A drive from the community and Governor-General David Hurley for equal recognition for their achievements in public life and the community has resulted in more women than men being appointed as members of the Order of Australia for the first time in history.
Just over 50% of the general division Order of Australia honours will go to women. These honours also recognize prominent members like late comic legend Barry Humphries, Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore, former Labor minister Jenny Macklin, and Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore, whose Order of Australia is being upgraded to the highest honour.
Importantly, for the first time, gender equality, or better, will exist at the three highest levels of the Order.
Hurley added, “We are delighted that we have arrived at gender parity, but it’s not the reason for pause.”
We’re still going. We must continue to work.
The King’s Birthday Honours are the most incredible honour an Australian can receive, but the governor-general does not directly select the winners. Instead, his office supervises the 19-member committee that covertly makes the selections.
Hurley has made it a point to work on increasing the awards’ diversity, especially in terms of woman’s representation.
“We are not adopting a quota system at all,” he declared.
We examine Australia’s demographics and ask if the Order accurately represents us. Making sure our nation is accurately represented is essential.
Representing Indigenous Australians and Australians from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds will be the governor-general’s next area of concentration.
Hurley acknowledges that the fact that Australia Day and the King’s birthday are recognized as public holidays in the Order of Australia causes resentment among many First Nations people.
He stated, “Those feelings, associations with the Crown, and so forth, are out there.
The Companion of the Order (AC), which is at the top of the Order of Australia’s hierarchy, is followed by Officer of the Order (AO), Member of the Order (AM), and Medal of the Order (OAM).
The Order, established in 1975 to replace the previous Imperial honours system on equal principles, has long been criticized for favouring male recipients and for giving the impression that it favours wealthy individuals and retired politicians.
According to research by the advocacy group Honour a Woman, between 1975 and 2016, 70% of those receiving honours were men, and 30% were women.
Women won 19% of the highest-level ACs, 21% of AOs, and 24% of AMs between 1975 and 2019, according to the governor-general’s office’s publication of the gender distribution of the various levels of honours, which began in 2017.
The lowest “community level” honour, the OAM, has a better representation of women, with 35% of winners being female.
According to the governor-general’s office’s Australian Honours and Awards branch’s most recent report, the proportion of women receiving recognition increased from 33% in 2017 to 41% in 2021.
The reliance on community nominations is cited in the report as “the system’s great strength,” but this necessitates that “nominators must be aware of the system, be motivated to engage with it, and be able to access it.”
The paper claims that there is a persistent risk that the results (in terms of nominations into the system) will only reflect Australian society if awareness, motivation, and access are equal.
However, 52% of the AOs and 50% of the ACs on this year’s King’s Birthday list are female. In the AMs, women make up 53% of the total. Women make up almost but only a tiny 50% of the OAM group.
Pam Brock, 77, has received the Medal of the Order (OAM) in recognition of her community service work as a bellringer at St. Paul’s church in Burwood, in western Sydney.
She describes her bell-ringing as “a hobby that I also call an art.”
“Once it enters you, it becomes a part of you. When you hear bells, you only want to go inside and ring them.
When Brock started honing her craft in 1965 at 19, it was uncommon for women to be bellringers.
She claimed that the environment was predominately masculine because the rector who installed the bells was a padre in the military and had many male friends.
Because Brock believed you had to be wealthy and a man to receive an Order of Australia, and “I’m not any of those things,” Brock said she never gave it any attention.
Professor Glenda Halliday, a Sydney University-based specialist in neurodegenerative diseases, will be named an AC today in recognition of her contributions to medical research, including the creation of updated Parkinson’s disease diagnostic criteria.
The honour, according to the 63-year-old, “was a huge surprise.”
Halliday was travelling when she got the email informing her of the award, and she didn’t believe it until she returned home and had a chance to print it out and carefully review it.
“I was quite proud after that. I’m pretty humbled by it since it’s something I never imagined would occur.
Halliday claimed that “I noticed” she had not experienced any sexism in her professional life, but she did note that when she first entered the field, there were “very few” female instructors in medical schools.
“Thankfully, that has changed.”
Graham, a father of four biological children, said it had been a delight “to be able to share and understand and give some love” to young children, some of whom had been the victims of abuse and neglect.
