Queen’s Birthday Honours: Higgins, Tame ‘gave women confidence’

Record female representation in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list may have been boosted by the wellspring of support among women for each other.

Peta Credlin. Picture: Aaron Francis

Record female representation in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list may have been boosted by the wellspring of support among women for each other after the Brittany Higgins and Grace Tame speeches earlier this year.

With women receiving 44 per cent of all honours in the 2021 list, up from 41 per cent last year, some high-profile female award recipients say Australian women may have been galvanised to action by Ms Higgins and Ms Tame.

And if they were too late for this year’s awards, given the long lead time, then they’ll be ready to nominate women doing great things in 2022.

“Grace Tame and Brittany Higgins have given a lot of women a feeling of having a licence to speak, and act,” said Coral Ross, chairwoman of the Australian Gender Equality Council.

Ms Ross, who became a Member of the Order of Australia in the 2021 list for her services to local government and gender equality, said this permission encouraged women to be more overt in supporting each other.

“We need to see women being honoured. You can’t be what you can’t see, and more recognition of women will snowball into more nominations,” she said.

Governor-General David Hurley said he had been actively pressing for greater female recognition in the honours list.

“I am pleased that this list includes the highest ever percentage of women,” General Hurley said.

“It is important that the Order of Australia represents the diversity and strength of Australia – for this to happen we need to ensure outstanding women, members of our multicultural community and First Nations people are nominated by their peers in the community.

“I am prioritising increasing awareness of and engagement with the Order of Australia amongst groups that have been historically under-represented. We are seeing positive progress and I am determined that it continues,” he said.

Grace Tame, the 2021 Australian of the Year, spoke about her experiences as a survivor of child sexual abuse in her acceptance speech in January, which prompted Liberal political staffer Brittany Higgins to speak publicly about her alleged rape in the office of a Morrison government minister in 2019.

Ms Higgins spoke at a March for Justice rally in March, where thousands of people of all ages came out to oppose sexism in all its forms across society.

Former NSW Liberal leader Kerry Chikarovski, honoured with an AM for her services to the parliament of NSW and the community, said those events had forced Australians “to look at how we as a community behave, across organisations and in parliaments, toward women”.

Ms Chikarovski said she was pleased the honours were moving closer to a 50-50 gender split because “there are an enormous number of women doing incredible things out there”.

Former Liberal political staffer Peta Credlin, who became an Officer of the Order of Australia for her service to parliament and politics, to policy development and to the executive function of government, said women had been “contributing to Australia for a very long time, it’s just that their contribution hasn’t always been recognised”.

Dr Elizabeth Hartnell-Young, co-founder of Honour a Woman, a group advocating equal representation of women in the honours system, said the 2021 political climate was ripe to press for equality.

“This is the year, if we are going to achieve something then this is the year to achieve it,” Dr Hartnell-Young said.

But simply asking people to nominate more women, as the Governor-General is doing, won’t shift the dial enough, she said.

“We need gender targets. And we need to stop the disproportionate awarding of the lower level awards to women.”

Former Western Australia state Labor MP Cheryl Davenport, honoured with an AM for her services to the WA parliament and the community, said it was great to see younger women “no longer prepared to cop it”.

“They have got a volume of support behind them now because of the gains made by the feminist movement over the last 25 years,” she said.

Ms Davenport is also a past co-convener of Emily’s List.