A woman's journey

I was very pleased to be asked to join a panel of women speaking at the local library about the accelerate action platform for women on this years International Women’s Day. It provided a forum for women (unfortunately we couldn’t get the men there) to discuss how we might all contribute to the movement that would see an acceleration of equality in our society. If the research is accurate (and there’s no reason to think it is not) women will achieve full gender parity in 5 generations time! That is 2158. The wait seems impossible, implausible and unbelievable. But of course, in any movement there is always a few steps back, several critical turning points and surges and wrong turns along the way. But 5 generations! (IWD 2025)

So what does that look like in my own personal history? What does the past 115 years in my own family, in the lineage of women mean?

I start here with my grandmother Hazel. She was born in 1906. By this time she had inherited from the women before her the right to vote and to stand for parliament should she choose. Thankfully the age of consent had been raised from 13 to 16 and women’s organisations were proliferating across the country. A time of change became a time of war and the effects of it were felt deeply in the small Tasmanian community in which Hazel lived. She had little schooling, but she worked in various jobs by the time she was 14. A few years later, and possibly accidently, she started her family. By the time she was 22 she had four babies under four years of age. And soon thereafter she became a single mother. There are varied stories and rumours as to where my grandfather went and why, but the story is not about him. It’s Hazel’s story. She had to work to keep a semblance of domestic civility and a roof over the heads of her children. But the care of the children fell to other members of the extended family. Hazel was not a well woman, physically or mentally. She was hardened by her early life, and struggled to be softened even when she remarried and had a wonderful partner to help raise her children. I have vague memories of this diminutive, demanding and rather frightening figure who grew a garden, drank too much and died suddenly of a massive coronary event at 61. I had no time to know her. I only know the history of time in which she lived. A war, the Spanish influenza, a time of change, a great depression and a slow movement towards true emancipation for women.

My mother, Patricia, was born between the wars. She was the third of the four children. She was one of the two who had to go and live with the parents of their missing father on a farm in Tarana. Mum said very little about the time under her grandparents’ guardianship other than she had to wear boy’s boots, it was cold, and she feared the sounds of the bush because the animals sounded like wolves (that did not live in Tasmania). Not unusually in my family she was a tiny human…there were many discussions regarding who had actually made it to 5 feet tall (152.4 cm). Her life had its own trajectory. Left school early and having little education she worked in factories as a machinist. One job included working in a mattress and quilt workshop, hefting heavy materials under manual machines with kapok stuffing floating around like clouds.

Patricia, despite a limited education was a smart woman. Sharp and a memory like no other I’ve met. She loved films (I was named after some movie star’s daughter) and reading. She read every day, almost till the last one.

She met her first husband during her first years of work. Married at 21, bullied and manipulated for a few short years and divorced after having to prove in court that the irreconcilable differences included his refusal to start a family. Later she met my father who had spent some time in New Guinea with the 2nd AIF. He had a back story too, but somehow, they found each other, had two children (my brother and me) and managed to stay married for 44 years only to be separated by Dad’s death. She followed shortly after felled by lung cancer which her doctor misdiagnosed as depression following bereavement. It was quite the misdiagnosis.

She remained herself until the end. Days before she died, she asked my what I thought was wrong with her. By this stage the cancer had spread throughout her body and nothing could be done. Given she was allergic to morphine she was given methadone. ‘They are turning me into a drug addict.’ Some of her last words to me.

She was born into chaos. Lived through change but never quite benefitted from everything that was slowly becoming available. I feel deeply saddened when I think of all the things she could have been but I’m equally proud of the kindness she showed everyone whose path crossed hers. She could make a meal out of scraps, and feed all who happened to sit at her table. We fought, we laughed, we concocted punishment for our shared enemies and despite our profound differences she only wanted the best for her kids and grandchildren.

And me. Born into an era of rapid change. Society was experiencing the second wave of feminism as women challenged traditional gender roles. Girls of my generation were told they could be anything they wanted…except if they wanted what men already had. At school girls were still doing cooking and needlework and the boys were off to the workshop to do metal and woodwork. Girls played girls sports, and we were only tolerated when we tried to join in the lunchtime footy games but couldn’t play for real. It was time where a girl could have the ambition and ability to take on professions and careers in male dominated spheres, but they had to work ten times as hard to get there. Life was a marathon, the hurdles and a steeplechase all rolled into one. But we were not a complacent generation. We had learned a great deal from our sisters in the previous decades. The 1970s were not only a time of bell-bottom jeans and platform soles, but it was also the age striving for equal pay, anti-discrimination for women and the first International Day rally for women. We were on the move. It had taken a hundred years to recognise that women were not second-class citizens and that we had a place and a right to be heard. More importantly we became a unified force. We were the sisterhood!

So it was with some confidence that I decided I could be a mother. Actually, there was no confidence…I had no idea but I thought if I read enough books and asked a million questions I might be able to do it. Firstly a daughter…Ellen.  And then a son…Patrick.

Both, hopefully, were raised to be kind, hopeful and optimistic people who would respect the rights of all genders. (And they are). I wondered when pregnant with Elle if the world would be safe enough for her. The Persian Gulf War started, the dissolution of the USSR began, Rodney King was beaten to death by police; there were floods, natural and human-made disasters and rallies for peace and the invention of grunge music! She was born into a decade of upheaval and further change. But it was also a time for women. The perpetual struggle for recognition and opportunity had almost been conquered. Young women and girls grew in a time of expectation of fairness and equality. A hard-won journey towards equality. And yet not quite there.

The rise of celebrity culture, size 0 bodies and toxic beauty standards all played out on social media were backward steps that diverted progress. The concept of toxic masculinity raised its ugly head with society seeing only nominal moves to equality. What I expected to be a tsunami of movement for my daughter slowed to a ripple that has culminated in the noxious slide to extreme right-wing attitudes that seemed to diminish the gains made by the sisters of the past. It has been determined that 30% of women have endured violence from an intimate partner or non-intimate sexual partner in the era that my child became a woman. Thankfully she is not a statistic. She has been taught by the women and men in her life that she is worthy of respect, opportunity, safety and greatness (should she choose it.)

Young women today have a greater sense of choice than Hazel, or Patricia or perhaps even I had. They are seen in all careers, have their own football leagues, study all facets of human knowledge, lead the world politically, spiritually and in business. They recognise the journey the sisterhood has had, acknowledge the stumbling blocks of generations past and look forward with a blindingly bright optimism. But what of the next generation of girls and women? What of the daughters to come? How can we accept that she, should she be born in the next few years, will still be waiting for complete, unequivocable parity? And her daughters and three more generations after that?

We have moved mountains in just over 100 years. For the future daughters may there be little to fight for. May there be much to celebrate. And let’s all work for accelerating action that won’t see women waiting another 100 years to be fully equal, safe in their relationships and communities and respected for the journey they have taken.

Each time a woman stands up for herself, without knowing it possibly, without claiming it, she stands up for all women. - Maya Angelou