Recording: International Women's Day 2023

THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  Hello, everyone.  There are people still filing in, so please come in, please come in, but we do want to start on time because we've got a number of online   well, I'll explain that in a minute, but we want to start on time, basically.  

So welcome, everybody.  Thank you very much for joining us today for International Women's Day at UTS.  We love putting on this day and this is a day for UTS.  This isn't something we advertise externally.  It's something where we invite the UTS community to come and share in International Women's Day.  

I'm Verity Firth, I'm the Pro Vice Chancellor of Social Justice & Inclusion here at UTS, and it's a real pleasure to welcome you all, both in person and online, to celebrate the successes of women in our community and also to acknowledge that there are challenges that we still face and that we all come together in solidarity to face those challenges and to change the way the world works.

I was particularly excited today when I saw the registrations for this event   850 people   it's great (applause).  So hello to everyone out there in the online universe as well.

Before we begin, I'd like to welcome Aunty Joan Bell, from the Metro Local Aboriginal Land Council, who'll open today's event and conduct a welcome to country.  Thank you very much.  (Applause).

AUNTY JOAN BELL:  Thank you.  Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guests.  Hi there.  Gee, you're looking at me as if I'm maybe     

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  How are you?  

AUNTY JOAN BELL:  I am tiptop, darling, run a mile.  And I'm here to do a welcome today for you guys   girls, ladies, we are women (applause).  

And I'd like to state that as an Elder, I support the people in government embracing the Uluru Statement from the Heart, voice, treaty and truth telling, and I'd also like to tell you that I sit on the board of the Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council and Metro LALC is the body for the protection and preservation of all Aboriginal culture and heritage within its boundaries.  That includes Sydney CBD and surrounding 24 local government areas, from Canterbury Bankstown to Cessnock and we are proud to acknowledge all respective traditional owners and custodians for this place now called Sydney.

My name is Joan Bell.  My family and friends know me simply as "Aunty Ding"   ding bell.  I am a proud Wiradjuri/Gadigal woman.  I am a mother of 10, a grandmother, a great grandmother, and a great great grandmother of 81 grandchildren (applause).  Thank you.  

My Gadigal ancestor was a local custodian who was taken to Parramatta's Native Institute and in 1845 was taken by Reverend John Cartwright to Pajong, Gundungurra country, near Gunning, New South Wales, to work.  

I was born at a little central west New South Wales Wiradjuri town called Peak Hill.  However, I spent my younger teenage years with my family and friends in Redfern, The Block.  I lived on The Block for 15 years and Waterloo, including Louis, Caroline, Eveleigh, Vine and Wellington streets.  That was my stomping grounds as a young tidda.

We honour our Gadigal Eora Elders and leaders, including Barangaroo, Pemulwuy and many others who fought the first boat people who landed in Sydney Cove in 1770 and 1778.  My respects to Gadigal Elders past and present.  We honour our matriarchs and patriarchs.  Because of them, we can.  My respects to all Elders and peoples from other First Nations here today.  

We listen to the old people, ancestors, and they show us the right path.  They protect us, they help us.  They take care of us.  This welcome to country is made in the spirit of peace and harmony with all peoples of modern Sydney.  Our aim as local custodians is to establish an atmosphere of mutual respect through the acknowledgment of our ancestors and the recognition of our right to declare our special place in the pre and post history of the Sydney region.  

Respect is taking responsibility for the past, the present and the future.  Evidence of our occupation, ownership and nationhood can be seen everywhere throughout our country.  Our signature is in the land, not just in our DNA.  Respect is in the fire that warms the camp and the possum skin cloak that shelters all.  Respect is in how a woman digs in the earth for yams.  Respect is in the rivers, the sea and the breeze quietly moving through country.  

The law of this land says that you must respect and honour all the people and all parts of the country.  With this welcome, we ask that you all will respect the law of the country.  Give honour, be respectful, be polite, be gentle and patient with all.  Respect is everything living and growing.  Please look after the land, sea and rivers.  Then the land, sea and rivers will look after you.

In conclusion, I say to you respect shapes us and lifts up the people.  Welcome to the land of my ancestors.  Welcome to my country.  Welcome.  Thank you.  (Applause).

THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  Thank you, Aunty Joan.  I really appreciate that welcome to country.  I'm sure we all do.  

I live on Gadigal land.  I've lived on Gadigal land for 35 years now.  My kids grew up completely   were born on Gadigal land and have grown up on Gadigal land and been educated on Gadigal land.  It's definitely my home.  I feel enormous respect for past, present and future Aboriginal Elders who've looked after this land so well and this, of course, is land that was never ceded.

So today we have a very special International Women's Day event.  We're delighted to be welcoming a keynote speaker Sarah Malik, who's a journalist, TV presenter and author   I'm doing my marketing bit here, Sarah   of the recently released book Desi Girl.  She also happens to be a UTS alumna, so we're very proud of her, and I'll be properly introducing her in a minute.

Following Sarah's keynote address, we're also going to welcome Associate Professor Eva Cheng and Farra Zaed for a chat about their different experiences here and stepping into their power.  

I also want to thank, because we were sponsored   this year's event we were sponsored by UTS Advancement and the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, so I want to give a warm welcome to our sponsors here today.  And before we begin, I'd also like to welcome to the stage our Vice Chancellor, Andrew Parfitt, and our Provost, Professor Vicki Chen, who are also going to say a few words.  Thank you.  (Applause).  

PROF. ANDREW PARFITT:  Thanks, Verity, and thank you also to Aunty Joan for the welcome to country.  Let me also acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation.  They own the land on which the campus stands   they always have, they always will   and pay respects to Elders past and present and also in this important year where we do have a conversation around the Uluru Statement from the Heart and how we will have truth telling, how we will arrive at treaty and how we will create a voice, all of those need to happen, how we can contribute as a community, particularly noting our Indigenous leaders.  We have the largest Indigenous professoriate in the country and they do amazing work working with the change that needs to happen and so we're so proud of supporting them in what they do as a university.

Unlike Aunty Joan, I have one daughter and no grandchildren, so I have a much smaller group, but I learn so much from my daughter every day.  She's an HR professional, really just starting out.  She told me the other day she just got her first promotion, which was kind of nice.  But she works in a very male dominated community and the insights that she has about making change and making an impact as a young woman as an HR professional are so important to how one shapes one's thinking about what change really looks like.

So I'm delighted to join you all here today for at least part of this afternoon's International Women's Day at UTS celebration.  We do have the opportunity to recognise the amazing achievements of women in the UTS community.  There's such a long list, I could be up here all afternoon, but I won't be, I promise, but just some indicators.  Our first and our latest ARC Laureate Fellows, Distinguished Professor Jie Lu and Larissa Behrendt, are both women who make incredible contributions to significant areas for the university and for our communities.  

If you look at recent award winners in the Order of Australia Awards, we have women leaders across the university working in health, in law, in IT, in social impact, a wide range of areas that have been recognised for what they do in the community.  Just our Law Faculty alone has four women distinguished professors, so we are very pleased that across UTS we actually develop a leadership that's inclusive, but also committed to excellence and committed to change and committed to the impact of their work.

Half of our student population is female.  That might not seem terribly ambitious, but for a University of Technology, where it's dominated by STEMM disciplines, that's quite remarkable as well.  94 of those young women are successful, 94%, so that's again a commitment that we make to ensuring that professions of the future in STEMM in particular, but more widely than that, do have a diverse and inclusive membership so that they can go on to change the very professions that they're learning in and they will go on to shape.

But we know there are challenges.  We do know that there are challenges getting women into STEMM disciplines and we've done some pretty bold things in that sort of area, but we still need to do more.  We know getting women into senior ranks in STEMM disciplines is a challenge and we don't always get it right.  We recently had a promotion round where very few women were in the senior promotions cycle.  That's not a long term issue, but we need to make a difference here and be serious about it.

We know the gender pay gap still exists and we know that discrimination and harassment and even sexual assault impact people across our community and the work that we do in areas like Respect. Now. Always in the university we hope will go on to make a difference.  

We have a way to go, but the vision is to be a public University of Technology that's recognised for global impact and we can only achieve that vision if we actively challenge the stereotypes we have, we fight bias, we broaden our perceptions and we tackle injustices where we see them.  That's why we recognise the importance of placing social change at the heart of what we do.  It's the foundation on which we educate the professionals of the future and that we tackle the research challenges that will impact on our society.

To do that, we have to focus, and we do focus, on a culture where the principles of diversity and inclusion are just part of our daily activities.  So we're passionate about building a current and future workforce that reflects equity and diversity at all levels, engaging right from primary school through to graduates who are looking at career development and seeking pathways for senior professional positions for women.  

But change can't happen without meaningful action and our mission is to create a more just and equal world starting with individual actions and university actions that inspire social change.  So today's event is just one part of that conversation.  It's great to see so many people here and online to engage in the conversation.  We will need to unpack today and today we'll start doing that intersectionality and the need for society to embrace equity on the journey to reach equality, to cross cultural divides and to address the barriers that will impede us in our challenges.

And on that note, I'm very pleased to introduce to say a few words Professor Vicki Chen, who is our Provost and Senior Vice President.  You see, you get two of us for the price of one today.  Before joining UTS, Vicki was Executive Dean of the Faculty of Engineering, Architecture and IT at the University of Queensland and before that Head of School of Chemical Engineering at UNSW.  She's a very strong advocate for women in STEMM and more broadly across the university and we're very lucky to have her on board as our most senior academic officer.  Would you please welcome Vicki Chen (applause).

PROF. VICKI CHEN:  Thank you, Andrew, and I also acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, upon whose lands we are privileged to be standing in here today and pay my respects to past, present and emerging Elders, acknowledging them as the traditional custodians of knowledge of these lands.

So thank you, Andrew.  What a pleasure it is for me to be here for my first International Women's Day at UTS.  I joined UTS as Provost in late November last year coming, as Andrew said, from the University of Queensland.  So in my short time at UTS I've been really impressed with the commitment to social justice and gender equity in action of the work of our fabulous Centre for Social Justice & inclusion and more broadly across the university.  And as the Vice Chancellor said, UTS is committed to addressing gender equity and taking on the intersectional approach that considers all diversities, which I am passionate about.

One of our commitments is the Athena Swan Program, a gender equity initiative that aims to remove key barriers and inequities in the STEMM disciplines, and UTS is one of the first pilot institutions to be awarded a bronze accreditation for the initiative in 2018 and we're continuing to work in this area, with a commitment to attracting and promoting women in STEMM.

Now, I want to reflect that I've been privileged by having people around me that supported me in pursuing a career in engineering and as an academic.  Initially my parents encouraged me to pursue engineering, to those who kept on asking me, "Have you thought about an academic career?"  That pathway seemed to be really off my radar and in my early professional career I was surrounded, and really unusually for engineering school, by a significant cohort of female academic leaders who were culturally diverse and who showed me that this was the normal, not the exception.  

Unfortunately, this is not the experience of many people working today, but working together, we can see maybe we can make that the norm.  So at UTS, we aspire to have a more diverse academic community and leadership emerging, particularly in STEMM, and coming back to looking at our students, the orientation in the first week of semester was just a few weeks ago and it was fantastic to see the new wave of students arriving on campus, full of excitement, male and female and other, and I could see the long lines of them at the sausage sizzles right out my office window, admiring, you know.  

I hope we are paving the way for these students so their opportunities are not restricted based on gender, socioeconomic status, cultural background, and other factors that make them who they are and I'm looking forward to hearing the experience of women at UTS community today.  And I will now hand you back to Verity.  Thank you, everyone (applause).

THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  Wonderful.  Thank you for that.  

It's now my huge pleasure to introduce our keynote speaker, Sarah Malik, Walkley Award winning Australian investigative journalist, author and television presenter.  Her work focuses on asylum, surveillance, technology and its intersection with gender and race, most notably examining domestic violence, gender inequality and migration.  

She has authored two books, 'Desi Girl: On feminism, race, faith and belonging', and 'Safar: Muslim's women's stories of travel and transformation'.  She's co hosted and co produced award winning SBS podcasts 'Let Me Tell You' and 'The New Writers Room'.  We're also proud to say that she's a UTS alumna, graduating with degrees in law and journalism.  So can I please welcome Sarah Malik to the stage.  (Applause). 

SARAH MALIK:  Thank you so much.  I'd like to begin by acknowledging the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, the traditional custodians of the land on which we are gathered, and pay my respects to all Elders past and present.  And I extend this respect to all First Nations listeners here today.  I recognise that we are on stolen land with no treaty and sovereignty has never been ceded.

So it was just over 20 years I walked through those front doors   I know, a long time   to do an arts and law degree.  I was 18 years old and I was a bookish and shy young Muslim woman from a Western Sydney public school.  I was so exhilarated and excited by the life I wanted to open up for me at a big city university like UTS, one I had worked so hard to be at.  It felt like my love for words was a portal that had transported me with a magic Dorothy like clicking of the heels into a better space, the promise of an education opening doors that had not been available to anyone in my family.

I dreamed of being a journalist, a writer, of making a mark in the world.  Words made sense of the world to me.  They helped give shape to a nebulous cloud of half formed questions and desires.  They paved a road to self determination from the limitations of a working class adolescent and the wider world that circumscribed it.  Every feeling, from loneliness to anger to curiosity, I could find a salve for in books.  I knew what I couldn't find a mirror for would be in the books of the future, written by my generation, existing now in the hyphenated margins of western society.

It's why I felt attracted to a career in journalism and writing.  I was fascinated by how contesting, competing truth claims were, the way information was strictly guarded, words carefully crafted to create stories and ideas that impacted the way we think, words full of power, both weapons and shields.  They could illuminate or obscure, create sympathy or antipathy.

Much of the rhetoric of the media growing up that I heard was directed at people like me.  I stress "at" rather than "to".  We were the problem, the non integrating Muslims, migrants, misfits.  This racism was sometimes mirrored in what it felt like being a girl for me in a traditional community, being indirectly addressed and talked over, your life analysed and dissected and directed by others, your own feelings and emotions ignored.  

This fusion outsider was so many of us children of migrants in the west.  I remember reading Dickens and Austen while eating biryani.  My morning meal fasting meal was Vegemite on toast.  I watched Beverley Hills 90210 and Bollywood videos, I listened to Qawwali and Bob Dylan, I read Germaine Greer and Kamala Das.  How could I reconcile myself without imploding?  

I read.  I read and I was comforted and discomforted.  I was intoxicated by the idea.  In my early 20s, I devoured the news, words, the internet, finding solace in other hybrids, blogging to make sense of the world.  We were the in between generation, the Salafis and the Sufis and the seekers who derived inspiration from Ralph Waldo Emerson and Rumi, Amina Wadud and Naomi Wolf, Allama Iqbal and Hafez.

At the time I registered that universities were the place to solve problems, connect with great minds whose own biographies provided the puzzles to the problems they solved in their work, who felt the sting of being lonely, of feeling like an outsider.  I read Edward Said and Derrida and Judith Butler and I read these people because I felt like they had the words for the wordless and searching parts of me who could not even dare to ask the questions out loud.

I pored myself into courses that spoke to me.  Why am I here?  What am I supposed to do?  Is there a God?  Why do I experience the world the way that I do?  What are the social reasons for the struggles that I'm experiencing?  Being a woman in the world constantly policed and surveilled and forced to conform, understandings of religion that circumscribed and stifled me, a wider society where I was treated with suspicion, a post September 11 world where my identity was constantly foisted upon me as a challenge and a test, where in order to show how Australian, how liberal and how progressive I was I had to erase myself, my culture and my identity to assimilate into a whiter and supposedly more superior way of being.

I read not as a luxury, but as if my life depended on it, to open up my life from the vice grips of other people's projections of me, of messages that bombarded me from everywhere, that told me who I was and who I should be, from the invasive gazes that felt like they sliced into me, leaving me no room to breathe   the gaze of the imam who told me a woman's place was to be obedient, the gaze of the white feminist who told me my people were backward, the papers that blared "Muslims are dangerous".  

Reading was the lifeline that opened up my horizon and literature and higher education was the hand that came out of the page and took mine, the hand that understood, and eventually the hand that empowered me to speak back to those projections, to contest the way those narratives have defined what I learned was historically the other, people like me who did not have the power and the platforms to speak back.

In the library just here I developed a feminist consciousness with works of Simone de Beauvoir, which was later transformed with the works of feminists of colour like Bell Hooks.  Reading shaped a way of looking at the world as filled with nuance and endless possibility, full of histories and meaning that impacted the present day.  Instead of being accidents, I learned that our current social realities and relationships had patterns and threads.  They were deliberate creations that benefited some at the expense of others.  These knowledges were like x ray glasses, revealing and opening the world to me, as a myriad of ways of living and seeing and being.

So much of my memoire 'Desi Girl:  On feminism, race, faith and belonging' is about that period of life, the UTS years, when I moved out of home, when I struggled financially, when I became an independent person and, most importantly, it's where I developed a consciousness, an idea of how I wanted to live, what mattered to me, what I wanted to be guided by and a spirituality that spoke to me.  

It's where I found housing and scholarships and part time jobs.  It's where I connected with teachers like the late great Islamic studies teacher and feminist academic Jamila Hussain, jurisprudence teacher Penny Crofts, head of journalism feminist Wendy Bacon, immigration law scholar Jennifer Byrne, people who were formulating paradigms to question the frameworks we lived by.  That was intoxicating to me.

The university was a precious space, an incubation, a reprieve, a place where instead of a traditional thesis, I created an online website predicting digital journalism would transform society.  Increasingly, our universities are under threat, with casualisation of staff and run by corporate metrics.  But that time reminds me of what a great trust they have in nurturing the aspirations and social mobility of young people like me from underrepresented backgrounds, to give them the confidence to become leaders of their own lives, as handrails to understand the ropes that bind us and to be free of them, as authoritative voices for social progress.  

And this happens by creating the work conditions and psychological safety to thrive through collaborative relationships and fellowship to create breathing room for new ideas and by continuing to engage deeply in the political and social currents we live in but, most importantly, by ensuring our student loan systems are as accessible and affordable as possible.

More importantly than books, university gave me the opportunity to fail, to make mistakes, to get my heart broken, to join political groups and leave them, to do a million ill advised things that are the privileges of youth.  UTS was my safe space, a place where I was like an experimental Petrie dish, cultivating and becoming something new.

This is the meaning of any true education and what I found in the radical books I read, they gave me the courage and impotence to find my own voice, to build autonomy for myself one small step at a time.  They gave me the courage to believe that I too could be the journalist and writer I dreamed of, despite not seeing anyone like me.  I connected to an imaginary and I dreamed the possibilities because the books I read, the ones that felt as real as my hand and my heart, were also acts of imagination that became tangible things in the world and maybe I could too.

Years later, now in my 30s, I still don't pretend to have all the answers, but I know that empowerment begins with a question.  It begins by becoming comfortable with not having a place, but being in the in between place where things don't always fit.  It is these secret worlds that education and books opened for me that have sustained and shaped me.  

I still remember the words of late great writer Audre Lorde:  "What are the words that you do not yet have?  What are the tyrannies that you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own until, you sicken and die of them, still in silence?  Of course I am afraid.  I am afraid because the transformation of silence into language and action is an act of self revelation, and that always seems fraught with danger.  But tell them about how you're never really a whole person if you remain silent, because there's always that one little piece inside of you that wants to be spoken out and if you keep ignoring it, it gets madder and hotter and hotter and if you don't speak it out one day, it will just up and punch you in the mouth from the inside."

Today I am the writer I dreamed of being and that happened by refusing to be silent.  Today I write and my words matter and they are read and considered by others.  They are maybe a tiny drop of colour in a river of social narrative that changes the constitution of the whole by just existing.  

I wrote my memoire because I am the first in my family to have the privilege of writing a new story for myself, of literacy, of going to university, of choosing a life for myself that I wanted.  I think about so many women and girls who are denied that opportunity, people in my own extended family.  I think about how history loops and often repeats itself.  I think of Palestinian women trying to protect their children, surviving every day under occupation.  I think of women in Iran, tear gassed in the street for fighting against police brutality and the right to dress how they please.  I think of women in the US stripped of their right to bodily autonomy, where books are now routinely banned.  I think of Afghanistan, a new regime that begins now its old assault on women and denies them the power that access to knowledge brings.  I think of trans women who face continued discrimination for just existing.  I think of First Nations women who daily navigate a society that has systemically taken so much from them.  

I think about so many women whose lives are circumscribed by those who want to deny them the autonomy, voice and power that knowledge and education brings.  This is why authoritarian regimes ban books.  It's why extremists target female education.  Art and knowledge creates question, sows doubt and wonder, and lights a path to an unknown place.  A girl who reads is a girl with ideas and a girl with ideas is a powerful girl.

In a world where control over women can be either subtly or violently enforced, from conforming to social ideals to rigid laws circumscribing physical control, it is a rebellious mind that has the potential to be the biggest threat.

I think about my mother, who grew up a world away from here, who wasn't allowed to go to school, and me who grew up here and how connected we are.  It makes me realise how urgent our fight is and how deeply connected we all are as a global society.  The threads that bind us are more intimate than we think.  As Audre said, "I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own."

It also made me realise how, despite it all, women rise.  We create art, we create music, we create families, we run businesses, we lead companies, we work at factories.  We are professors and students.  We volunteer at schools, mosques, churches, synagogues, and we lend our time, our energy, our passion, our care to power our communities, this society and the world we live in, often unpaid without the recognition and credit we deserve.

For me, rising and finding my voice has always happened through words.  Education helped me know another world was possible and writing helped me feel like I existed.  Writing helped me name my experiences, to trace the contours of my emotions and say, "Yes, this hurt", or "Yes, this mattered", or "This is the way I see it, I matter, you matter, we matter."

Outside of the safe haven of university and faced with the real world, writing taught me that we can have difficult conversations with ourselves and others and this is how we progress by being truthful, by allowing ourselves to take off the masks we've had to wear to survive and refusing to contort ourselves to be pleasant, to be good, to shape shift, to fit environments that were never designed for you, but to create new worlds that do.

This is not easy.  I think about how at each step the temptation and the deep seduction to take the easier route, to conform, to not speak, to play nice, to repress our voices and healthy anger and how this leads us, or at least me, to the therapist's office, often personalising the collective problems I have internalised, the glass ceilings, the devaluing of my work and labour in environments that sometimes wanted a model minority to showcase, but did not embody the transformative representation and equality that true diversity calls for.

For me it represented itself in burnout, in pain that my body could not ignore even if my mind did, and I registered that my body, my personal life and my being was intimately linked to society, culture and the wider political structure.  So my personal story was political because it was the instrument on which these structures imprinted itself.

I know the fight is not over, but has new manifestations.  I don't experience the challenges my mother did, but different ones and they still matter: the pay gap; the structural racism in our politics, arts, media and powerful institutions that in 2023 are still largely led by men and people of Anglo Saxon background; the tokenism, micro aggressions, indignities and lack of respect we can experience as we try to make our ascent in a country that often tells us that we don't belong, that we're not good enough; of feeling secondary even in spaces that propose to be for us; the white feminist voices that can sometimes dominate and not make space, whose words can often be unloaded with unconscious white privilege; the progressive who's there to help as long as you remain servile or one down and don't eclipse them.  

As Audre Lorde said again, "the visibility which makes us most vulnerable is that which is also the source of our greatest strength because a machine will try to grind you to dust anyway, whether or not you speak.  We can sit in our corners mute forever while our sisters and ourselves are wasted, while our earth is poisoned.  We can sit in our safe corners as bottles.  We can sit in our safe corners mute as bottles and we will be no less afraid.  The decision is to define ourselves and speak for ourselves, instead of being defined and spoken for by others."

The mazes I sometimes got trapped by, I remember that great escape route, words, naming the nameless feeling, the shameful thing, the tricky relationship.  I think about how words can illuminate and reveal and they can dazzle and obscure too.  They can empower and disempower.  I thought about how I wanted to use my words and how they were an escape tunnel in those early days.  By telling my own story in my own words, I reclaimed myself.  

The right to our own stories, our own ways of seeing the world, is something that no one can ever take away.  I think about every woman here today, you, you who showed up, despite a million private griefs, of sorrows privately internalised; who fought for that pay rise; who escaped that psychologically abusive relationship, despite family disapproval and gossip; who decided to study as a mature age student; who recovered from that miscarriage; who maintained a relationship to a spirituality that uplifted you and didn't put you down; who raised that child on her own while juggling two jobs; who chose herself; who said yes, I too do matter, I too deserve happiness, love, prosperity and self expression, I too deserve to honour myself, to treat myself as something precious, I too am worthy.  

Every day that we do this, we rise and we win against the forces that want to chip away at us.  It is you that I salute today and I am in awe of.  I hope today is a celebration of your strength and your joy and the power of your words, our words, to speak, to keep fighting for the world we want to live in and the capacity always that we have to use our words to write new futures for ourselves.  Thank you.  (Applause).

THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  I just said to Sarah, that was absolutely brilliant.  Thank you so much for that.  (Applause).  I was scribbling   I was quoting and quoting her, scribbling down in my margin just so many amazing thoughts and words, and thank you for your generosity about the university and the role of education in both personal and social transformation.  It was just so   it was just brilliant.  Thank you.

So lucky for us, we now also get a chance to hear some more from Sarah and from two other excellent women.  So I'm going to get all three of you to move to the white chairs on stage and Sarah is going to be joined by two other amazing women from the UTS community and we're now going to have a conversation about gender, race, faith, taking your place in the world, and navigating all of that.  

Before I continue, I also want to note that this is both an audience in person and there's also people online and you are going to get a chance to ask some questions if you like.  We're facilitating the Q&A through Slido, so you simply need to go to the link up here on the slides that will appear at some point and we're also going to be posting online for people joining virtually so you can click on that link.  You can go in, you can ask your own questions, you can upvote questions that others have asked, but please do try to   you know what it's like, try to keep the questions actual questions rather than big, long comments.  I mean keep them relevant.

Now I'd also like to introduce our other two panellists, Associate Professor Eva Cheng and Farra Zaed (applause).  Associate Professor Eva Cheng is the Acting Head, School of Professional Practice and Leadership here at UTS.  Previously she was the Director of Transnational Education and Director of Women in the Faculty of Engineering and IT.  With a background in telecommunications engineering, Eva actively collaborates on social justice and community engagement across the STEMM diversity and humanitarian engineering movements, including collaborating with the Tech Girls Movement Foundation and Engineers Without Borders Australia.  Welcome, Eva (applause).  

Farra Zaed is a graduate architect from DJRD Architects whose focus is on health infrastructure projects.  She recognises that architecture is an important tool that can influence our lives, mood, and the environment we live in.  Farra is also a member of the UTS Young Alumni Committee and is passionate about supporting alumni with meaningful connections and networking opportunities.  Welcome, Farra (applause).

So whilst you're   sorry, that was a bit loud.  Whilst you're getting connected to Slido and typing in your own questions, I will begin with my own and I think I'll start   I'll start with you, Eva, because, you know, that's nice, and we thought we'd start with an optimistic question and then delve into the depths of what we need to change about our world.  But we'll start with the fullness of life experience.  We know that it's both good and challenging, but we wanted to begin with something that you're actually proud of, an achievement you're proud of or something that you've done that's close to your heart and has spoken to your true self.

ASSOCIATE PROF. EVA CHENG:  Thanks, Verity, and thanks, everybody, excited to be here.  I had trouble coming up with one answer for this.  I'm going to share a couple, if I may, and if I'm running over time, let me know.

So, firstly, what I wanted to share that I'm proud of is our women in engineering and IT program here in the faculty and UTS, the impact that we've had, but also the awards that we've received that recognise the impact, both nationally and internationally, because that celebrates the work of   it's not about me, it's about the team and community, that gender and equality and equity matters, that it matters outside the university and the movement itself matters internationally.  So that's something I'm really proud that we're achieving here and that is actually a faculty and university program, right, we're not running it on the side.  So it's a collective kind of proudness.

More personally, and because we're in a UTS context, I wanted to share about my personal success in achieving academic promotion last year and it's not the outcome that actually matters, it was the process.  So I'm proud that I did this process.  It was really uncomfortable, and I will share why.  I don't like celebrating my achievements.  I find that really difficult and I'm still finding it difficult.  But what that process forced me to do was think about what is my value, what am I contributing and what do I want to share with people and then document it and evidence it.  So whilst I had to separate the we from I, because I do work very collaboratively, I then had to think about okay, what is it that I have done that I'm proud of, but not at the cost of we, I'm going to include that as well.

So my reflection on that was the process mattered for me to be able to have to fit a box because this is the way promotion works, but what I wrote on the page did not fit in any box.  I am not a standard academic.  It was really difficult to write because everyone told me, "They're never going to value you because you've only got $10,000 research income", which is true, and if you're an academic, you know that that's not enough.  So that for me was this is what I value, I hope you value it as well, and being successful showed me that, "Yes, we appreciate it and we respect your work that you do here".  So that I'm now sharing with others who are doing academic promotion that you don't have to fit the academic box.  You write about you and that's what matters.

THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  Lovely, thank you (applause) Farra.

FARRA ZAED:  So I think similar with Eva, I don't just have one achievement that's close to my heart, but I think being very early on in my career and I have so much to contribute, I'm still trying to catch up to Eva, Sarah and Verity, so I'm still in the backyard trying to like run towards them.  

But I think what it's important to note is that I celebrate all the little achievements that I've gone through in life.  So I'm an immigrant.  I moved here 15 years ago from Malaysia and my parents have sacrificed so much for me to be here, so just knowing that all the little   like finishing high school, my degree, my master's and currently now doing what I can to give back to alumnas is making my parents proud, making the academics and people that have supported me throughout my studies is what I feel like a cause close to my heart and I'm trying to use that as a motivation for me to achieve more and more and, you know, be the best version that I can be and also what I can do to bring back.  

So it's very important not just for me as a student, but now as an alumna and what I can bring back.  So it's nice to not just look at again from the lens of what I can do, what I have achieved, but now that I've achieved that, what I can do for all of us and all of us here women, so more power to us.  So trying to give back.  (Applause).

THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  Oh, Sarah.

SARAH MALIK:  Oh, okay.  Look, I find it really interesting because I think of you guys as so amazing and this reluctance that we have to toot our own horn, right, like this feeling that oh, maybe it's too much or maybe they'll think I'm full of myself, and I think that I struggled with that too after the book came out, I just wanted to hide.  I just wanted to go under the covers and I almost had to depersonalise it a bit.  I had to be like well, Sarah, if you were your own PR agent, what would you say to yourself, like just do that, do what you need to do.  People have invested in you and give back to them.  This is about like connecting with other people who might want to need this and to see themselves in this book, you know.

So I had to do a lot to kind of like jazz myself up, you know, and I think that so many of us have that reluctance to take up space, you know, because we feel like we haven't been given that space and we've had to fight for that space or to be seen or to be visible sometimes, it can be scary, you know, and it can come with backlash.

So I think the book, obviously, and then just really reclaiming the space, you know, just saying "yes, I'm pretty good, like I'm pretty damn good" (applause).

THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  I love it.  So one of the bits of your speech that I scribbled down into the margins because it was also brilliant was where you said, "I had to erase myself, my culture and my identity" and I thought that that was just so profoundly moving and awful, but also that you were able to put it so beautifully, and my next question was going to be around facing those challenges, right, where you actually feel you can't be your authentic self, where you are erasing parts of your true self or striving to fit into a box that doesn't even seem to want to have you in that box in the first place.  So is there any, I suppose, either experiences or lessons that you've learnt from those experiences that you can share with the audience today, and we'll start with you this time, Farra. 

FARRA ZAED:  So again, to just recap, so when I moved here, I was in that like teen stage, like early teens, so having to navigate your growing up adolescence in a new country with a new language, completely new culture, you know, you don't want to stand out because you don't want to be made fun of, so I tend to really kind of like don't look at me, I'm not here, please look away, you know, I don't exist and let me just go with the flow.  By doing that, you realise that you lost your sense of self and you don't understand your value, so you don't have anything to stand on because you're getting smacked in the face with   you need to change what you look like, you need to change what you sound like, you can't speak your language here and it's very intimidating to start off with.

I think what's really helpful is to surround yourself with a really good support system and really looking inwards and knowing what your values are and see if you can find aspects, like people in your life that align with your values.  

And Australia is so diverse now and we were just talking, Sarah and Eva, about how myself and Sarah as alumna, UTS has changed so much and it's good to see it is a good change, especially with events like today, so you know, how can we basically recognise these changes for the better and make our future more bright for our future children and our children's children, you know.  

So it's hard to start off with when you don't know yourself, but it's good to sit down, know your values, and Australia for me has been so accepting and I'm so grateful to be here, to be a part of UTS alumna and also just a part of our movement here today.  (Applause).

THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  What about you, Eva, where have you faced challenges where you feel you've   yes.

ASSOCIATE PROF. EVA CHENG:  Yeah, lots, but I'd like to share maybe some of the earlier ones because hopefully it's not the case today, and thank you for sharing, Sarah, your journey, because the whole kind of survival growing up is where I remember most.  I remember being in high school and just knowing that I wanted to be as invisible as possible, so how do I make myself look like the others.  So I took up sport.  

So you may not know it, but I used to play cricket, I used to play football, soccer, I still love soccer today, I took up table tennis because I knew that that would buy me and give me social currency and protection, and it has till this day, which I think is something we need to work on.  And especially because I was good at maths and science, I love computers, that was definitely not the norm in the 90s and I went to computing meetings where it was the stereotype IT thing coke, pizza, all of that.  It's no longer the case, so please come and study IT, but that was the case in the 90s and that was the time when I felt like I did not belong and I didn't even know what to do.  So that would be the challenges I would share today and we've moved a little bit from there, which is good.

THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  Good.  Any other challenges you want to share, Sarah?

SARAH MALIK:  Yeah, look, I think it's interesting, like when you're a child of migrants, it's accelerated by this concept of code switching, right?  Like you're always trying to assess your environment like an antenna and do what you need to do to figure out how you can belong in a particular scenario, but I think that anyone knows what that feels like to a lesser degree when you are trying to neatify yourself or excise parts of yourself in order to belong to a workplace or to a relationship and it doesn't have to be such a struggle.  

I realised by compartmentalising myself and my life so much, I had just kind of   it was a recipe for like a mental health disaster, you know, and so this book was kind of like   it saved me.  It was like I could finally just be myself and breathe in all the different aspects of my life and be like I am enough and I'm enough as I am and I don't need to contort myself and shape shift in order to fit these places that were never designed for me.  And I think there's such a great liberation in that because I think that's when we find our greatest power when we can really fully lean into ourselves unapologetically.

THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  Totally agree (applause).  Isn't it annoying?  I could stay here all afternoon and we're running short of time.  So I do want to move to some of the audience questions.  Sarah, you'll be pleased to know that anonymous has said "Sarah Malik is giving me life today", and that's been upvoted, that's like the highest upvoted comment.  That is a comment, that's not a question.

So the question I would like to ask, which is the next highest voted question, is anonymous has asked, "I can't help but notice the lack of men in the room here today"   I've noticed all the lovely men that are here, thank you, but this person is saying there aren't a lot of them, "Why do you think this is and is this a problem?"  Who wants to have a go?

ASSOCIATE PROF. EVA CHENG:  I'm happy to start.  Thank you, anonymous.  I also noticed it as well and yes, I do think it's a problem.  I think we've got two spaces here, right?  We still need safe spaces for women because we don't always feel safe, but there is also the fact that the move towards gender equality and equity is not a women's problem, so this is the conversation we really need to have is what does everybody need to do to activate towards this change and advocate for each other because it is not a women's problem, so yes (applause).

THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  Farra, do you have a view about this question?

FARRA ZAED:  Yes.  So I work in the architecture industry, as you know, it's probably very male dominated and experience I had, some of my lecturers tend to be male.  I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but I'm just saying that with a very minute number of us being architects and within the field we need to make our voices heard and we also need that support system behind us.  

So it is great to see some of the men here in this room, but we also need a safe space for us to grow first, but it would be nice to have further involvement with men.  And don't be scared, even it's International Women's Day, it is to celebrate us, but it's not meant to be alienating the men as well in the picture because at the end of the day, we coexist.  It's not a world for women and it's not a world for men, because we need each other in this world.  So it would be   ideally it would be nicer and I guess more inclusive to have more men who are not afraid to be included today.  So talk to your friends, talk to your family and get   you know, I'm trying to get my dad and my brother more involved in today and it's not just about oh, it's women, no, it's not about me at all, you know.  So it's nice to, if we have the opportunity, talk to family, to your friends, come from your heart and that's when you know that we are sincere for them and that they will love and care for us to grow as well in our own space.  (Applause).

THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  What about you, Sarah?

SARAH MALIK:  Look, definitely I think that women and people of colour, we can sometimes take on the burden of creating social change, of educating our organisations.  Like it's exhausting, you know, and like, yeah, I think that men, white people, they have a real role in engaging in kind of honest and equal ways and sharing the power, shifting the power.  It doesn't happen until you give up power.  That's how equality happens.  So we need that to happen and I think that will create a better world for all of us, you know, when we are able to see that shift happen.

THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  I totally agree.  I'm going to ask the next question from the audience, which is actually an extremely important question, though it's a rather technical question to answer in some ways, which is what would Australia have to look like in order to officially close the pay gap between men and women, which is still at around 14.3%, or something, last time I looked and has stubbornly remained so for decades.  What do we need to change?  I'll start with you this time, Sarah.

SARAH MALIK:  We just need to pay us more.  (Applause).  You know, I think of like also the feminisation of low paid professions, the devaluation of those professions.  I think of women of colour, who also lag behind white women.  So that diversity has to be intersectional and it has to be across, you know, so many different metrics because, you know, we can't just like reinstate the new patriarchy by having only a certain kind of women who replicate the social structure.  I think the structures need to be deeply transformed.  

So, yes, it's a really big question because I think our economic opportunities shape so many of our life decisions, our choices, our freedoms, our ability to create the new worlds and futures for ourselves and our families.  So it's a really important question and one that actually needs very deep structural changes and reforms and urgent action.

THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  Yes, I totally agree.  I mean, the good thing is they have now put gender equity as an objective of the Fair Work Act, which will be interesting.  So it will be interesting to see the impact that that has, but it's absolutely about the devaluing of women's labour and particularly the care and community sector.  Do you have anything to add on pay equity?

ASSOCIATE PROF. EVA CHENG:  Maybe just a thought on the power aspect of having more gender diversity in power because if we're involved in the decision making, then that's one part of getting the structural change that really needs to happen and until we recognise that, I think it's always going to be very difficult if the power structures at the top have not changed.

THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH AM:  Yes.

SARAH MALIK:  And also that means transforming the nature of work itself because that system has been kind of made for people who aren't women, and so I think like the remote work, the flexibility, the understanding that people have caring responsibilities, the shifting of caring responsibilities across genders   like I think it's not just work, but like social transformation that needs to accompany that.

THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH AM:  It's not just work, it's unpaid work, right?

SARAH MALIK:  Yeah, it's all the work that we do, it's all the work that we do.

THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  Farra?

FARRA ZAED:  I think it's also important, just to kind of recap everything, it also is starting a conversation as well.  So yes, pay us more, definitely true, but, you know, the method of where we start off this conversation would be good as well.  So luckily for me at DJRD, where I'm working for, our directors are all male, but we have an increase with a number of women and men within the workplace.  So I think it's around 60:40 percent men to women.  So most of our senior associates are women.  So it opens up more conversation and a welcoming atmosphere to have that conversation in a way that it doesn't feel forced on us and it's not that we're taking your rights as a director or as a boss or a manager, but it's also this is our work and we know that you have your work as well, how can we work through that and it's not just bye, this is our time now, because it doesn't work like that.

THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  Mmm.  Now, I'm mindful of time.  This is going to be the last question.  It's again from the audience, but I think it's quite a nice rounding up sort of question.  "IWD tends to highlight strong women who overcame a lot of barriers, inspiring", purple heart, "but how do we identify the systemic barriers and work together to remove?", which is so true, right?  And there is and there's been a bit of criticism this year about sort of IWD always just being so joyful and it doesn't actually go to the heart of what it is that needs to change and what are the deep systemic and cultural barriers that still exist.  So maybe   whose turn is it to go first?  Okay, Sarah.

SARAH MALIK:  I'm happy to go first.  Look, I get it and I think my whole talk was about that.  I think so much of my life and so much of women's lives is about the fight or flight, the struggle, you know, fighting for rights, making space, and I think it's also   there's time for joy and celebration too, you know.  I think there is   that is an important thing to be joyful, to celebrate.  

I think all of the black feminists that I read, they talk about how it's almost radical to rest, to celebrate, to lean back, you know, to be connected with nature, to be connected with each other because I think that that is transformative and powerful.  Like our own personal wellbeing is connected to the political.  So we can do both.  

And I think kind of leaning in and just celebrating yourself, you know, celebrating everything that you've done to get here, all the ways in which, you know, you are overcoming, all the ways in which you are continuing, you know, despite the struggles in your life.  I think, like Farra said, it's about kind of just marking every little thing, you know, and saying yes, I am enough, you know, and I'm worthy and I'm someone who kind of deserves to be honoured, you know, and I think that that's something that's very powerful, that consciousness.

THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  Yes.  Farra?

FARRA ZAED:  I feel like Sarah has really recapped that quite well.  I'm not as eloquent as Sarah there.  

I think   so like I'm still young in my, I guess, life to really have so much   gone through so much where I know what I've gone through is probably not as monumental as what Sarah has gone through and what Eva and probably what Verity has gone through as well, but it's good to kind of mark down   like everyone goes through struggles and it's good to notice that as well and it's good to celebrate that as well.  I tend to get really shy and scared when I see like this person has gone through so much, I can't do that, and I think it's nice to celebrate the small monuments because over time that's what creates your bigger achievements at the end.

THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  Mmm.  Eva?

ASSOCIATE PROF. EVA CHENG:  Yeah, parting thoughts.  Definitely we have to celebrate what we are and contribute today and I think it's also nice to have this day every year to reflect on those celebrations, but to remind people how much work we still have to do.  So it's like every 8th of March, look, yes, we've gone up 1%, so what are we going to do about the other 99%?  

THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH:  Yes, I so agree.  And I think   I like what you said, Sarah, about that element of self care and actually looking after yourself and celebrating the achievements that you do manage to do in a world that's structurally against you in so many ways, and one of the things I loved about all three of our panellists today is even in that moment of celebration when they were talking about their own achievements, they were actually also talking about how they were helping others.  So it's a pretty collective sense of responsibility and celebration, which I think all three of you just made so beautifully today.

Unfortunately, we're over time.  I've got   someone is saying "please wrap up", exclamation mark, so I've got to wrap up.  One of the bits of Sarah's speech that I also wrote down was where she talked about sitting in the UTS library and developing a feminist consciousness and how that helped her stop personalising the collective project problems, and I thought that that was just such an insight and so true because that is why feminism exists, right?  It gives us all the intellectual framework, in some ways the emotional framework, to actually say, you know what, this isn't about me, right, this isn't because I can't achieve or feel good because I'm so hopeless, it's actually because there are really deep, long lasting, patriarchal structures that have existed for centuries across cultures and, you know, we occupy this space and what feminism gives us is a way, I suppose, to understand that, not personalise it, but also to give the power to come together and try to change things.

So thank you so much.  That was just so wonderful.  I cannot thank Sarah enough for her keynote, I thought it was just absolutely brilliant, and also, of course, to Eva and Farra, thank you so much for giving your time with us today.  You've all been wonderful (applause).  

We're four minutes over time, but there is refreshments being served outside.  So please stick around, have something to eat, say hello to each other and keep having a wonderful International Women's Day. Thank you.