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Tuesday, 16 March 2021

International Women’s Day (IWD) is celebrated around the world annually on the 8th of March and is a day to both celebrate the incredible achievements of women and acknowledge the work that still lies ahead in achieving gender parity. ECU’s thirteenth annual Edith Cowan Memorial Lecture to celebrate IWD was held on Monday, 8 March 2021 at the Pines on the Joondalup Campus and featured a powerful and insightful keynote address from Libby Lyons, Director of the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) and the Chair of the inaugural Science in Australia Gender Equity Limited (SAGE) Board.

ECU’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Strategic Partnerships) Professor Cobie Rudd commenced proceedings and introduced Olman Walley to lead the Welcome to Country, followed by an opening address from the Honourable Simone McGurk MLA, Minister for Child Protection; Women's Interests; Prevention of Family and Domestic Violence and Community Services. Ms Lyons then delivered her presentation in what would be her final International Women’s Day address as the Director of WGEA and this was followed by a question and answer session with the audience consisting of ECU staff and students as well as the wider community.

The 2021 global campaign theme for IWD is #ChooseToChallenge and ECU’s event provided the opportunity for ECU staff and the local community, to engage with Libby Lyons to discuss Australia’s progress towards gender equality and how a challenged world is an alert world. Discussions took place exploring the current breakthroughs for women and girls in the workforce, how organisations and the community are building inclusive workplace cultures and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the effect it has had on us achieving gender equality.Ms Lyons explored a series of themes throughout her presentation, beginning with quoting Edith Dircksey Cowan herself in her debut speech in the House of Assembly (WA) 21/7/1921, “I know many people think perhaps that it was not the wisest thing to do to send a woman into Parliament [even so] the views of both sides are more than ever needed in Parliament today”.

The well-attended event with over 200 people, and many more attending via live steam, was a celebration of how far women have come, but also a sombre reminder that progress towards gender equality has been slow. Ms Lyons stressed organisations need to ‘do better’ and to support the business case for gender equality, as for the first time a causal link for gender equality and productivity has been shown. The presentation finished with Ms Lyons encouraging the audience to use their collective voices, as she led a rendition of Helen Reddy’s song ‘I am woman’.

ECU strives for gender equality as both an educator and an employer. In December 2018, ECU was one of the first 11 universities in Australia to receive an inaugural Science in Australia Gender Equity (SAGE) Athena SWAN Institutional Bronze Award, with this award recognising ECU’s efforts in improving gender equity and diversity in STEMM in Australia's higher education and research sector. In 2021, we continue moving forward, towards the Athena SWAN Silver pathway, where work is now progressing to evaluate the actions we’ve taken and assess the real impact they’re having on ECU’s staff and students. Also, ECU was ranked in the top 4 per cent of universities surveyed for gender equality in the Times Higher Education Impact Rankings in 2020 and is recognised as a Women in STEM Decadal Plan Champion by the Australia Academy of Science.

Additionally, just last month ECU was named an ‘Employer of Choice for Gender Equality’ by the Australian Workplace Gender Equity Agency for the fifth year in a row. ECU continues to be the only University in Western Australia to have achieved this citation.

You can view a recording of the 2021 Edith Cowan Memorial Lecture celebrating International Women’s Day event here.

For more information about ECU’s commitment to gender equality, visit the ECU Gender Equality website or contact athenaswanaustralia@ecu.edu.au.