 Hello and welcome to the latest Loewe Institute live event. This is a part of what we are calling the Long Distance Loewe Institute in which we communicate our content and analysis online while we aren't able to do so in person. A warm welcome to everyone joining us from Australia and overseas. I'm Natasha Kasam, the Director of the Public Opinion and Foreign Policy Program here at the Loewe Institute. I am just delighted to welcome this fantastic panel today for our International Women's Day event to discuss women in the era of COVID-19. Professor Michelle Ryan is the inaugural Director of the Global Institute for Women's Leadership at the Australian National University, an institute founded and chaired by former Prime Minister Julia Gillard. She is a Professor of Social and Organizational Psychology at the University of Exeter and part-time a Professor of Diversity at the University of Grongingen. Professor Ryan focuses on leadership and the impact of gender in the workplace. Thank you Michelle for being here today. Thanks for inviting me. Professor Jackie True is the Director of Monash University's Centre for Gender, Peace and Security, a Professor of International Relations and Politics and a Global Fellow at the Peace Research Institute in Oslo. Her books, chapters and articles focus on gender and governance, violence against women and girls and peace and security. Thank you Jackie for being here today. Great to be here Natasha. So we are one year into a pandemic that has upended life as we know it, touching almost every aspect of our daily routines. Research from around the world has highlighted the ways in which the pandemic has disproportionately affected women and girls, including the higher rates at which they have lost employment or the workforce, the challenges they faced in accessing education, the degree to which they caring and household duties have increased, higher rates of domestic violence and the amount type and severity of mental health challenges that they faced during the pandemic. This time has really laid bare just how far the world remains from achieving gender equality, made even clearer by events here at home in the past few weeks and has arguably set back the movement even further. The United Nations predicts the pandemic will push 47 million more girls and women into poverty and drive 13 million additional child marriages over the next decade. But it may not be all terrible news. The outbreak of COVID-19 has also been a test of leadership. Later Hong Fingcha argued in CNN last year in April that female world leaders who currently make up 7% of the world's leaders were doing a disproportionately good job of managing the outbreak. In the cases of New Zealand and Taiwan, that prediction has really stood the test of time. And last month, the Lowy Institute ranked them first and third respectively in our COVID performance index. The pandemic provides countless examples of the different leadership qualities that women bring to problem solving and consensus making, qualities that will be crucial in solving 21st challenges beyond the pandemic. So Michelle, I'll put this question to you first and then to Jackie as well. You know, this year's International Women's Day theme is women in leadership, achieving an equal future in a COVID-19 world. I wonder if both of you could describe for me the way in which the pandemic has affected and informed the research that you do and how women have been affected considering this momentous theme. Yeah. So Natasha, you've touched on sort of some of the big changes and effects that COVID has had. And of course, what that does is sort of raise a whole number of research questions that really need to be investigated. So for example, what leadership looks like and who is doing well and who is perhaps doing not so well, but also really understanding why that is. What are the factors that explain that? Is it in the responses, is it in the framing of the COVID pandemic, of the crises and those sorts of things? So I think there's lots of nuances that we need to understand a new phenomenon, but also as you say, existing phenomenon that we already know about is being exacerbated as well. So it sets up new problems and increasing problems and in some ways really forces the issue that we need to find answers soon. So I think we're certainly looking at women's leadership. We're looking at how women deal with crisis and extending some of our original work on the glass cliff and women's leadership in times of crisis to help look at different types of crisis and different frames of crisis. We're also looking at relationships and how sort of domestic relationships might also then work in tandem with sort of workplace changes that the pandemic is bringing in terms of working from home and flexible working and those sorts of things as well. And we'll come back to some of those questions about the glass cliff and other research that you're doing. But what do you think, Jackie, on this issue? Big picture. How is this affecting your research? It's had a huge impact on our research. Natasha, being a scholar of international relations and with many colleagues in the gender peace and security centre, we usually travel for our research. So that immediately stopped and I think we immediately reassessed our research priorities and what we could do. And we could see we knew from our past research on the impact of the global financial crisis, on the impact of natural disasters, including the bushfires here in Australia, but also the Christchurch earthquake that gender-based violence would most likely be exacerbated in the context of COVID and the COVID pandemic restrictions. So we turned to research in gender-based violence in the pandemic and as part of something at Monash University called the Melbourne experiment where researchers came together from across the disciplines at Monash to actually look at Melbourne and the impact of COVID there as a kind of natural experiment. And so we started looking at the impact of COVID and the restrictions on gender-based violence, particularly domestic violence in Victoria. And at the same time with my colleagues in the gender peace and security centre, we wanted to look at the impacts in the Indo-Pacific region. What was happening is to women, especially in the most fragile and vulnerable settings, conflict-affected settings, settings already experiencing climate-induced natural disasters and so on. How were they faring in a situation where many services and support in those communities had to withdraw? And so in a way, it's been a really intensive time for researchers. And the early impacts of COVID, we were able to document the increasing incidents and the increasing severity of gender-based violence and not only domestic violence, sadly. And this has become such a serious problem that we've seen the United Nations coin this term, the shadow pandemic. Jackie, I might stay with you to just tell us a little bit about that and what that means before we go back to some of those economic effects of the pandemic. Yeah, absolutely. Happy to. So across the world and in every country in 2020, regardless of their levels of development and wealth, the types of governments or the social cultural norms, the restrictive public health measures to control the spread of the pandemic have increased diverse groups of women's vulnerability to all forms of gender-based violence. So it's been a striking universal pattern. And I think it's been amazing and illustrating just what a global epidemic violence against women is. So already with some of the early research by April last year, the head of the executive director of UN Women, Firmzili Malumbu Nukuke, and then later the secretary general, Antonio Guitara, has named violence against women as the shadow pandemic. It's the pandemic within the pandemic, whilst noting obviously that it was already at epidemic levels before COVID hit. And I think what was really important about coining gender-based violence as the shadow pandemic is that it went against the grain of all advice at that time by the World Health Organization and by many governments worldwide who were promoting a stay home, stay safe campaign as a way of preventing the spread of the pandemic. And yet what we already knew, and particularly from annual reports from the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime is that home is the most dangerous place for women and the most likely place for women to be killed and injured worldwide, even in Afghanistan, where you would think that would be happening on the so-called battlefield. The home is where women are targeted and killed. So confining women to their homes and allowing perpetrators to use controlling tactics within homes may have reduced the community's spread of COVID, but it actually increased the risk of violence against women and their children. I mean, that's just, it's so concerning. And when you really think about how many of these public health measures have had unintended consequences, women in the workplace, children who were receiving meals at school and not getting them at home, it's, you know, we're really going to feel the effects of this for such a long time. Michelle, I might come back to you on this. The Vice President Kamala Harris recently wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post where she said 2.5 million American women have left the workforce since the beginning of the pandemic and that this constituted a national emergency. What do you think this means in terms of recovery efforts? Why is it important that governments include a gender perspective when they're creating these kinds of policies and interventions to get economies back on track? Yeah, absolutely. I think what Harris is talking about really underlies the fact that the pandemic hasn't hit people evenly. And I would sort of add to that that it doesn't just have a gender dimension, but it also has a racial and class dimension as well. So if you think about who has been laid off, you know, it is disproportionately women, but it's also disproportionately women of color and working class women as well, who are more likely to be in the service industries and those sorts of things. So I think absolutely any economic recovery really needs to take that into account. A lot of governments have started coming up with recovery, but really targeting big business, right? So really looking at how we bail out particular organizations, how we support organizations. And of course, that's necessary. Those organizations employ people that need that support. But I think if we only look at that sort of level, we miss a lot that's going on as well. We also know that women are more likely to be self-employed, precariously employed. They don't have those contracts that can't be furloughed. So a lot of the activities that are already there, women just slip through the gap. So yeah, I would absolutely agree that any sort of intervention needs to look at those intersecting effects, not just for gender, but also for race and class as well. Well, and then there's also the issue, even if you are focusing on big business on the corporate sector, we often look at thinking about the positive impact of gender equality in terms of the effect it has on company profit. And so does it surprise you that many organizations are still slow to implement some of these equality initiatives that we still have to talk a lot about the economic upsides of gender? I mean, what about other reasons, moral emergencies and the other factors that we've seen come up during this pandemic? Yeah, I mean, I think that's a very good point. And I think a lot of the rhetoric around gender equality is at a corporate level often talked about in terms of the business case. I'm with you. I think I'm much more persuaded by the moral case for diversity and equality. I mean, I guess what it also really shows then is that issues of equality and diversity actually often get pushed down and away when there are other types of crises. So we're talking about how our research has changed. Actually, a lot of the work that we do with organizations on diversity, they've all just said, actually, sorry, this is no longer a priority. And actually, if you're not making profit, you know, the business case suddenly goes away. If you start talking about the moral case, then, you know, I guess it's less easy to shove to the sideline. But I think there's other problems with them with the business case for diversity as well, because it's premised on particular ideas that women will bring something different to organizations and that they will increase profitability. Now, that's quite a big burden to put on women. So not only do they need to come into the workplace, but they need to do better than men. They need to improve things. And why should they have to do that? Why can't they just come in and nothing changes? Is that not a big enough case to, you know, to put in for gender equality, for example? So, yeah, I think there's definitely a need for a moral case that should transcend a lot of these sort of economic arguments that I think both stereotype women that they will bring something different and innately different. And we could argue that they they may bring different perspectives and different ideas, different representation. But the idea that that suddenly has to turn into profit is sort of highly problematic. And I mean, I couldn't agree more. And I feel like we've all been in that position at one point or another. From your perspective, Jackie, have you seen the research that you do and the focus on preventing gender based violence? Has that also been sidelined as people worry about public health and economic recovery? Yeah, that's that's a really good question. I mean, I might answer it with regard to women, peace and security, which is the UN agenda, which recognizes the different impact of conflict and crises on women and men and tries to respond in gender sensitive ways to those crises. And, you know, we we did do research in the Indo Pacific region last year that we ran two surveys targeted at practitioners who were really responding, you know, who could be broadly termed women, peace and security practitioners, half of them were responding to gender based violence, but they may be responding more broadly to situations of fragility. And what we found is is something like, you know, close to two thirds had lost their funding. And and they had they were already having to to to adapt and to to become essentially, you know, sort of part of the effort to prevent the virus through, you know, promoting public health information and and and so not able to kind of tend to their kind of core business, but with with much less support. And so that was really concerning. And I think the UN, certainly the Women's Peace and Humanitarian Fund, which Australia substantially contributes to, did create some rapid funding mechanisms to address that situation. But of course, it you know, it doesn't replace the fact that those services were not in in the situations and just give one example there recently told to me by someone in in Colombia, in Latin America, that because of the, you know, sort of the the evacuation of not only the state, which is often not present in those vulnerable regions anyway, but of the the international NGOs and aid that women experience in gender based violence, they were not afraid of the pandemic. That was not their greatest concern. Their greatest concern was the militia moving into the community and the risk to them and their families as as a result of that. So, you know, in a way, our sort of single-minded response to the pandemic is if it's the only crisis going on in the world has actually meant, you know, as exacerbated other vulnerable situations for communities, you know, including women in them, who are already experiencing multiple crises. I think these kinds of unintended consequences, these stories behind the pandemic, we just don't hear them very much either as much as we know that medical resources are being diverted elsewhere. We know that a lot of this funding is being diverted elsewhere. And, you know, it's really, it's really kind of striking and shocking to hear how this is affecting communities all around the world. One way that I think people would expect better responses is through better leadership and particularly having more women in leadership. So, Michelle, I might come to you on this. You coined the concept of the glass cliff back in 2005 and we find ourselves in a crisis again. We can see Ngozi Okonjiowalia just two days ago took office as the first female and first African Director-General of the World Trade Organization. Human Rights Watch has just recently started a campaign calling for a female United Nations Secretary-General. Could you explain to us the concept of the glass cliff to the audience for those who might not be familiar and then give us a sense of how you think it's held up as we find ourselves in a new crisis? Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, the idea of the glass cliff, and as you say, we've been working on this for a while now, is looking at when it is that women tend to take on leadership roles. So, when do they break through the glass ceiling? When are they appointed? And what we found is that women are disproportionately likely to take on leadership roles in times of crisis. Now, the original research tended to look at FTSE 100 companies, so top companies on the London Stock Exchange, and showed that women came on boards of directors when those companies' share price was dropping. So, there was this initial finding. We've since seen that that generalizes in lots of different ways and can be seen in lots of different arenas. So, political leadership, sporting leadership, educational leadership, health leadership, all sorts of ways. And the idea really is that women are seen in these crisis positions. We've also done a lot of work to try and understand why that is. So, not just describe the phenomenon of the glass cliff, but to understand it. And there are a number of different types of explanations that we think happen simultaneously. So, a sort of positive upbeat description of what's happening might be that we see that women are particularly good at dealing with crisis. So, they have the traits and abilities that make them good crisis managers. But if we're to take a more slightly cynical view, and there's evidence for both of these perspectives, they're not necessarily the best opportunities. To take a leadership role in a time of crisis, it's more likely to be precarious, hence the metaphor of the glass cliff. Women are less likely to stay in positions for long periods of time throughout crisis. And I think it also potentially reinforces the idea that women aren't suited for leadership if you are more likely to see women in times of crisis. So, a perfect example for that is Theresa May and Brexit. So, a different type of crisis. You could see men running in the other direction, perhaps leaving her to flounder in that sort of position. And then what you get is this review of her performances being particularly bad. But yet whatever you think of Theresa May or Brexit, one's got to recognize that it's an incredibly difficult position to be in. So, that's the glass cliff. It could be both positive or negative. We've certainly seen how women respond in times of crisis. And you've said that women are disproportionately doing well in times of crisis. If you think of Jacinda Ardern or Tsai Ing-wen as well in Taiwan, you can see that their approach has been perhaps different in dealing with the crisis. But yes, certainly with the WTO as well, Konjo Auella herself has said, this is a bit of a glass cliff position. She recognizes that the WTO is in a bit of a crisis so that it needs reform, it needs change. But also at that time, so many eyes on her as well as she does that. So, it's a highly visible time of dealing with crisis, so difficult as well. So, I think there is ongoing research to look there as well, to look at how women fare or whether they fail, to look at how they're evaluated because part of the problem is, is to evaluate people in times of crisis is difficult. Is it their leadership that's you know, poor or failed or is it the current sort of situation and how you can take that into account. So, I think it certainly raises a lot of issues. But I think it also raises other issues about how we see the crisis. What sort of crisis is COVID? And I think one of the reasons that there's so many differences across different leadership responses is really how that crisis has been framed. And I think we see with Jacinda Ardern for example, she really has framed this as a social crisis and a health crisis foremost. And when she's making decisions about that, it really is about trying to minimize deaths. You know, that really is her primary concern. And you can see that. I read somewhere that as of a few months ago that women led countries had half the number of deaths controlling for size of country and GDP and all of those sorts of things as well. So, I mean the other option of course, and if we look at other countries such as the UK or the US for example, is prioritizing economic growth and recovery over perhaps, you know, health and social reasons as well. So, you can really see how the crisis is framed can also really change the response, but also change who is seen as good at leadership at that time. Is it a humanitarian effort? Do we need someone with compassion? Or do we need someone who can, you know, really face the economic crisis? Yeah, I think that's a really interesting question. And Jackie, you've done some really interesting research on this, you know, the way in which political leaders harness gender dynamics to further their power and their authority. I read last year in the New York Times, Nick Kristoff said, it's not that the leaders who best managed the virus were all women, but those who bungled the response were all men. Firstly, a particular type, authoritarian, vanglorious and blustering. I'm quoting here by the way. Boris Johnson in Britain, Jaya Bolsonaro in Brazil, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Iran and Donald Trump in the United States. Virtually every country that has experienced coronavirus mortality at a rate of more than 150 per million inhabitants is male led. So Jackie, I wanted to ask you in a research paper published yesterday, you really point to populist leaders as having similar aims to authoritarian ones in reversing gains of the feminist movement over the last decade. Could you tell us a bit about that? Yeah, absolutely. That's such a good entree. And I think, you know, you've really highlighted there, why do we focus on women's leadership rather than gendered leadership? And in fact, the failure of leadership by some really some really appalling hypermasculine leaders, and both in so-called democracies and more authoritarian states. And I think, you know, there is a remarkable pattern that we can draw, you know, looking at, you know, the leadership of Donald Trump of Boris Johnson of Rodriguez de Terte in the Philippines, you know, Erdogan in Turkey and even Putin in Russia. And, you know, I think one of the common, you know, the common narratives, the way they framed the crisis was in fact, you know, to ignore it, to ignore the human cost, to deny it, and meanwhile to stoke up fear about other problems, the Chinese, to blame someone else. And, you know, I think that and the impact of that type of, I don't even think we can call it leadership, the impact is has been devastating. And it will devastate, you know, many families, communities for generations. You know, people are talking about this as a crisis, you know, already in many countries more people killed than in World War II. And these leaders have not recognised that at all. And so if we think about leadership as being the ability just building on what Michelle has said, to turn a crisis into an opportunity, they've completely and utterly missed the opportunity to serve as leaders. And I think this is now the window. This is the policy window for women's leadership, because, you know, to the contrary, they have shown that you can be a compassionate leader and also a leader who drives the economy, that these are not antithetical. And that so called feminised leadership that is empathetic, is is compassionate, you know, is focused on human security is actually, you know, really powerful, it can generate a lot of public support, and even electoral support. So I think, you know, I just want to say that I think Ardern's leadership is outstanding. And whilst a small country, I think, you know, her leadership is really demonstrate in a way, although Michelle has emphasised both sides of the glass cliff, it's a counterpoint to the glass cliff, because I think what she's shown is that you really, you really can change the narrative. And this happened for her well before COVID. And so the article I just published with Karen Augustam in international affairs in the UK is really talking about the way in which she managed at the time the crisis of the Christchurch terrorist attack. And so, you know, what we saw there already is that what we have with the Trumps of the world, the detertees, the Boris Johnson's is what they tend to do is stoke the fear, they aggressively respond. So if, you know, in an often in a militaristic way, she did the complete opposite. She refused to say the name of the terrorist. She focused on the victims. She visited immediately the victims. She donned the hijab as a sign of solidarity and empathy. And she arranged a national televised commemoration and two minutes of silence. And then after that, she started working on the international stage with France and other countries to to address the social media companies in the way in which they amplified far right extremist movements and other things. And she actually also changed the meaning of the hijab from a meaning of female subordination to one of global humanity. And that is a powerful moment for a Western leader to kind of make that connection cross-culturally and internationally. So so much happened in that case. And then we come to COVID. Well, as she said, you know, who could be a prime minister and have, you know, have a have her first tenure in which her campaign to be leader was literally six weeks. And it was premised by the the leader of a male leader standing down because he recognized she would she would have a far better chance of making a government of winning the election. So it's a really unlikely male who actually retreated from power in order to, you know, to to give rise to a to a female leader. But nonetheless, her tenure has been has been marked by crises, but marked by growing public support. So I think what we can see now is that women leaders can command electoral support and they can lead differently and different leadership not only can save lives, but it can command impressive popularity and not just in a small electorate or constituency or country like New Zealand, but globally. And it can be part of the platform for the soft power of a country in foreign policy. And that's what we argue in our article. And I think this is this has implications for leaders and not only women leaders, it has implications for for all leaders worldwide about how they can lead in their own way. And in a way that is, you know, both effective and successful in terms of, you know, the typical in terms of security and the economy, but also in terms of, you know, really being attentive to the the needs and priorities of citizens. I think that's so interesting when we think about the way that her leadership has made international headlines and really resonated around the world. To me, this is because it is unusual to see this kind of empathy and compassion in leadership. It's unusual for a leader to take maternity leave. It's unusual for a leader to communicate in those cross-cultural ways. And yeah, I think the reason it's had such a global impact is because there's just hasn't been enough of it. So I'm really glad that you kind of explained that to us. I think it's a really fascinating case. Michelle, I want to ask you, as we're finally at the end of the at least first era of Donald Trump. And at the same time, we see the effectiveness of leaders like Jacinda Ardern, like Tsai Ing-wen in Taiwan. Do you think as a global community, we now understand more about the cost of not valuing leadership and competence in politics? I mean, I hope that that's a lesson that we've learned, you know, and I hope that that, you know, as as Jackie suggests, that that we'll, you know, there'll be these examples of great success, you know, electoral success, but also dealing with the crisis. I mean, I guess the slightly more cynical part of me suggests that, you know, as the as the crisis wanes, you know, as other things come to the fore, whether we can keep that momentum and we can keep that sort of view or whether that drops off. Certainly within the research on the glass cliff, we often show that women are appointed in times of crisis, they might deal with the crisis and do with it relatively well. And then when things start going on the up again, they're replaced by men. So it's called the savior effect as well. So what we don't want to see is that. So the idea that, oh, well, the, you know, the human side of the crisis is over now, we've got to focus on the economics and this person will be will be better. So I think we've got to keep that momentum and move forwards. I think it's also really interesting to look at how Ardern's leadership is seen more broadly as well. I mean, in the circles I travel in, it's seen as excellent, but it is very interesting to see say some of the media here or some of the social commentary where it's, you know, whether it's sort of propping up, you know, existing governments here in the UK, but saying, oh, well, anyone can do that on a small island. Oh, you know, they're etc. etc. So I think there's a lot of excusing of and sort of attributing away their good leadership to say, well, they're lucky, you know, New Zealand's a small island. It's so many people. It's not very populated. Of course, it wasn't going to be a problem. And then you go, but, but what about Taiwan? Pretty densely populated country, right? You know, very close to China. And then they'll say, oh, yes, but you know, they've already been, you know, they've had COVID outbreaks before. So they're just immune. So it's all a problem. So I think it isn't the case that I think that their good leadership is universally acknowledged. I think there are, you know, forces that play to really downplay their success as well as acknowledge it. So I think it's not just a simple model of look, this is brilliant. Let's put more women in power. I think what it also shows is that women are a credible threat. And we know that where a credible threat emerges that will also be stamped out. So, so yeah, so optimistically, it would be great. But yeah, I'm not entirely there. So sorry, Jackie, I can see you're trying to jump in. No, I think you're making some really great points. And I think you're especially seeking, it's pointing to the backlash that we can expect, you know, when you talk about women being a credible threat. And, you know, I think we need to be really prepared for that. And certainly we are sort of seeing that in Australia for sure. And, you know, we should be realistic of the fact that, you know, in the COVID pandemic, despite some of these great examples that we're speaking about of leadership, that women, you know, are just 24% worldwide of COVID task forces and committees that are making decisions about responses and recovery. So, I mean, that's less than a quarter. So the big picture is not great, even though, you know, if we think about who's on the front line response of COVID, and it's like three quarters women who are there, and yet one quarter in the decision making ranks. So it's actually really appalling because, you know, we really need all the leadership capacity we can get to respond to not only COVID but all of the crises, especially, you know, the climate crisis, which is the slow violence, the slow crisis that we're encountering. So I think it's really concerning. And then, I guess, you know, the backlash by those men who unlike Andrew Little in New Zealand who recognised he wasn't going to win the election and gave the leadership to Jacinda Ardern, many men are not of that nature. They're going to hold on to power no matter what. And, you know, we see that this week in Australia, they think it is their right and their entitlement to lead and that their leadership is somehow unquestioned and that there is impunity for whatever they do. So I think we need to be prepared for that pushback. And, you know, I think then that's an opportunity for collective leadership. And that's not something that individual women or men can counter. But it has to be a moment for, you know, for the broader society to lead. We might actually stay on that question of Australia before turning to questions from the audience. And I know we've had some questions about what's been going on in Australia over the last few weeks. But first, I just wanted to mention that the World Economic Forum's 2006 Global Gender Gap Report ranked Australia 15th in the world for overall gender equality and 32nd for political empowerment. So that was what 15 years ago. In 2020, this dropped significantly. We're 44th overall and 57th for political empowerment. So, Michelle, why do you think we've seen such a steep drop? Yeah, I mean, I think it's all it's often the way is that we like to think of progress as linear and upwards. But, you know, that is never the case. And I think it is very interesting to me, a real stagnation that we've seen on lots of dimensions, on lots of metrics. And as you say, of falling back, you know, taking away women's rights. So I mean, not just in Australia, but, you know, abortion rights in America, for example, representation here. I think some of it is around the idea that people think, oh, well, you know, the real discrimination is over. So now let the market decide. And I do think this very neoliberal attitude that I think is really pervading society and increasing in pervasiveness, I think is partially responsible for a lot of this. There's a lot of talk about meritocracy and about choice, the idea that, you know, overt discrimination is done with. So there's a lot of complacency now that comes around, well, women just choose. They prefer to be nurses than doctors. Women have the opportunity to become, you know, politicians, they just choose not to. So, you know, this is just the nature of things. So I think there is a lot of complacency that happens. But I think, as Jackie was saying as well, there's also great backlash. So where there are advances, you know, Julia Gillard, for example, when we look at our first prime minister, first female prime minister, a massive backlash against that, right? So it isn't just that, you know, oh, we've had our first female prime minister, that will open the door for everyone. I think there's a lot of things that happen there. One, there's a pushback against men to say, I don't think we want that to happen again. But there's also the idea of women who may aspire to political positions, for example, going, she actually suffered quite a lot of, you know, vitriolic evaluations. Is that really what I want? And I think this alongside of, say, what we're dealing with over the last couple of weeks in terms of issues of sexual harassment, of believing women about where women belong in politics and whether they feel valued, whether they feel safe, whether they feel believed, whether they feel, you know, that their careers matter as much as the careers of men. I think all of these things contribute to this backsliding, you know, and, you know, this thing. So I think it is a lot of complacency and it just means we need to work harder. I think we need to do more. I think we often don't see this gradual change as we let it happen, as we let women come through the pipeline, where we actually see policy changes, sorry, where we see change in gender equality is where there is policy change and legislative change. And I think where other countries are moving ahead of us are ones that are bold in that respect that have clear quotas in terms of women's representation, either in politics or in the corporate sphere, where they really are making clear changes instead of just waiting for it to happen. I think that's really interesting in terms of the way that those issues have progressed over time, but then that's sliding. I heard former Prime Minister Julia Gillard on a podcast last year on Shameless, where she was saying that in the 80s and 90s, there was this real feeling of upswell. And people really assumed that progress was going to continue on this trajectory. And one of the reasons we see so much frustration today is that not only has that progress slowed and stagnated, it has really gone backwards and people just don't want to wait for things to happen naturally anymore. I might, on that point, go to our first question from the audience and I'll put this to you first, Jackie, though I'd love to hear from you as well, Michelle. Jennifer Jacket from the ANU asks, how can we quickly or creatively regain some of the major setbacks for women during the pandemic, whether they be economic, social or political? What do you think? Yeah, that's a great question and it connects to the discussion you've just been having with Michelle in terms of how can we improve Australia's ranking on gender equality and why are we falling back? And I think it comes down to the structural enablers for gender equality and for women to have equal opportunity in the economic sphere, in the labour market, in careers and in politics in the public realm. And for me, that requires significant state investment and societal support for early childhood education. That is the most fundamental condition that is, I would say, holding Australian women and men back. In every country that has achieved far greater quality in the political and economic sphere have much greater support for early childhood education that lowers the cost. That means that women don't literally have to pay essentially a secondary tax and receive very little income for their labour because most of it is gone in paying for childcare, but also changing the narrative around the importance of early childhood education so that that's not solely the responsibility of the mother or even the parents is the responsibility of the society. As Hillary Clinton used to say, it takes a village. And if we look at New Zealand, we look at Canada, we look at the Scandinavian societies, they have really strong early childhood education. And it's about the quality of that care so that mums and dads feel really empowered that they can really have all the opportunities that they want to seek in the workplace and in public life and that their kids will be well cared for and educated. And I think at present, when there's a discussion of early childhood education in Australia, it's primarily about cost and that is really important, but it's also about quality of care. And that is crucial for gender equality in the workplace. And if we look at, you know, and this is not even my field, but I experienced it because I was fortunate enough to spend the first 10 years of my working life in New Zealand at a time when the government had a massive investment in early childhood education. So I was able to go to work and have my children in child care close to my workplace and feel very confident that they had the best care because there was a national curriculum, T-Farahiki. And it was focused on the well-being of the child and the environment and the society. And it was bi-cultural, multicultural. And so it wasn't just a question of cost. I felt that they were safe and that they were well looked after. And that's enabling for women. At the time, and this is the first New Zealand woman, Prime Minister Helen Clark. Actually, she was the second. She said she couldn't have been a Prime Minister and had children. And I remember a lot of us at that time were so disappointed. How could she say that? What does that mean for other women? Now, of course, Jacinda Ardern has totally changed that narrative. But what happened between Helen Clark and Jacinda Ardern is that Helen Clark's government actually enabled universal government-supported child care. And that has changed the gender equality in the labour market in that country. Now, Australia has not had that kind of policy innovation. And I would suggest that that is what needs to happen. I think all of the things that Michelle already mentioned are really important. But we've seen during COVID, we can do it. We actually created free child care last year. And look at the response. And I think we need to build on that. And we need to build on it now when we've seen that governments can actually make change happen. I think that my experience last year was really to realise for the first time that precariousness of child care work and the importance of having those child care options. I have small children. I was at home with them for much of the year. And I think that really resonates for a lot of people. Now, Michelle, I want to bring you in on this question of how we can regain from some of these setbacks. But I'm going to add another question from Asira Saleh from the Pacific Forum, who also asks how the pandemic has affected the perception of women in the workplace. Yeah, I think that I think that's really interesting. I mean, I'd certainly agree with Jackie in terms of what needs to be done. I would sort of add parental leave around that and shared parental leave. But also, you know, strongly mandated the way it is. It's not enough to just offer parental leave that either men or women can take because women just take it and men don't. There's a lot of evidence that shows that that's the case. In Scandinavia, they say if the man doesn't take it, you lose it. There's no, you know, just sharing it or swapping it between people. So there's real policy interventions that really force a hand of equality, which I think is important. I think in terms of other things that need to be done, and I guess how it's seen women, I mean, one of the things I would like to think is that there's more value placed on some of women's jobs. So I think women in the healthcare sector teaching, I think there's a whole lot of people that suddenly have a newfound respect for what teachers do on a day-to-day basis after a year of homeschooling, for example. So I think on the one hand, I hope it might change the value of a lot of women's work. But I think the other thing that we need to do is have a really clear look at what employment practices are like so that when we return to work and things go back to normal, that actually not everything just goes back to the way that it was. I think there's a lot of employment practices that we've been undertaking in terms of zero-hours contract, gig economy, precarious work, all of these sorts of things, that I think if we just go back to doing that business as usual, women are not going to recover in the same way. Women that have already had a massive penalty in their pay that they're more likely to be in poverty, that they're all of these sorts of things. So I think it isn't just going back to business as usual and giving everyone back their jobs. It's actually rethinking what that needs to look like in a way that we continue to value women's work. So I think in some ways what you can do is use crisis as a vehicle for change to say, look, we can go back and do things differently and use that as a momentum. I think maybe again that's a fairly optimistic sort of thing. Organisations will say, oh well we can't change things now, we're just trying to find our feet. But actually I do think it presents an opportunity for change. So you'll be unsurprised to hear that we've received many questions to put to you about what has been happening in Canberra over recent weeks. I was in Canberra on Tuesday and the sense of disappointment, fatigue, anger and dejection amongst many women was palpable. It's really hard to imagine an international women's day that has felt this way before. So I'd like you to think about and in addition to what you've already told us, how we can tackle some of these structural and institutional challenges that seem to result in these gender divides being baked into the workplace. Did you want to take that Jackie? Yeah, no and I also I think what Michelle was saying just now, like just in terms of COVID being an opportunity and for us to do things differently. And I think we've already, we've also seen the way in which all of our ability to work from home and online, how much that flexibility facilitates productivity but it also enables women and men to better balance their working lives and their family lives and that's really important. I think I think, you know, I do think policy change and institutional change is important, but I think it's driven by social movements and social change from outside institutions. And, you know, I think what's happened in a lot of liberal democracies, not the US so much is that, you know, the state has kind of co-opted feminist movements and we've become as I think Michelle said complacent, you know, and I think this is a moment for us to step back and say, okay, no, we've got to regroup. We have got to really put forward an alternative vision and we have lots of models for what that could look like and, you know, things are going to change because people are angry and when people are angry, then they're not going to accept incremental policy change or new laws. They are going to call for more major structural changes and I think this has been building last year when we saw a budget that, you know, didn't even involve any kind of, you know, you know, auditing from the office for women. We have a very weak policy mechanism to even bring a gender equality perspective into our government and now we have seen Australia having effectively our Me Too moment and our Me Too moment has to become a movement. It has to become a movement to stop the violence and abuse and in our homes and our workplaces and public spaces online and that is going to have to involve changes in every realm and I would suggest one thing that we start calling for is a well-being budget. There's a movement globally and unfortunately there was going to be a large conference of it last year organised by Scotland, Finland, Iceland and New Zealand calling for, you know, for this well-being movement and to shift the way we consider, you know, our societies away from the focus on economic growth and GDP to a focus on well-being of our populations. At the moment we see a whole bunch of royal commissions with a whole bunch of recommendations and it's unclear what is going to change and all of this has huge implications for everyone in our society so I'd like to see a movement for a well-being focus in Australia and that, you know, all government spending and certainly any new government spending must be addressing the quality of care for children, for elderly people, it must be addressing mental health and it must be addressing violence against women and stopping it and I don't want to see any more money from the public going to support anything that is not reducing and addressing and in fact eliminating those social problems and I think women are, you know, the majority of the electorate, they've shown themselves to be, you know, really swing voters and they've shown an ability across more than a century to organise and mobilise and certainly in Australia. Women in World War I were the ones who got out and opposed the conscription of men to go and fight a war in the British Empire so I think it's time for a social movement because I don't think that, you know, our current institutions are able to instigate the kind of structural changes that we need to secure our future. And I have an audience question that I want to ask you, Jackie, about women in protest, but before I do that, Michelle, is this Australia's Me Too movement? Yeah, I mean, I think it is but I mean, I think it's also important to say that, you know, what's happened over the last few weeks, it isn't just about sexual harassment and it isn't just about what happens in Parliament House, I think it's indicative of the issues that women face more broadly. So actually I think a lot of the things that Jackie is talking about, I mean, you could talk about do we need codes of conduct within organisations and things like that, but actually I think that's taking the issues too specific and I think part of the reason that women are feeling so much rage, you know, after yesterday, you know, I certainly woke up this morning to a whole day's worth of Australian news and I was candid most of the day. I mean, that isn't about isolating, I mean, it's partly about isolated cases, but it really is about things more generally about saying is this really what they think of us? Is this really what they think should be done? Is this an appropriate sort of response? So I think, I mean, it could be about a Me Too movement, but really the Me Too movement, I mean, in some ways that goes in waves as well. I mean, there was a lot of protests. There was a lot of hashtags. There was, you know, a few things that were done, but has anything massively changed? I mean, I think these social movements are important to raise consciousness, to galvanise for solidarity, but unless that actually turns into systemic change, to policies change, to legislative change, to societal change, then it's just venting. So I really think we need to capitalise on it and really push for change, not just for voice. Voice is all very good and well, but unless it actually, unless someone listens to that voice and responds to that voice, then it's just shouting into the wind. I think Grace Tane, our Australian of the year, made a similar point in her address yesterday. So I have one more question from the floor. This is for you, Jackie. Olivia Piri Griffiths from the Alliance for Journalist Freedom asks, in a region where democratic values are dwindling and autocratic and sexist regimes flourish, how can women rise above safely? And what is the role of women in protests that we've seen across the region in recent months and years? That's a great question. And certainly I'm really mindful of that, having been doing some work with ASEAN, where at present, there's probably only really one strong democracy. So I think, and all of my work has really been about this, is the power and the importance of transnational feminist networks. And I think that is crucial to bringing about policy and institutional change, the kind that Michelle's mentioning in situations and in countries where the political environment is really difficult. And so I think joining, and how that works, is joining up with movements in other countries who also influence their own governments to put pressure on these more recalcitrant countries. But it's also about a normative global campaign. And being part of that, and that that can be influential even to leaders, and they're typically male leaders, I would say, who they condone, for example, gender-based violence that might be widespread and systematic in their societies. So just to give an example of that, I think that is what the Women, Peace and Security Agenda is about. It is about changing the norms, the international norm, that countries that really are good international citizens should actually be addressing the gendered impacts of crises, and that they should have plans to do that. And they need to engage with civil society and women's organisations, for example. And I think that with COVID and having shown the problem of gender-based violence being one that's universal, albeit taking different forms, and that every country has experienced this type of violence, and that violence is being exacerbated in intensity and severity. I think this actually means that for authoritarian governments, for governments who think they can ignore the problem, they cannot. And that it's also not embarrassing or not losing face or to respond to it, because you're not the only ones. And I think that the fact that that's happening, I think that is an opportunity for women's protest within countries to join up with global movements around, for example, 16 days of activism against violence against women, which is November 25th to December 10th, and then the Women, Peace and Security Agenda being really key, and then also obviously a number of other key international norms. And to be able to use those to advance change in their own countries and to connect with other organisations and movements trans-nationally. And I think we can see there is increasing possibility for change, and I can certainly see it in the Indo-Pacific region, although there are some obviously really concerning situations there at this time. Now, we're just about out of time, but perhaps to end on a slightly more optimistic note, Michelle, is there anything that you're looking to this year, any particular woman, a particular factor that maybe gives you hope for leadership and progressive change in this time of COVID-19? Yeah, I mean, we've been talking about her quite a lot throughout, and I think, you know, Jacinda Ardern totally represents a great model of excellent leadership. So not just in terms of results, but in terms of the way she speaks, the compassion and the way she brings the country together in a shared enterprise. And I think what for me, I really admire about her is that she shapes and changes, you know, New Zealand values and society. You know, she's not afraid to lead, to shape an agenda. And I think what I see elsewhere is really, you know, you'll do a poll first and see what people say, and then you say that's what you want to do. There's a real inability to actually set an agenda and lead. And I think, you know, it's really shown that that works and that's just so impressive. So I mean, I know we've talked about her a lot, but for me, that's my big take home. Jackie, Michelle, it's been such a pleasure to host you both. I really am so grateful for how generous you've been with your time. This is just the beginning of a bigger conversation, and we're very much looking forward to you, Michelle, getting back to Australia as soon as possible. Thank you to everybody who's joining this event from Australia and online. Please look out on the Lowy Institute website for other events, podcasts that we have coming out. And in the meantime, I'd love to thank my colleagues, Madeleine Nist, Erin Bassett, Hannah Liza, Jennifer Reinhart, Andrea Pollard, and Josh Gooding for their assistance in pulling together the event. Thank you to you all. Thank you very much, Natasha.