When seeing is believing
LAST week I was fortunate enough to attend “An evening with Hillary Rodham Clinton”. She is an amazing woman. As a lawyer, she dedicated her skills and her intellect to improving the lives of children by working with the Children’s Defence Fund.
As the United States’ First Lady, she achieved many things, including advocating for women’s rights. Her bold and famous speech at the UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995 and the phrase, “human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights”, is part of her significant legacy as someone who has her own views, is a feminist, humanist and has used her position for the betterment of others, particularly women.
In her speech last week, she addressed many topics.
The Q&A with Julia Gillard, included discussion about gender equality, the importance of diversity around the decision-making table and the role of gender in her defeat in the race to be President.
The examples used when discussing gender in her political defeat were carefully chosen and backed by fact.
It was forensic and brutal and difficult to hear. If gender is still an issue for Hillary, then all of us are still vulnerable.
On the drive home from Melbourne last week, I reflected on the evening.
As an outcome-focused person I wanted Hillary and Julia to provide me with a solution to gender inequality or, if not, at least a “to do list” we could all enact in our day-today lives to bring gender equality closer, not only for our benefit but for the benefit of our children.
The disappointing part of the evening was that it left me with many more questions than answers and certainly no “to do list“. To be fair, they never promised one.
One of the themes that stayed with me from that evening was that for people to “be it”, they have to “see it”. More specifically, if we want a female President of the United States, we need more women in politics and more leaders coming through — and when one of these women does become President, little girls everywhere will “see it,” which will tell them that they too can “be it”.
In short, role models are essential in all of our lives.
A role model makes your dream or ambition seem achievable by virtue of their own reality in having themselves achieved it.
You may never meet them — and in some instances I am sure it is preferable that you don’t — but their existence is proof that you can “be it” because you can “see it”.
In the Australian context, the day Julia Gillard became Prime Minister was the day a friend’s daughter, who was six at the time, jumped up and down in her living room and screamed to her mother that “a girl is the boss of Australia”.
That little girl may never meet Julia, but she still wants to be Prime Minister and for her and many other little girls in Australia, they have now, by virtue of Julia’s achievement, “seen it” and can now, in their own minds “be it”.
The recent professionalisation of women’s sport has had the same effect.
My son Harvey, like many other boys his age, wants to be an AFL footy player when he grows up.
He has generations of men before him to look to. They tell him by their very achievement of his goal that he may one day also “be it”.
My daughters are, however, the first generation of girls who, in the context of AFLW, cricket or netball, have a group of professional sportswomen to look to.
If they want to “be it” they can now “see it”.
It is thrilling to watch them have sporting role models such as Sharni Layton, Katie Brennan and Ellyse Perry who, by their achievements, make our girls’ dreams possible in their own minds.
Whether it is politics, nursing, physiotherapy, law or sport, we all need role models to show us the way. Their triumph sparks a belief in us that we too can make it.
Hillary told us that since her defeat, more than 30,000 women had undergone political candidate training in the US.
While she did not achieve her ambition to be the first female President of the US, it seems she may have inspired, by her attempt, an army of women to try to achieve their goal as well. Rachel Schutze is a principal lawyer at Gordon Legal, wife and mother of three. [Ed’s note: Ms Schutze is married to Corio MP Richard Marles.]