Recording: International Women’s Day 2022

[Verity Firth] Thank you for joining us at today's event, it's a real pleasure to be with you here today I'm really sad that we have converted this to an online event we absolutely were hoping to do it in the flesh we were very excited that we would all get to be together at UTS on International Women's Day but of course the severe weather and the advice from the state government about not catching public transport over these two days really made user on the side of caution and shift to an online event. It has been a really difficult time for a whole lot of people so I really want to extend my sympathy and support from UTS and from the Center for Social Justice and Inclusion to those that the floods have affected. We're really delighted, although virtually, to be here with all of you to celebrate International Women's Day and this event is just one of many that are happening around UTS to showcase the important work that's being done to tackle gender in inequality in our country. I'd like to begin by welcoming Auntie Glendra Studds, Auntie Glendra is the UTS elder in residence and she's going to open today's event and conduct an acknowledgement of country, she brings a wealth of experience and knowledge to UTS and she's a mentor for all students and staff, she's also the former CEO of LinkUp Aboriginal corporation and Aboriginal engagement advisor with Knowmore which is the nongovernment legal organisation supporting people giving evidence to the Royal Commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse. Auntie Glendra is extremely passionate around outofhome care issues in particular the younger Aboriginal generation in the system and she has been an advocate for over years and is a trained counsellor. I'd now like to welcome Auntie Glendra to do an acknowledgement of country [Auntie Glendra Stubbs] Thank you Verity, I don't tell people I'm a counsellor because no one wants to talk to you then but if you say you're the Auntie everyone wants to talk to you. Thank you Verity it’s always wonderful to be in your presence. Happy International Women's Day, in solidarity with women facing poverty violence and war across this planet I want to also acknowledge the achievements of strong women that have left this planet a better place, hugs to them and anyone that has lost a strong woman I remember meeting these young women in Warburton in the city, it is way out in the remote community and it was women there that have brought that community into a much better place, they decided that the kids weren't getting lunches so they started doing hospitality then they realized that the elders weren't getting looked after. This is all bringing employment to the young one's, employment and big support so that community is now one of the most thriving communities, all by a few women saying ‘we want our kids to be fed, well we want our elders looked after, we want our young ones in work’ and that was all from a few women, so a few women can do that think of what we can do as lots of women and you know people at UTS and people that are on the virtual are all articulate educated women so you know, no pressure about you know we're all depending on you hey. So like Verity said oh yaluman dumarang galindara, so Glendra or Galindora which is my name means peaceful waters now I'm peaceful and I'm calm until there's not social justice and then I become the raging wild river so you know, you’re sometimes given a name for for a reason I believe. Like Verity she said I am the elder and I would like to acknowledge and pay respects to the traditional owners of the Gadigal people where the UTS college is and the Eora nation and I'm on Dharug and Gundungurra land in the beautiful Blue Mountains and I'm sure you are all on a different land. I put out a little challenge to find out, on the area that you're at, what are the traditional owners of that land and try and learn a word just hedmskfgmsnglllo like yala manju marung is hello yamas is hello in Sydney so yeah just a little challenge out there by the Auntie. As we share our knowledge teaching and research practices within this university may we pay respects to the knowledge embedded forever within the aboriginal custodians of country and acknowledge their struggles and their strengths so that we can have opportunities that weren't afforded to them and I think one of those, the best opportunities that we can have is the opportunity for higher education and UTS is a place where you can be the best you are, and you get supported in lots of ways to be the very best you are so I'm always proud to put my hand up and say I love UTS. Love all that it does and you know I can't say how honoured and privileged I am to be in all your presence so big Happy International Women's day and think about our sisters all around the planet eh. [Verity Firth] Thank you Glendra, thank you. It’s now my pleasure to introduce professor Leslie Hitchens who's the UTS Acting Provost and Vice President, Leslie joined UTS in and she served as an Associate Dean research and then became the dean of the faculty in and she's now of course our Provost. So over to you Leslie. [Professor Leslie Hitchens] Thank you Verity and Auntie Glendra. Thank you also for that really powerful acknowledgement and acknowledgement as well of the day that's bringing us all here International Women's Day and it's my great pleasure to welcome all of you to this virtual celebration of International Women's Day here at UTS as a community at UTS, we come together to recognise both the outstanding achievements and the successes of those fighting gender inequity but also, to take time to highlight the ongoing issues and work still to be done and there is a lot of work needing to be done in Australian society and through our institutions and that has been so starkly demonstrated over the past year and I'd also just like to take a moment to acknowledge the women and children of Ukraine who are caught up in this terrible situation and to remember them on this particular day. Today's keynote speaker Jess Hill recently wrote an essay titled the Reckoning, which is the topic of today's conversation and a reflection on the collective rage at the lack of accountability and change in our society. Gender inequity and gendered violence is a wicked problem worldwide it doesn't exist in a vacuum it's compounded by the intersection of other social issues culture, race visa status, income, age, geography clasp, beliefs and sexuality are all inseparable factors in how women experience life and how we as a society respond to their experiences.The rage that Jess Hill writes about and that Auntie Glendra just talked about the raging waters is fully justified and we do not need to apologise for that. Universities though must contribute their support and considerable resources working alongside the experts in communities and frontline practitioners to tackle these issues we exist for the public good not just for those who pass through our doors but for all civil society our vision here at UTS is to be a leading public university of technology recognised for our global impact and we know that we can only achieve that vision when positive social change is at the heart of all we do we have to challenge stereotypes, fight bias, broaden perceptions and remedy injustices where we see them. Here at UTS, we believe everyone has the right to live, study and work safely and we are deeply committed to continuing our work to ensure that our university community is safe, inclusive, and respectful for everyone. Thank you for joining us today to be a part of this really important conversation and a huge thank you to Jess Hill and professor Saba Bebawi we can't wait to hear from you thank you. [Verity Firth] Thank you very much Leslie that was a wonderful opening, now to the business of our event it's my huge pleasure to welcome up Jess Hill for today's conversation with Saba Bebawi and it's going to be great so I'll introduce them both to you now but before I do that, I also want to quickly point out that there will be an opportunity to ask questions, so if you do have a question what we want you to do is to type it in the Q&A box which you'll find in your zoom control panel. The good thing about the Q&A box is you can then up vote questions that others have asked so that means, I don't know how Saba is going to do it but I often use the ones that have got the most votes because they're usually the best questions. You can upvote other people's questions but remember please try to keep your questions relevant to the topics we're Starting, we're discussing here today. I also want to apologize we normally have closed captions for all of our webinars, but we weren't able to do that today because we shifted to online so quickly, we shifted just yesterday and every single closed captioner in Sydney is currently doing closed captions for other women's day events so we really apologize for that and we'll do better next time.Professor Saba Bebawi is the head of discipline for journalism and writing at the school of Communications at UTS she has published on media power and the role of media in democracy building, in addition to investigative journalism in conflict and postconflict regions Professor Bebawii has worked as a journalist since and is also a media development and policy consultant and a media trainer so we're very excited to have Saba here today to lead this conversation with Jess Hill. Jess Hill probably doesn't need a whole lot of introductions Jess is a Journalist, author and speaker who focuses primarily on social issues and gendered violence Jess’s reporting has won two Walkley Awards, an amnesty international award and three Our Watch Awards. Her first book, see what you made me do, on the phenomenon of domestic abuse and coercive control was released in and awarded the stellar prize. In it was adapted into a series on SBS, her recent projects include a podcast series on coercer control and patriarchy called The Trap and a quarterly essay on how me too has changed Australia titled, the reckoning as Leslie's already mentioned. UTS is incredibly lucky because we had Jess as the inaugural journalist in residence with the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences which she was named in we feel like she's one of Ours welcome Jess it's a real honor to have you here over to you Saba and Jess. Thank you Verity thanks Leslie and thanks Auntie Glendra and thanks Jess for being here I'm really excited to have a chat with you and we'll keep it relaxed and informal and I thought what we can do is I'll ask you a few questions and then you can answer as much as you want and then we'll open it for questions after that if there's anything that we've missed. If that works for you I guess the first question I'd like to ask you is you believe that the MeToo movement has morphed from raising awareness of the ubiquity of sexual violence into an accountability movement tell us what's the difference? Well thank you Saba thanks very much Auntie Glendra I really appreciate being invited to speak today there's so many things that we can talk about on International Women's Day and it's a real pleasure to be with you guys today What is the difference well that's what I was really contemplating as I wrote this essay was you know we've had consciousness raising since the s when it became you know the most prevalent where women would gather in in living rooms and talk to each other about the experiences they'd had when they started to get this sense of a commonality of experience and so many of them had experienced harassment or sexual assault and started to strategize in those lounge rooms as small groups of women as to what they were going to do about it I think that what has really typified the consciousness raising movements has been very much focused on awareness raising MeToo had that awareness raising component but the awareness raising happened as a result of the way that MeToo as it launched in the Hollywood version not the Tarana Burke version which launched a decade Earlier it had at its heart the need for accountability in a way as I wrote in the essay that this wasn't the consciousness-raising movement of old which is like ‘I was raped and let's discuss what rape is let's discuss how it fits into the broader system of patriarchy’it's ‘I was raped and he is the one who raped me and they are the ones who protected him’ and that was building on at least years and you know it's hard to put a pin in the beginning I don't think it has a beginning point but at least years of us really coming to terms with not only the nature of perpetration of sexual violence but the nature of how institutions will will form a protective ring around perpetrators especially when they have power I think what was the reason why MeToo raised awareness is because suddenly women were naming the institutions and the rapists and the harassers and there was this sense I think you know in a lot of first of all it was a sense amongst everybody who was watching it like oh my god either a sense of horror or kind of mixture of exhilaration a sense of like a floodgate opening but really something quite unprecedented but I think also as I've written you know in the amygdala of men worldwide that old reptilian part of the brain that like you know really processes fear it's like this time they're coming for us what have I got in my history you know what have I done something wittingly or unwittingly that could have me become MeTooed it was a totally different landscape and the accountability side of it was not ever part of Tarana Burke's original mission not that she doesn't want men to be accountable or perpetrators to be accountable whoever they are but her mission was really about healing and about solidarity and support. MeToo as it launched in off the back of the Harvey Weinstein exposè and you know really off the back of trump being elected and the rage around that was something else entirely it was a total coincidence well we don't know this but it's likely it was a coincidence that it too used MeToo. Although it's obviously a powerful Phrase it's a happy coincidence because I think had we just had you know a Hollywood approach to MeToo that then did go viral around the world without a grassroots basis I don't think we would have seen the longevity that we've seen of MeToo and in fact I think Tarana Burke because she was able to step in and say hey you know wait a minute like I've been using this phrase for the last years to do this work please don't just like run away with the work that I've been doing even if you're doing it inadvertently but because she was able to step in reclaim the movement she's been able to sort of like rescue it from becoming quite superficial she's like connected it back to the work and that's unfortunately what we keep on having to do is we have a very historical approach to some of these movements and when something flares up as it did again last year we can sort of really focus on what's happening in the moment and the people who are representative of the moment and neglect to call upon and to platform the people who have been doing the grassroots work for years and I think in Australia you know I know there's been a lot of conversations in the last hours or so about like a new group of women including Grace Tame Brittany Higgins Lucy Turnbull and a bunch of others who are starting a campaign all of whom deserve to be there like I have no problem with them starting a campaign the way they do I think that sometimes aside from the diversity conversation that's been had about that is actually just you know where are those grassroots people where are the people with the decades of experience working in gendered violence so I think that if we're going to have an accountability movement it's not just about raising awareness but it's about like really not just holding perpetrators accountable but seeding really long-term change we kind of got to stop reinventing the wheel every time these things these flash points occur and see it instead as this slowly Evolving what I described sort of like a slowly evolving weather system you know use whatever metaphor you like but that's the one that made sense to me is that this is something this is a firestorm in a slowly evolving weather system and to understand what the firestorm means and what it portends you also have to understand how the weather system Created developed and what the fire Storm how the firestone will affect the weather going forward but to have that whole spectrum of experience present in how we prosecute it now. Thanks Jess that's really interesting and just building on that especially in relation to your point on it's about long-term change how does moving from awareness to accountability change the language we as a society and the media speak about perpetrators and victims or even survivors [Music] It's a good question because I think that well first of all it's not even so much that I think the language has not adequately changed to reflect the accountability moment that we're in I think we still hide in the passive voice a lot and I wrote something about that in the introduction to the essay which was something that came to mind when the women's safety summit was on which I was sort of stirring I'm not suggesting that you just adopt this idea but what would our conversations look like if we called it a men's violence summit because essentially that's what we're talking about the whole time and when we talk about women's issue we're talking about men's violence why are they women's issues to begin with it sounds like a lot of men who've got a lot of issues that are subjecting women to them. so you know maybe we talk about men's Issues but you know so I don't actually think that we have made the shift in our language to an accountability language where we use active language but I think that the accountability part of MeToo has definitely changed or it has influenced the sorts of conversations that have happened within that and I think what's particularly forward-thinking and progressive if not uncomfortable at times is on days like International Women's Day you know I just went to one of those sort of like rah-rah breakfasts which I always feel completely out of place in because I'm just not rah-rah in my inner critic is just far too enlarged for that but you know the speakers there particularly one speaker Khadijah you know her address was all about how do you hold yourselves within the sisterhood accountable so like I don't want to divert from the very particular problem of men's violence but the accountability movement has also I think filtered down into feminism in a way that was not happening to this extent prior to when I say was not happening not that women of colour were not trying to hold the feminism to account because that's been happening since there was feminism you know so journer truth like over years ago was holding feminists still count but the platforming of this conversation that accountability has actually become a theme within feminism that is circling around itself and going around in feedback loops I think is really positive and I think that also like where we are like when I first started writing the book on domestic abuse I was writing the chapters on policing and on the courts and back then a lot of the media reporting on police responses to domestic abuse were pretty Positive there was a sort of a quid pro quo if you give positive coverage you're going to get another ride-along. A ride-along gives you proximity to the action ride-along for people who don't know is where journalists literally go out with the police and attend these call outs and makes for good copy makes for good television and I'm not suggesting that journalists have just sold out for this but that level of access was something that people were seeking because they wanted to show what domestic violence looked like and there's not many ways to do that aside from going on a police ride along and seeing just after the moment of crisis or right inside the moment of crisis but and I had also been guilty of this is in preferencing that I had internalized sort of the point of view of police because they'll always take you out with the police who are the progressive ones and who are doing the best jobs they're not taking you out with the guys who are getting the complaints against them I found it quite not uncomfortable I don't have a problem with challenging police but it was a thing that i had to do to get out of that old mindset and to do something that wasn't being done so much back then now since then and I'd say really with the coalescence of MeToo and the Black Lives Matter movement police have come under incredible scrutiny but Police the courts the family courts our politicians this whole thing of accountability that that really was generated by MeToo and the rage about particularly about Donald Trump being elected despite or even because he had come out so overtly as a misogynist and a racist to name just two of his problems that I think it it reminded people what was at stake if we do not hold these institutions accountable if we coast in that way again you know none of this stuff MeToo doesn't operate in a vacuum MeToo has been very much affected by Black Lives Matter it's been affected by a number of different intersecting movements and obviously the political climate in general in different countries it shows up in totally different ways depending on which country it has taken off In really when we're talking about MeToo we're talking about a particular movement about sexual violence and sexual harassment and women's mostly women's safety and the safety of non-binary people but generally speaking this is all happening inside various systems that within which there are feedback loops and things that are changing the way that we come at it and I think the most hopeful thing I've seen about International Women's Day today has been it's like we've been talking for long enough about gender equality talking for long enough about men's violence to now feel comfortable enough or be and when I say feel comfortable enough we're being pushed by women of colour to address racism to foreground racism and those voices are being platformed I think in ways that that we haven't seen in years previous that's what a sophisticated conversation provides the space for but women of colour are still having to take It it's not just being given to them. They're still having to fight and argue for it and to cajole and to make women like me white women uncomfortable about their role in this that's the job that I think is the next phase of this and building more into that conversation and still speaking of Language. [Professor Saba Bebawi] What do you think are some of the movements strategies to hear and engage audiences across spectrums and intersectional experiences and also respond to them [Jess Hill] I'll start with the political spectrum because I did write about I wrote briefly about Nina Funnell’s #letherspeak movement which I think a campaign not really Movement it was a campaign to change laws and to educate people in Australia around sexual violence and being able to disclose in public and I thought Nina Funnell really understands someone who's worked at the grassroots often does that change doesn't just happen simply because it should or because it's fair or that it's deserved you know and it can't be just pushed through with blunt force it has to be strategic and what i thought was brilliant about Nina's letherspeak campaign is probably the same thing that others might find distasteful and that is that she ran it in the news limited newspapers this is a campaign for and about victim survivors of sexual violence not a natural fit with news limited tabloids but what she did is she knew how important it was to use this as a teachable moment and as she said you know when every time there'd be a shift in the law or the campaign would have another win she'd use that as an opportunity to platform that particular survivor and there were one of six there were survivors and use it to educate the readership on what that particular survivor had come up against so whether it had been barriers for being disabled for being Trans for being you know whatever it is that they had experienced now as she said news limited readers generally were not going to be interested in just stories about sexual violence packaged in that way but the reason why it was so successful as a campaign and so popular was that she didn't frame it as an issue of sexual violence she framed it as an issue of freedom of speech and news limited readers are very activated by freedom of speech issues so that meant that you know conservatives who would normally resist that kind of messaging was suddenly being engaged as well and that's the point sometimes I think the women's movement perhaps when we talk too often just to ourselves or to the choir we can get sort of trapped in shoulds and feeling and I know when I started writing my book part of it there was an emotional block I had to get past which was like you should all eat your vegetables you know I'm eating the worst vegetables you can just have two beans you know but that's really not a helpful approach because actually no one has to read my book no one's holding a gun to their head I have to make it something they can't put down and that was the strategy that I tried to do which is you know not a guaranteed strategy but it was something that I worked very hard at and i think Nina opening that up to such a broad political spectrum was a stroke of genius in terms of like intersectional work you know like as I said like Tarana Burke's grassroots movement for young women of colour was very much about connecting communities and doing that work on the ground and of course that has you know that continues as it always has in Australia in various communities I'd say MeToo has not been successful in appealing to intersectional experiences generally speaking it is trapped. even as we kind of move out of the trap the ideal victim which previously has been the victim who cries but doesn't cry too much you know preferably white middle class you know someone you can have sympathy for maybe someone with obvious bruises you know or someone who can prove what happened to them beyond a doubt where there were Witnesses there's a lot of things that have gone in to create the ideal victims such that it actually only covers a very small number of People particularly they should not be angry that is not an ideal victim's type of behaviour now that kind of ideal victim has been overturned but we kind of have replaced it with another now which is you know white not necessarily middle class because you know Grace Tame is not middle class she came very much from the working class and you know her mannerisms and everything are very much representative of that and she's not shy about that but I guess that kind of able-bodied you know approaching and people that we like to look at we don't have a problem with them being angry so much anymore but yeah there's there's still a quite a narrow paradigm but I think also it's difficult it will change so you know I think back to what things were like when we had like the only models you'd see were size six or size eight and now how that's changed and how we now have plus size models we have a greater diversity of cultural backgrounds all that sort of thing and how that took some really you know that had to be it was done consciously it had to be disrupted you know we had to see that that was our problem that we didn't have enough diversity and then that had to be disrupted by brands and by you know fashion designers who were brave enough to do that so i think we're probably on the way to doing that it's no surprise that I mean like when you think about this is the ideal this whole ideal victim paradigm and the notion of even investing victim survivors of sexual violence with power with cultural status expertise that is for western societies or western cultures very new and you read stories like this recounted from Indigenous societies one in particular an Ojibwe I think Ojibwe woman who was raped by a neighbouring group returned to the tribe and was revered as a warrior and a medicine woman and her experience was the what she was subjected to and what she survived was central to what she became and became known as in that group I don't remember a time in the last years of western civilization when that has been the case for victim survivors of sexual violence who've either at best been pitied at worst pathologized blamed ignored disbelieved etc. It's not really it's not surprising that the public in making this massive leap to seeing victims are not only giving many victim survivors the benefit of the doubt but like raising a few victim survivors to icon status that they have done that in that old prism of you know preferencing white able-bodied you know attractive women that's not a surprise but now yeah the push is on to expand on that and to be like how do we actually get that same public fascination and attention not just like you've got to get the public fascinated in it right they're fascinated by Grace Tame they're fascinated by Britney Higgins they you know you can't just say you should watch people from all backgrounds we have to make we have to find a way to make them fascinating so that's and I know that sounds I don't know cold or harsh or like it's coming through a media lens but honestly a big part of my work has been to try to figure out how to make domestic abuse fascinating you know that's actually what we have to do as storytellers or as journalists you know if we want to get the public to pay attention to stuff that they don't want to pay attention to we need to make it fascinating so that's what I'm wondering about how do we do that how do we shift this now forward so that it doesn't get trapped in another paradigm [Professor Saba Bebawi] that's really a fascinating point I might just pick a bit further on this Jess and you've written that and I'll quote ‘it's no coincidence that here and overseas the MeToo landed so powerfully in two fields entertainment and judiciary there are two of the most influential parts of our Culture one establishes dominant cultural narratives and the other decides what is socially permissible’ end quote so these are highly visible and high profile industries and spotlighting them prioritizes the experience of privileged women building on what you've just said how can we harness that same energy and scrutiny across all industries and institutions [Jess Hill] yeah it's a good question and just before I like as that second part of the question I think it has spotlighted more privileged women as a point out in the essay a lot of the women who have been MeToonor you know who have become high profile actually did not do so with that with any with their consent so their stories became public actually largely against their consent um in various ways where they were outed for political gain you know in the in the Geoffrey Rush case for example because a newspaper wanted to have a scoop and a front page and didn't want to do the work to actually back it up so while it has prioritized the experiences of privileged women those women themselves have been extremely disadvantaged by the spotlight that was put on them and it is actually quite unique about the Australian situation just how few women who were written about in this context did so of their own volition the other thing I just say is that even though it's put the spotlight on the women because of course we need a narrative and we need to hear about the actual people involved I'd say that the actual focus on these industries wasn't really driven as much by concern for the women although that's not totally you know insubstantial but more for the integrity of the institutions they were working for and the influence of them so in the judiciary particularly the shock to people who were not already you know aware of it which was apparently most people within the judiciary and the judicial profession that you know someone like Dyson Heydon could be so predatory and known to be so predatory was largely connected not to the just you know up and coming you know graduates that he had harassed and turned off working in the law but the fact that somebody in that position could be of that character was a paradigm shift for people in entertainment I mean it's obvious because these are people that for a lot of people are either heroes or you know occupy a myth-making part of the of Australian culture and have and the people who are really having a huge influence on the cultural narratives that we hear or don't hear you know so that and not to mention the fact that I mean in the arts and entertainment industry outstrips all other industries by a country mile in terms of the prevalence of sexual harassment and that's for both men and women so it's and respectively um i think it's women and men slightly higher for men who have been sexually harassed within the arts and entertainment industry like you know we were very upset by the idea that a third of I think women speaking working in federal parliament had experienced that and I would never be I would never like endorse politicians applying a water battery lens to you know a moment of their own accountability but like the fact is it's a bit rich for the media to be sort of saying well that's terrible isn't it you know they really need to do something about their workplace like you know our workplace is the worst so that's why those high-profile industries were also spotlighted but how can we unharness that same energy and scrutiny across all industries and institutions that's what the respected work inquiry did that's why respect at work was so necessary it was supported by kelly O'Dwyer a coalition minister who was very invested in in this type of I'm in seeking progress across all industries and obviously Kate Jenkins who has been I think one of the best sex discrimination commissioners we've ever had who has taken this moment and leaped on it ensuring that this does not just become a cultural flashpoint that we refer back to with interest in decades to come but is a moment when these reforms got better down the respect at work inquiry and the way the recommendations which have to be taken as a whole cannot be sort of sliced and diced in the way that the government has tried to do if we just look at that central recommendation the positive duty for employers to prevent sexual harassment from occurring what that's saying is to put sexual harassment on the same par as workplace injury in terms of their responsibility to prevent it from happening in the first place and for so long you know for decades the unions had to fight tooth and nail just to get employers to take responsibility for their workers on-site so that they didn't get electrocuted or you know an arm cut off by a factory implement you know those sorts of gains were made at a time when there was very little interest in protecting workers rights they had that had to be gained through decades of hard work and what Kate Jenkins is saying is that this should not be we shouldn't actually be spotlighting women at all we shouldn't be waiting for victim survivors to have to come forward and complain you know we should be pre like we should be preventing it from happening and here's how we can do it and I think I read the respect at work inquiry cover to cover it both [ __ ] so excuse my French but horrified me and I am not easily horrified having been knee deep in quite a lot of horror for a long time but it was a new level of the sorts of things that people are being subjected to in workplaces across Australia but the extent of the recommendations and the application of that whole of systems thinking as to how to change workplaces in Australia is incredibly impressive and does I think hold a real key just like Susan Ryan's incredible pioneering work in getting the sex discrimination act up in the s holds such a key to us being able to really see movement on this so that women do not have to be that no women's experience needs to be held up as the fodder for why we need to change anymore [Professor Siba Bebawi] thanks Jess the questions are building up at the Q&A and I still have several questions I might squeeze in one last question and we can go to Q&A to give everyone a chance because we've got just around minutes left In essence do you believe that this movement can be sustained and what does it mean to be successful in fighting for accountability and gender equity in our institutions? [Music] I keep on being surprised at how the level of the movement is sustained really since I was sort of which is when Rosie Batty was Australian of the year and domestic abuse became a front page issue you know freely for the first time I've been sort of waiting for it to wane and it just hasn't I think for it to be sustainable it needs to it needs to evolve and I think it is evolving a little bit kicking and screaming but it is evolving where we need to see the intersecting patterns not only between like MeToo and the women's movement more broadly but racism sustainability and climate change. The issues around the abuse of children these are all intersecting issues it's very important that we learn to talk about these as you know as independent systems but working within a whole so that we don't have one conversation suck the oxygen out of others because at the moment you know I get concerned that the conversation about gender equality sucks the oxygen out of the conversation about climate change there's no reason why we shouldn't actually be dealing with both in fact the you know the official theme for today is about gender equality for a sustainable future very much about how this what we're doing with gender equality what we're doing with trying to achieve better racial equality is about actually not just cutting emissions which is obviously urgent not just doing the things that scientists are saying we urgently need to do to stop runaway climate change but changing the very systems that created this problem in the first place that's where I think that this movement needs to expand into I have every hope that is going to happen there are a lot of skilled people both who've worked in it for decades but who are also coming to it anew and afresh especially young people who can think in this much more broader intersectional way and I hink that it will be with us for some time to come great thanks Jess I'll move on to the questions and I'll try and accommodate as many as I can and as Verity said at the start we'll go through the most voted questions first in fact the one that's most voted comes from Melinda and it's in relation to what you've just talked about with one conversation taking over the other so Melinda asks can you comment on the dynamics that seem to still be in play where the counter movements to women's rights safety/ justice seem to still be so overwhelmingly powerful in our thinking societal approaches and she says here I'm thinking of how quickly and deeply the #notallmen angle seemed to take the wind out of all the sails of the MeToo movement [Jess Hill] yeah iit's hard because backlash has always been a counter movement to feminism since it began it is supremely uncomfortable for men to for not all men see what I did there it's like just waiting for you in there but it is like mostly supremely uncomfortable to have these conversations day in day out especially when those conversations are reasonably new if not just for this generation but the I mean the thing is it's tricky because anger has been the anger and rage you know has been the propulsion fuel for MeToo a great deal of its power and yet and this is where i think Tarana Burke is also just such a great lodestar you know anger and rage doesn't take us to where we want to go in the end we're not like getting together to chuck men off cliff do you know what I mean like it's not you know we or I think what we haven't really come to is an understanding of how can we collaborate with men on this I know maybe we've not been angry enough for long enough i don't know it's hard to know it certainly needed the propulsion fuel to get us you know going again can we trust men to come into this movement and not try to take it over there's all these sorts of questions but I think a lot of guys it's you know it can feel disempowering for some men who feel like well maybe it's better if I just shut up and then they maybe get sort of criticized for shutting up and not standing up and I think there's a lot of confusion as to what we want how we want men to be in this conversation and in this movement I think it's always been thus male feminists from the s to talk about that same thing seen as a gender traitor by other men but sort of looked at with suspicion by some women in the women's movement as to like what do you really want or what are you covering for you know because as we've seen plenty of guys have used things like white ribbon and other organizations to cover for their own violence you know so it's not without reason so yeah I don't know I I'm not sure I think that we will probably get better and more sophisticated at speaking about Men I hopefully will attract more sophisticated and intelligent men to this movement that I think is growing in Australia to really be able to speak to men about this so that it's not just women speaking to men or women speaking to women so yeah that but that does need to develop I don't think we've landed there yet [Professor Saba Bebawi] great I've actually just looking at the next three questions and they're still related on the men's perspective so I'm going to read them out if you just want to respond if there's something you think you haven't still addressed so the first question is are we doing enough to co-opt our brothers on women's issues or alienating them the second question do you think that between brackets most men support gender equality or are we just kidding ourselves will it always be reformed by kicking and screaming and the third question how do we call men out on supporting sexual violence by their behaviour if their behaviour is not called if they're not calling it out themselves so for different aspects but yeah [Jess Hill] yeah and it's good I'm glad to see that there's um there's such emphasis on non-men too because that's I agree that's where it should be I think that so are we alienating them men are you know just like women a very diverse group I think a lot of men have woken up to the reality of what women live with in a way that they were not aware of prior to MeToo and I and including men who would have counted themselves as feminists just had not been aware of it just was not of interest to them and they would and that yeah etc so that has happened are we also alienating some men yes yeah i think that there's but there's a general sense at the moment where in on various social issues you can put a foot wrong and there can be quite a lot of heat that can come back on you may be deserved maybe not so deserved you know and where people who feel like they don't know the language and how to speak about these issues can feel a bit nervous about sort of like talking about them at all which can lock out people who are not politically correct or those are not politically correct are not schooled on all the potholes you know um and are coming at this as people who are a bit more clumsy in this area and so probably in order to not alienate them we need to be just a little bit more forgiving if people who aren't sort of like skilled orators in this area and who may make mistakes so do we have the capacity to forgive people for making mistakes that's I'm not sure at the moment that we're great at that what were the other questions again it [Professor Saba Bebawi] was are you just here we go do you think that most men support gender equality or are we just kidding ourselves [Jess Hill] I think there's a difference yes so I think there are probably all sorts of different men here men who support gender equality and will actually do something to achieve that or put something on the line or even sacrifice something there are those men they're probably more in the minority lots of men who support gender equality as long as it doesn't affect them you know lots of men who support gender equality up here and who go home and control their partners also just saying but I think the argument for gender equality is so blindingly obvious now we're not having to come up against the same sort of stuff that we had in the s where women are physiologically incapable of being in certain positions or you know like there was a lot of you know pseudoscience used to explain why the world was the way it was now it's like oh it's there's nothing there's no scaffolding for that to hang on I think it will there'll be less kicking and screaming as we go along because actually women are more and more in positions of power so we're not just like begging from the street for crumbs from the masters table anymore you know we are appealing often to other women in power to use their power to achieve better outcomes for all of us and obviously we are still appealing to some men in power but we're also saying well we are going to be much more unforgiving if you don't lead on this and we'll use our votes and we'll in between that we'll use our voices to be quite forthright about that and there is power in that too how do we call out men on supporting sexual violence if they're not calling it out themselves I think is there I'm not sure what that question means but I'll just interpret it the way that that I'm sort of thinking and I'm sorry Julie if it's not what you meant I think that I answered a question like this this morning is that like intervening and being a being not just a bystander but someone who stands up in this area Actually needs you need a bit of education in how to do that you need education and how to do that in a way that doesn't see you then alienated from your friends if they judge you harshly for doing that there's a lot of yeah there's a lot more community education and discussion I think that needs to go on how to be an effective bystander but also I think there's a lot of concern from men that if they call out someone else that something in their history will come back to bite them and I've talked to men who work in this area of sexual violence and are really dedicated advocates who once MeToo came along literally like had to go back and ask previous girlfriends did I ever do anything that crossed a line with you because you have to remember a lot of what MeToo has shown is that often men and women are living in quite different universes as to what they consider to be consent what they consider to be respectful treatment and that what some men consider to be consent because they were able to coerce the woman into saying yes for other women feels like violation or even assault we are still very early days in being able to establish just a common sense of experience and a common understanding that we both live in the same world that men are gonna that men are going to be better at saying that when they are trying to coerce against the will the woman that they're trying to seduce that that's not just sexy Romeo and Juliet territory and that we don't need them to be like salesmen when they're coming on to us but that's a real work in progress but it's something that has definitely started under MeToo and my god like the level of consciousness among young men particularly around issues around consent and the gray areas and role in consent is light years ahead of where it was a few years ago [Professor Saba Bebawi] thanks Jess and I think that's a really great point to end our conversation on just remembering those distinctions and different universes that we live in I'm afraid we cannot take any more questions although they're all great questions we're slightly over time Jess thank you so so much for answering each question in detail and articulating everything it's been a pleasure talking to you and I also want to thank everyone for coming and especially with such a great turn up it's great on International Women's Day so thank you everyone thank you thank you Sarah thanks bye