Equality for women

I'm not a radical feminist. I've always been quite happy to be a woman, thanks very much. In fact I enjoy it. There are so many differences between men and women, and thank God there are, that I don't say men and women should be equal, but I do believe strongly in equality for women when it's a level playing field.

What's brought this on? Well, a couple of things.Firstly I heard a news item saying that women in Australia in many areas still earn less than men for equal work. Wasn't that meant to be fixed back in 1970? Obviously not. WA women are worst off with with the average difference being 26 per cent. This applies over many sectors while the health industry is a whopping 46 per cent. Now , how can this be justified? One of the often overlooked results of this difference means that women have less money than men to invest for their retirement, so they will be worse off in retirement too. Why should women be financially disadvantaged it this way?

The other thing that made me think was a contestant in my favourite TV quiz show, The Einstein Factor. In case you haven't caught up with it, it's a quirky quiz show with no prizes, contestants play for the glory of winning. It's hosted by Peter Birner a very droll comedian. Contestants choose their own categories and recently a very smart young lady named Kirilee( what a pretty name, I think I'll use it for a character in a book sometime) chose as her category the six wives of Henry the Eighth and that set me thinking. Certainly a king can't cut off his wife's head today ( I wonder if Charles ever felt that way with Diana?) but how far have we really come since the sixteenth century? After all, domestic violence is still alive and well, in Australia and in all the other countries that pride themselves on being enlightened.

It was not until 1893 that the Married women's Property Act was passed in NSW stating that 'henceforth a woman's property shall remain her own after marrige'. Before that everything a woman owned became her husband's property, leaving her totally dependent on him for absolutely everything and totally at his mercy, and the law always favoured the husband in cases of violence. (It was the injustice of this that prompted me to write my latest book An Independent Woman).

Even so women had to wait untilthe early 1900's to gain the right to vote, while in USA it was 1920 and in UK 1918,but then only to women over thirty.

There are still many parts of the world where women are unable to vote, while in Sudan a woman can be sentenced to flogging with forty lashes for wearing trousers.

We all know that here in Australia, in the majority of homes, it still falls to the woman to do the greatest amount of the household chores and child raising even if they both work. Maybe that will never change but I think a bit more equality is called for.

What do you think?