Women get greater share of Order of Australia honours for the first time

For the first time in history, more women than men have been appointed as members of the Order of Australia, reflecting a push from the community and Governor-General David Hurley to have equal recognition for the work they do in public life and the community.

Women will receive just over 50 per cent of the general division Order of Australia honours, which also recognise high-profile members including Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore, former Labor minister Jenny Macklin, and the late comic legend Barry Humphries, whose Order of Australia is being upgraded to the top-tier honour.

Governor-General David Hurley (right) with King Charles during a visit to Sydney during the King’s time as Prince Charles. Hurley has made a point of increasing the number of women honoured for the King’s birthday.Credit: Edwina Pickles

Crucially, the three highest levels of the Order will be equal male and female, or better, for the first time.

“We are very pleased we have reached the point of gender parity, but it’s not cause for pause,” Hurley said.

“We are not done. We have to keep working.”

While the governor-general does not personally choose the recipients of the King’s Birthday Honours – the highest accolade Australians can receive – his office oversees the 19-member council that chooses the honourees in a secretive process.

It has been a particular project of Hurley to improve the diversity of the awards, particularly when it comes to gender representation.

“We are not adopting a quota system at all,” he said.

“We are looking at the demography of Australia, and does the Order reflect our makeup … it is about making sure it reflects us as a country.”

The governor-general’s next focus will be on the representation of culturally and linguistically diverse Australians and Indigenous Australians.

Hurley admits many First Nations people are put off by the fact that Order of Australia honours are given on public holidays associated with our colonial history: Australia Day and the King’s birthday.

“I think those sentiments are out there, associations with the Crown and so forth,” he said.

The Order of Australia is arranged according to a hierarchy – the highest is the Companion of the Order (AC), followed by Officer of the Order (AO), Member of the Order (AM) and Medal of the Order (OAM).

The Order, founded on egalitarian principles in 1975 to replace the old Imperial honours system, has long been criticised for its skew towards male recipients, as well as perceptions it favours retired politicians and the top end of town.

Analysis by lobby group Honour a Woman found that between 1975 and 2016, 70 per cent of honours recipients were male, and 30 per cent female.

Since 2017 the governor-general’s office has published the gender breakdown of the different level of honours, and those numbers showed that between 1975 and 2019, women received 19 per cent of the top-tier ACs, 21 per cent of AOs and 24 per cent of AMs.

Women were better represented among the lowest “community level” honour, the OAM, where they made up 35 per cent of recipients.

The most recent report of the Australian Honours and Awards branch of the governor-general’s office showed an improvement in the number of women recognised, from 33 per cent of recipients in 2017 to 41 per cent in 2021.

The report notes that “the system’s great strength” is its reliance on nominations from the community, but that means “nominators must be aware of the system, be motivated to engage with it and be able to access it”.

“It stands to reason that if awareness, motivation and access are not equal there is an ongoing risk that results (in terms of nominations into the system) will not be representative of Australian society,” the report states.

Separate Sydney Morning Herald/Age analysis from 2021 showed ACs had historically been dominated by big names from politics and business, and were statistically more likely to be wealthy and live in affluent suburbs.

But in this year’s King’s birthday list, half the ACs are women and 52 per cent of the AOs are women. Women make up 53 per cent of the AMs. In the OAM category, women account for nearly, but not quite 50 per cent.

Pam Brock, 77, is being recognised with the Medal of the Order (OAM) for her services to the community as a bellringer at St Paul’s church in Burwood in Sydney’s west.

Pam Brock who has received an OAM for services to Bellringing. Credit: Duncan Wright

“I call it an art, but it’s also a hobby,” she says of her bellringing.

“Once it gets into you, it’s part of you. You hear bells, and you just want to be in there ringing them.”

When Brock began practising the art as a 19-year-old in 1965, it was rare for women to be bellringers.

“It was male-dominated,” she said, “mainly because the rector who put the bells in was a padre in the army and so he had a lot of male mates.”

Brock says she never contemplated receiving an Order of Australia because she thought you had to be rich and male to get one, and “I’m not any of those things”.

Professor Glenda Halliday, a researcher in neurodegenerative disorders based at Sydney University, will today be appointed an AC for her services to medical research, including her development of revised diagnostic criteria for Parkinson’s disease.

“It was an enormous surprise,” the 63-year-old said of the honour.

Professor Glenda Halliday in the Brain and Mind Centre in Sydney, is one of a growing number of women being recognised.Credit: Janie Barrett

Halliday was overseas when she received the email about the award and did not believe it until she got home and was able to print it and examine it closely.

“Then I felt enormously proud. It’s something I hadn’t ever thought would happen, and I’m very humbled by it.”

Halliday said she had not faced sexism in her career “that I noticed” but says there were “very few” female professors in medicine faculties when she started out.

“That’s changed, fortunately.”

Joan Graham, of Devon Meadows in Melbourne’s south-east, who fostered hundreds of children in 50 years, was also recognised with an OAM for her service.

Graham, who has four biological children, said it had been a pleasure “to be able to share and understand and give some love” to children as young as a few days old, some of them victims of abuse and neglect.

Joan Graham with some of her biological children and former foster children and their offspring.Credit: Joe Armao

Graham said she had learned simple things like providing structure and reading a bedtime story could make a difference to a child. She strove “never to judge people, always be giving, always be generous. There’s always someone you can help and always something you can do to help somebody”

Graham, who gave up fostering two years ago after having a fall and whose husband and partner in fostering, Brian, died in 2002, said the OAM was “very humbling. It’s just amazing.”

“I loved doing what I was doing,” she said. “I loved every bit of looking after the kids and working for the community.”

Carol Kiernan is the co-founder of Honour a Woman, a volunteer lobby group established in 2017 to redress the gender imbalance in the Order of Australia that has worked closely with the governor-general’s office.

“We are really pleased to see gender equality across all the levels, but there is still a need to embed these changes,” Kiernan said.

“Progress is not linear. Gender equality does not happen unless we measure it and report on it, and ensure we guard against conscious and unconscious bias.”

Kiernan says Honour A Woman would like targets to be imposed requiring 40 per cent of honours recipients to be male, 40 per cent female, and 20 per cent to be open.

The lobby group would also like to see committees established in each state and territory that proactively nominate women and people from under-represented groups.

Some states and territories, such as Victoria, already have these.

Honour a Woman also advocates for greater transparency around the decision-making process.

The makeup of the 19-member Council for the Order of Australia, which decides on the honours, has recently changed, with a new chair Shelley Reys AO appointed in October last year.

Shelley Reys is the chair of the Council of the Order of Australia. Credit: Michael Quelch

Reys, a reconciliation advocate and First Nations consultant, is the Indigenous person and the first woman to be appointed Chair of the Council.

The 2021 report of the Honours branch states that the successive governors-general had sought to publicly highlight the issue of gender representation in the honours, but notes “that public promotion of the Order is not the responsibility of the branch, nor is the branch resourced for it”.

Hurley said in December 2021 that the Morrison government did resource his office for two more staff members to help with the public campaign for more nominations, particularly of women and of Indigenous and multicultural community members.

Asked what he sees as his role in the contemporary discussion about Indigenous reconciliation, the governor-general said: “It is to encourage Australians to understand the issues and debate civilly, and make a decision on their own.”

Asked if he believed the debate had been civil so far, he said: “It is not for me to comment”.

With Carolyn Webb

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