, I had the pleasure of attending St Hilda’s luncheon. This was for past and present students, as well as notable figures, to get together and talk about the importance of empowering the women in their life and highlighting the inequality we face, in hopes to reduce the effects this has. At St Hilda’s College, we have more female-identifying than male-ientifying students so it is even more important to empower them, especially whilst entering higher education and the workforce. International Women’s Day aims to recognise the achievements of women throughout the world, whilst noting how far we have to go, and that we aren’t an equal society – yet.
As a guest speaker, we had the pleasure of listening to Dr Danielle McMullen. Dr McMullen is not just inspiring due to her incredible work in her field, but also because of how hard she has worked to be where she is today, and how she is using her education to empower others. She is the president of the Australian Medical Association (AMA), and was the AMA NSW president during COVID; the AMA representative on the Strengthening Medicare Taskforce, being the leading voice in General Practice Reform; an incredible GP, with a clinical interest in women’s health, family planning and mental health; the director of the Australian Digital Health Agency, AND the Non-Executive Director of the Doctors Health Services Board. With this plethora of experience, she knows a lot about the disparity that women face in medical and educational sectors, and uses her power to share this knowledge and highlight some of the issues that need to be fixed.
Something that spoke to the soul of the women in the room is the disparity that women face when being educated through the lack of opportunities that they are given compared to men. It wasn’t only this unfortunately common reality that Dr McMullen brought light to. She also spoke on the issue that is women losing opportunities in their education due to not being able to attend days because of period-related issues. Given there aren’t programs to help women, they are forced to just miss out on things. Being a taboo subject, periods – and the issues around them – are not really spoken about, causing there to be a lack of women who seek help. These issues also extend to the workforce, where women will inevitably miss out on days due to period-related issues, therefore missing out on opportunities – continuing the inequality of opportunities as well as furthering the pay gap.
Extending this point that Dr McMullen was educating us about, she informed us on the disparity that women face in healthcare, in Australia and globally. Talking to everyone afterwards, I found that the majority of people, including women, in the room were shocked by the things that Dr McMullen was saying, particularly in relation to pregnancy and sexual health.
Most had no idea how dire the situation was. Currently, the Australian mortality rate is 4.8 deaths of women in births per 100,000, compared to other countries, including parts of Africa, where it can be over 1,000 per 100,000. With the work that is currently being done by parliament to backtrack the abortion laws that were approved in 2019, it is feared that this figure will rise in Australia. There is also an ongoing lack of knowledge around pregnancy and safe sex, due to restrictions given to GPs, causing those areas to be more unsafe, adding to why these things need to be taught.
However, despite this seemingly grave situation, there is also positive work being done. According to Dr McMullen, there is work in parliament and across the world to fix the inequality in access to healthcare between men and women. There is also work being done to allow women in medical training to get better access to paid maternity leave as well as women getting access to better maternity leave in medical sectors generally, and getting paid leave when going through menopause. The IUD and implanon medicare rebate has been heightened too!
Not only is there work being done to reduce the disparity across Australia and on the panels Dr McMullen works on, there is also positive work being done throughout college that was highlighted. This includes, but is not limited to, the access to sex education that is being delivered for all students as well as the Co-President model and having incredible people such as Dr McMullen come in to educate us.
I, and most women there, were not aware of these issues, and were not fully aware of the inequalities that we face in our day to day life as it is normal for us. This kind of inadvertent disregard to these topics due to the lack of education causes a continuation of inequality, hence why it is so important to be educated and raise awareness for such topics. International Women’s Day at Hilda’s was not just about celebrating the successes of the women in our community, but making sure they continue to enjoy an environment that is built for them to thrive.