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Cornel West speaks to a crowd during a protest against fossil fuels at Harvard University in April 2015. (John Tlumacki/Boston Globe via Getty Images)

Cornel West, 67, is a professor at Harvard University and professor emeritus at Princeton University, as well as an author and frequent commentator on issues of race, gender and class in American society.

There's been a real outpouring from people around the country and around the world in response to the death of George Floyd and others recently. Do you think this could actually be a turning point?

Well, I hope so. You never know which catalyst is the crucial one that can sustain the movement. The Rosa Parks moment. The Emmett Till moment. But there's good evidence that this could be a real pivotal moment in which people seriously wrestle with this legacy of white supremacy and other forms of injustice. The question is really: Where are we going? And whether America is even capable of treating the masses of Black people with decency and dignity. We might be reaching the real limits - the structural limits and the spiritual threshold - of a white supremacist empire.

The white supremacists whose sensibilities are being called into question by so many on the street, you know, they still got a lot of cousins. And once they organize, then it's a different thing. They got [lots of] white supremacist militia groups. And that's the ones with rifles. I'm not even talking about the ones without rifles. And Black folk, we ain't got none. So there are signs of great hope in terms of our precious fellow citizens hitting the streets and showing their deep outrage of a public lynching of a precious Black man. But once things settle down, that White backlash could set in with the neo-fascist gangster in the White House, and with his following - Trump [had] what, 65 percent of the White male vote, 52 percent of the White female vote? So, that's the kind of country we're dealing with.

Do you see a backlash coming from that coming as soon as November?

It's hard to say. It depends on who really decides to show up and whether, in fact, the milquetoast neoliberals in the Democratic Party can generate enough excitement so that voting for [Joe] Biden is substantive and serious and expansive. I mean, right now, it doesn't look too good. Biden just is charismatic as a dead fish in many ways. He's much better than Trump, but that's not good enough. You got to have somebody who can generate real enthusiasm.

I know you were a big Bernie Sanders supporter. Many of the issues he was talking about that people called outlandish at the time are now talked about by the mainstream candidates.

He reshaped the climate of opinion, there's no doubt about it. But the question is whether it's just lip service from the Democratic Party establishment during the election period. And they'll fall right back in. I mean, when you look at Biden's advisers, these are some of the most problematic neoliberal figures in both Clinton and Obama administrations. This is a new time, a new era, a new moment. You can't just keep looking back. As I've told people, I think we ought to vote for [Biden]. But that's in no way an endorsement.

You criticized President Obama, called him a "Rockefeller Republican in blackface" and a "neoliberal opportunist." How did your opinions of him develop?

For me, it's always a question of being true to the standards that come out of my own and our own Black freedom struggle. But when I first talked with brother Barack back in 2007, he asked me to work with him. I said: Well, what is your relationship to the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., Fannie Lou Hamer and Ella Baker? And we talked for hours. And it was an honest, wonderful talk. I said: This is wonderful, brother. And jumped on board.

But see, there's a connection for me between police crime, Wall Street crimes and Pentagon crimes. And once I saw him bring in the neoliberal economists - Larry Summers and others who had played such an ugly role in terms of unleashing Wall Street greed, repealing Glass-Steagall - I knew they were calling for the bailout of Wall Street. But when he brought in [John] Brennan as well, responsible for the torture, and then he allowed the torturers to go free. Well, how are you going to talk about torturers walking free and be critical of police walking free? They're still killing folk. Somebody's got to be accountable.

I raised the issue early on when he started hanging out with all those folk. I know politicians got to be politicians. I understand that's one lane that they're in. I'm in another lane. I said: Where's the talk about poverty? Where's the talk about the criminal justice system? Where's the talk about the new Jim Crow? Where's the talk about stopping these drones? Bush had 45 [drone strikes]. I'd call him a war criminal a zillion times. Obama's got 563, killing innocent folk. I've got to be morally consistent.

Everybody'd think: Oh, you must be working for Fox News. No, no, no. I voted for Barack twice. Because I'm against the right wing, but I want to be truthful about him. And when I was looking at his policies, I could see very clearly it was too beholden to Wall Street, too tied to the militarism of Pentagon. And did not address head-on the Black predicament. So I had to raise my voice. I said: We're going to need a Black agenda even with a Black president. Just your Blackness itself is not enough.

So did you ever get to have those conversations with him?

Oh, no, no. Sister Valerie [ Jarrett] put out a thing: West is a traitor, a race traitor. He's un-American and all that. I said: Okay, y'all. All righty. But what is happening now is that people come up to me and say: Brother West, I hated you. You were nothing but a trasher of Obama. And now I see exactly what you were talking about.

And I tell them, I never said that I hated Obama. Some of my critics did. I never hated Obama. You can't vote for somebody twice. You can't pray for his safety and protection against these white supremacist militia trying to kill him. Pray for him and his family. But I hate injustice. I don't care whether it's a Black person or a Black president. Or a White president. You got to be morally consistent.

So do you think this could be the election, the year, the event that really does force the United States to come to grips with the choices we have to make as a country?

I think it's going to be two moments. The first moment's going to be the election. And we just hope we can get through the election. Because Trump may either cancel it with the second wave of the virus or just claim voter fraud and refuse to leave. Then we got a serious crisis.

But the other moment is when the verdict comes down as to whether policemen [in the George Floyd case] are actually convicted or not. It only takes one vote on a jury in order to impede the conviction. And then it's very clear that the system does not have the capacity to reform itself. Because it's not just the police. Now it's the judges. And it's the prosecutors. It's the jury. You see, we've been through this before. I mean, how many times have we heard [Al] Sharpton talking about we're going to get justice, and rally after a precious Black fellow just gets killed? And he can't deliver. The system is too tight.

These killings went on by the hundreds under the Obama administration. And if you've got an Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch, these are very decent folk. They got a lot of power. So you got a Black president, two Black attorney generals, and Black homeland security [secretary], and Black mayor, and sometimes a Black police commissioner, and you still can't send these folks to jail. See, that's a systemic problem. That's not just individuals, you know? All that Black official power can't translate into stopping the police murders of precious Black young people. That's a system that is just rotten at the core.

Is it possible to transform the system from the inside, or do you think it needs radical overhaul?

If, under the Obama administration, they had made it a priority to transform the criminal justice system the way they made it a priority to bail out Wall Street, then that's a different kind of energy. That's a very different kind of focus, different kind of concentration, of resources and energy. Now, if they did that, and they had those of us on the outside putting pressure, and we still couldn't do it, then that's like a [Marcus] Garvey moment, right? Just time to get the hell out.

So, a collapse in the legitimacy of the system, in the legitimacy of leadership?

That's right. You know, Keith Ellison is [a very decent] brother. He's going to break his neck and do all he can. But he still might not be able to follow through. But, I think, at that point we have to come up with our own mechanisms of ensuring that we are not attacked. Not literally going back to Africa, but symbolically saying, we've got to really turn to each other and come up with ways in which we can try to generate goods, resources, self-defense and so forth. Because we have no other option.

Who do you see as being leading lights, or most exciting leaders, whether in academia, the arts, the political arena, who could inspire people to move forward and have the energy and enthusiasm?

That's a wonderful question. Because we just have so much mediocre Black leadership, just like you got mediocre White leadership. When you really look at the new wave of folk, they're not really that well known. You got Tef Poe in Ferguson. He's the co-editor of the Boycott Times journal with Mordecai Lyon. Phil Agnew, co-founder of Dream Defenders, is another. Sister [Charlene] Carruthers out of Chicago with the Black Youth Project [100]. All these are very important voices. Sister Ashley [Yates in Oakland]. Michael McBride, pastor of The Way [Christian Center], out in Oakland. There's always a very small number every generation of people who really love Black people. I'm not talking about people who love being in front of Black people. Willing to live and die for. You know, people like Stokely Carmichael and Huey Newton and Ericka Huggins. We're at that kind of point now. We have to have those kinds of persons of deep integrity and deep commitment.

As a professor, what do you see as the strengths of this generation, and things that give you pause?

The strength of the younger generation is the willingness to see more clearly certain truths that have been hidden and concealed. The courage to step forward. The willingness to be critical of charismatic models and be open to a variety of different people. That's why the multiracial solidarity that we see in the street is so beautiful, because the young folk grew up in a much more multiracial context and ideas.

The weaknesses of the younger generation, of course, is that they grew up in the most commodified culture in the history of the world. So there's something always very superficial about spectacle in a commodified culture. It's all about what's visible. What is projected. What your image is and so forth and so on. Just to give you one example, you can find a lot of the young brothers and sisters always talking about what they brand is. I say, I ain't got no god-dang brand. I got a cause. You know what I mean? They put a brand on enslaved Africans when they came here and kept that brand on them. But that language, that market language, is built into the culture. That's the mentality of a spectacle. So you've got to shatter the superficial to get at the substantial.

You're going to need money. You're going to need a career. You're going to need education. But do not view those things as idols. You use those things for something bigger than [your]selves. Love. Justice. Integrity. And so on. But it's easy to get caught. And, of course, my generation is a grand example of what it is to get caught in a commodified culture and think that it's all about success rather than greatness. This sense of: All I got to do is just become the first Black professor or Black mayor or Black president. That that, in and of itself, is a definition of service and success. No, don't confuse service and status. Once you get the status, then you start serving. What are you going to do with it?

Talking about how America might not actually have it in it as a country to get through this - is that a disappointment that you've come to grips with a long time ago?

In my first book 40 years ago, I said it's unclear if America [has] the structural capacity and the spiritual and moral wherewithal to really treat the masses of Black people - not Black middle-class folk, the Black masses - with dignity and decency. But that's blues - you can't find no way out. That's what it is to be a blues people. It's: Good morning, heartache, good evening, heartache. Heartache's there, no matter what. You've got to learn how to love and laugh and get through with dignity and make sure you fortify your children so they're able to deal with a predicament where it looks like there's no way out.

But it doesn't mean that we stop fighting. Because you know about this new Afro-pessimist movement that's out here. Especially my young folk. I've had a lot of debates with them, but that's a major, major influence these days. Their view is: To be Black in America is to be like a cow waiting to be slaughtered. We will always be slaves, either mentally or literally. And it's just a matter of when we're called out to be slaughtered. That, to me, captures certain elements of truth, but it's so wrong. Because it doesn't talk about how you keep fighting. How do you keep loving? How do you keep sustaining yourself?

On a personal level, is there a moment or memory or experience you continue to draw hope from?

I don't have a language to describe what it means to be the second son of Clifton and Irene West. And I'll never be one-half of the person that they are. I've got a whole wave of experiences and a life shaped by a Black family. Same is true with Shiloh Baptist Church [in Sacramento]. To be a product of Shiloh Baptist Church fortified me for life. It really did. So it's a whole network and system of relations with Mom and Dad and Cliff, my brother, and Cynthia and Cheryl and so on. Passing it on to my kids, that not just keeps me going, but I've got a surplus in my tank. I could go for three lifetimes without ever running out of gas, even though I wrestle with despair every day. Never allow despair to have the last word. But I've had that kind of luck. That's a love supreme right there. That's what Coltrane was playing right there.

You talked about the white supremacist structure maybe reaching the point of cracking. What would that look like? And then what happens?

You either have the kind of nonviolent revolution that takes the form of the democratic sharing of wealth, power, resources and dignity - or, you end up with a White backlash that is so vicious that it cannot but lead toward authoritarian regime. It could be that we just got to go down swinging, my dear sister. Might be that America just doesn't have what it takes to treat our children and our mothers and fathers with respect. That's a real possibility. We don't know which way this thing is going to go. It's a fork in the road.

KK Ottesen is a regular contributor to the magazine. Follow her on Twitter: @kkOttesen. This interview has been edited and condensed.

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Cornel West: Is America 'even capable of treating the masses of Black people with decency and dignity'?

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Cornel West, 67, is a professor at Harvard University and professor emeritus at Princeton University, as well as an author and frequent commentator on issues of race, gender and class in American society. There's been a real outpouring from people around the country and around the world in response to the death of George Floyd and others recently.

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Workers around the world look forward to payday. A paycheck may bring a sense of relief, satisfaction, or joy, but it can also represent an injustice-an expression of persistent inequalities between men and women in the workplace.

Globally, the gender pay gap stands at 16 per cent, meaning women workers earn an average of 84 per cent of what men earn. For women of colour, immigrant women, and women with children, the difference is even greater.

These discrepancies in py add up and have real, daily negative consequences for women and their families. The adverse impacts are exacerbated even more by crises. It is estimated that the widespread effects of COVID-19 could push 96 million people into extreme poverty by 2021, bringing the total number of women and girls living on USD 1.90 per day to 435 million

On the first International Equal Pay Day, 18 September, take a closer look at the gender pay gap and what can be done to close it.

Equal pay means that all workers have the right to receive equal remuneration for work of equal value. While the concept is straightforward, what equal pay actually entails and how it's applied in practice has proven to be difficult.

" Work of equal value " can mean a job that is the same or similar, as well as a job that is not the same but is of equal value. This distinction is important because women's and men's work may involve different types of qualifications, skills, responsibilities, or working conditions, yet be of equal value, and, therefore, merit equal pay.

Chidi King, Director of the Equality Department of the International Trade Union Confederation, and a member of UN Women and ILO's Equal Pay Champions initiative, gives the example that a job in the male-dominated construction sector may be of the same or similar objective value as a job in the female-dominated childcare sector. However, the childcare job is likely to have lower pay.

This past July, New Zealand passed the Equal Pay Amendment Bill, although existing law guaranteed women and men would be paid equally for the same work. The new law makes sure that women and men are paid equally for work that's different but has equal value, including in chronically underpaid female-dominated industries.

"Remuneration" entails more than a basic wage; it means all the elements of earnings. In addition to wages, forms of remuneration include overtime pay, bonuses, travel allowances, company shares, insurance, and other benefits. A basic wage is often only a small part of a worker's full compensation, so it is important to factor all forms of pay into the equation.

Illustration by Verónica Grech

The gender pay gap is rooted in systemic inequalities. Women, particularly migrant women, are overrepresented in the informal sector around the globe. Look around you, street vendors, domestic workers, coffee shop staff, and subsistence farmers are often women. They are in informal jobs that often fall outside the domains of labour laws, trapping them in low-paying, unsafe working environments, without social benefits. These poor conditions for women workers perpetuate the gender pay gap.

In addition to overrepresentation in vulnerable and informal employment, women do three times as much care and domestic work as men, globally. This includes household taskssuch as cooking, cleaning, fetching firewood and water, and taking care of children and the elderly. Although care work is the backbone of thriving families, communities, and economies, it remains undervalued and underrecognized. Try calculating your daily load with UN Women's unpaid care calculator.

The motherhood penalty is another reason for the pay inequity. On average, working mothers are paid less than non-mothers, and the disparity increases as the number of children a woman has increases. Lower wages for mothers may be related to reduced working time, employment in more family-friendly jobs which tend to be lower paying, hiring and promotion decisions that penalize the careers of mothers, and a lack of programmes to support women's return to work after time out of the labour market.

The lasting impacts of restrictive, traditional gender roles are also responsible for creating and sustaining pay inequalities. Gender stereotypes steer women away from occupations that have traditionally been dominated by men and push them toward care-focused work that is often regarded as "unskilled," or "soft-skilled" and therefore, lower paid.

Furthermore, discriminatory hiring practices and promotion decisions that prevent women from gaining leadership roles and highly paid positions sustain the gender pay gap. "It's not only the pay gap, there's also opportunity gap, and just being seen as an equal is a challenge," says Abby Wambach, a sports icon and two-time Olympic Gold Medalist and FIFA Women's World Cup Champion. After retiring from football, Wambach realized that she had scored more goals than any man but got paid much less. "If you think you're treated unfairly, don't wait for the fear of rocking the boat; rock the boat," she says.

Illustration by Verónica Grech

Equal pay matters because it is a glaring injustice and subjects millions of women and families to lives of entrenched poverty and opportunity gaps.

What should be done?

As governments shape policies to address the fallout from the global COVID-19 crisis, it is urgent that we put female workers on equal footing as male workers. Women make up the majority of workers on the front lines of the pandemic. They're providing essential health and care services and therefore face a host of additional risks and stresses. Furthermore, 305 million full-time jobs have been lost since the start of the pandemic, and, unlike many previous economic crises where job loss has often been greatest in male-dominated industries, this crisis is hitting women's work at least as hard as men's, if not more.

As more women face economic hardships because of COVID-19, the fight for equal pay takes on a new sense of urgency because those who earn the least are most damaged by income discrepancy. In the United States, Black women earn only 62 cents, Native women 57 cents, and Latinas 54 cents for every one dollar that white men earn. Where money is tight, shorted pay can prevent women and families from putting food on the table, securing safe housing, and accessing critical medical care and education - impacts that can perpetuate cycles of poverty across generations.

Unequal pay is a stubborn and universal problem. In spite of significant progress in women's education and higher female labour market participation rates in many countries, closing the gender pay gap has been too slow. At this pace , it will take 257 years to achieve economic gender parity.

Women workers' average pay is generally lower than men's in all countries and for all levels of education, and age groups. Women in male-dominated industries may earn more than those in female-dominated industries, but the gender pay gap persists across all sectors.

While gender pay gap estimates can vary substantially across regions and even within countries, higher income countries tend to have lower levels of wage inequality compared to low and middle-income countries. However, estimates of the gender pay gap understate the real extent of the issue, particularly in developing countries, because of a lack of information about informal economies, which are disproportionately made up of women workers, so the full picture is likely worse than what the available data shows us.

Click here to explore the International Labour Organization's country-specific gender pay gap data.

Illustration by Verónica Grech

Closing the gender pay gap requires a set of measures that push for decent work for all people. This includes measures that promote the formalization of the informal economy, bringing informal workers under the umbrella of legal and effective protection and empowering them to better defend their interests.

Equal pay expert King says that, "One of the most effective and quickest ways to narrow gender pay gaps is through minimum living wages (or wage floors) and universal social protection." Because women are overrepresented in low paid work, minimum living wages and social protections would benefit them more dramatically.

King also states that widespread adoption of proactive pay equity laws, which require employers to regularly examine compensation practices, assess gender pay gaps, and take action to eliminate them, would help bridge the gap. Transparency within companies in criteria and decisions regarding pay can also help prevent gender bias.

Ensuring workers' right to organize and bargain collectively is an important part of the solution. It is crucial that women be involved in employer and union leadership, enabling legislation that establishes comprehensive frameworks for gender equality in the workplace.

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Everything you need to know about pushing for equal pay

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Workers around the world look forward to payday. A paycheck may bring a sense of relief, satisfaction, or joy, but it can also represent an injustice-an expression of persistent inequalities between men and women in the workplace. Globally, the gender pay gap stands at 16 per cent, meaning women workers earn an average of 84 per cent of what men earn.

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Stop Giving People Who Supress Equal Rights Page Time!

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Stop Giving People Who Supress Equal Rights Page Time!

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A former staff member who was black couldn't help but see the irony of being forced to undergo training on unconscious bias - which became mandatory within the company early last year - and then to lose a large part of his wallet soon after. "I felt so devalued," he said, "after working so hard." "

The unconscious bias training is meant to alert you to your blind spots in your perception of people and ideas. But in terms of corporate governance and creativity, Condé Nast's programming has not been seamlessly integrated into the broader philosophy of the company. Last month, in a series of layoffs, in which 100 people were laid off amid the economic calamities of Covid-19, the company sacked three African American editors, all of whom covered the culture in different publications.

Of the top 10 publishers listed on the Vogue Masthead banner, all are white. According to a spokesperson for Condé Nast, people of color in all editorial departments of Vogue represent 14% of senior managers. On June 5, amid global protests over the death of George Floyd, Ms. Wintour sent a note to her staff, acknowledging that "it cannot be easy being a black employee at Vogue," and that the magazine had "not found enough ways to raise and give space to black publishers, writers, photographers, designers and other creators. "

Although Vogue has made a greater effort to present black women on its covers in recent years - Rihanna, Serena Williams, Lupita Nyong'o - the door opens much easier for those who are not. In this area too, the legacy weighs heavily. When LeBron James made history as the first black man to adorn the cover in 2008, he shared the space with a white model, Gisele Bündchen, who appeared as a young lady in her clutches, an unmistakable reference to King Kong.

A Condé Nast spokesperson admitted that a lot of progress must be made in terms of diversity in the company, but he defended Ms. Wintour's file, stressing that she has passionately supported various color creators throughout of his career, helping to raise funds for them through his work with the Council of Fashion Designers of America. She also installed two black publishers to direct Teen Vogue, truly radical in its content, one after the other (Elaine Welteroth then Lindsay Peoples Wagner).

At the same time, Ms. Wintour has chaired Vogue for 32 years, and during that time, she has done more to establish the values ​​of lineage, pedigree and privilege than anyone in the American media. A short and inconclusive list of Wintour's assistants in the 21st century includes the Yale-educated daughter of a prominent Miami dance director, the Dartmouth-educated descendant of a major bank president, the Princeton-educated daughter of 'an Oscar-winning screenwriter etc. For so long, it has been at the heart of the Condé Nast philosophy that you have to be slim, gorgeous and impeccably accredited to get someone else's macchiato espresso.

Even now, as the publishing industry continues to implode and wonderful writers who could really use the work (or at least the prestigious affiliation) abound, Vogue continues to list people like its contributor editors. German heiress Elisabeth von Thurn und Taxis and many others among the high-born. Five years ago, Mrs. Thurn und Taxis posted on Instagram a photo of a homeless woman reading Vogue, sitting on the sidewalk, with the words "Paris is full of surprises." Vogue quickly issued a statement, calling the gesture unpleasant, and then executed his signature on his website at least 10 more times.

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Can Anna Wintour survive the social justice movement?

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A former staff member who was black couldn't help but see the irony of being forced to undergo training on unconscious bias - which became mandatory within the company early last year - and then to lose a large part of his wallet soon after. "I felt so devalued," he said, "after working so hard."

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In every context of injustice females suffer most. 

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In every context of injustice females suffer most. 

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Join us in Prayer The international Salvation Army is being called to prioritise prayer, specifically for justice on behalf of women and girls.
In every context of injustice females suffer most. Globally, women do three times more unpaid care work than men. The gap is largest in Northern Africa and Western Asia, but it exists in every region. Globally one in two women who are murdered are murdered by a male partner or family member. 71 per cent of all trafficking victims globally are females.

Our hearts anguish to see the images and read the headlines. We cry out for justice in the streets, and before God in prayer.

We cry for justice because of the image of God in every human being, the God revealed in Jesus Christ, the One who loves justice, and works justice for all the oppressed (Psalm 33:5; 103:6).

Will you join us in seeking justice together, by crying out to God in prayer for justice in the earth, following the example of the persistent widow as described by Jesus? 'And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off?' (Luke 18:7 NIVUK)

Resources

You may find these resources helpful as you reflect on these issues.

Weekly Reflection

More resources

Discussion

Here is a space to talk about the issues behind this call, how you are hearing God's voice, and how you are feeling called to respond. Share with us any Bible verses or other resources that you find useful.

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an opportunity to join the worldwide salvation army in crying out to god in prayer for justice for women and girls in 2020.

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International Social Justice Commission - 2020 Cry for Justice

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Join us in Prayer The international Salvation Army is being called to prioritise prayer, specifically for justice on behalf of women and girls. In every context of injustice females suffer most. Globally, women do three times more unpaid care work than men. The gap is largest in Northern Africa and Western Asia, but it exists in every region.

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Transcript of Julia Gillard's Misogyny Speech 

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Transcript of Julia Gillard's Misogyny Speech 

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Thank you very much Deputy Speaker and I rise to oppose the motion moved by the Leader of the Opposition. And in so doing I say to the Leader of the Opposition I will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man. I will not. And the Government will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man. Not now, not ever.

The Leader of the Opposition says that people who hold sexist views and who are misogynists are not appropriate for high office. Well I hope the Leader of the Opposition has got a piece of paper and he is writing out his resignation. Because if he wants to know what misogyny looks like in modern Australia, he doesn't need a motion in the House of Representatives, he needs a mirror. That's what he needs.

Julia Gillard made an impassioned speech against Tony Abbott's motion to remove Peter Slipper as Speaker. Credit:Andrew Meares

Let's go through the Opposition Leader's repulsive double standards, repulsive double standards when it comes to misogyny and sexism. We are now supposed to take seriously that the Leader of the Opposition is offended by Mr Slipper's text messages, when this is the Leader of the Opposition who has said, and this was when he was a minister under the last government - not when he was a student, not when he was in high school - when he was a minister under the last government.

He has said, and I quote, in a discussion about women being under-represented in institutions of power in Australia, the interviewer was a man called Stavros. The Leader of the Opposition says "If it's true, Stavros, that men have more power generally speaking than women, is that a bad thing?"

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Thank you very much Deputy Speaker and I rise to oppose the motion moved by the Leader of the Opposition. And in so doing I say to the Leader of the Opposition I will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man. I will not.

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Former prime minister Julia Gillard's 2012 "misogyny speech" has been voted the most unforgettable moment of Australian TV history, after leading Guardian Australia's poll since voting opened on 24 January.

The parliamentary speech - in which Gillard accused then-opposition leader Tony Abbott and the Coalition of sexism, and proclaimed "the government will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man" - was criticised as opportunistic by many Canberra journalists at the time, before going viral among the Australian public and making headlines around the world.

The speech was voted number one by 3,391 Guardian readers, while Gough Whitlam's dismissal speech came in a distant #2, with 1,383 votes.

It's perhaps telling of the demise of traditional television that the top spot was taken by a moment which most Australians would have watched online: on YouTube alone, the ABC's video of the speech has been watched more than 3.3m times.

Gillard's misogyny speech is absolutely smashing this poll atm but I wonder how many people actually watched it on television, as opposed to online? https://t.co/Mj0YXpl9Ic
- Josephine Tovey (@Jo_Tovey) January 26, 2020

The Chaser's invasion of Apec - a revelatory oral history of which featured in Guardian Australia's story series, which ran alongside the poll - came in at #3. It was followed by Cathy Freeman's win at the 2000 Olympics, Scott and Charlene's wedding on Neighbours and, somewhat unexpectedly, A Current Affair's 2008 chastisement of infamous teen Corey Worthington, which hit the #6 spot - a reminder, perhaps, that people were voting for moments they'd never forget, for better or for worse.

Kevin Rudd's 2008 apology to Indigenous Australians was voted in at #7 (11 places ahead of actor John Howard's satirical version of same), Nakkiah Lui and Miranda Tapsell's trashing of Get Krack!n came at #8, and Gough Whitlam's dismissal made another showing at #9, thanks to comedian Norman Gunston's unlikely appearance at that seminal moment of Australian history.

The #10 spot went to the "100-metre-track" skit on John Clarke and Bryan Dawes' The Games, followed by John Aloisi's World Cup-qualifying goal in 2005, and Molly's death on A Country Practice.

Sporting moments featured highly: at #13, #14 and #15 respectively were Bob Hawke's cheeky advice for bosses after Australia won the 1983 America's Cup; Adam Goodes' celebratory spear throw in 2015; and Stephen Bradbury's unlikely win at the 2002 Winter Olympics.

But there were some shock twists, too. The death of child character Lou on Australian drama series Love My Way, endorsed by Guardian Australia editor Lenore Taylor and remembered through tears by many of her staff, came in all the way down at #20. While prolific among the nominations, dramatic deaths in general did not feature as highly as expected in the final results - with Patrick's death on Offspring reaching #23, the death of Josh's mother Rose on Please Like Me at #25, Judy's death on Seven Little Australians at #36 and Charlie Cousins' death on Bellbird at #43.

Each of these morbid scenes apparently fade into the deep recesses of memory when compared to "Bronson's pissing contest in Round the Twist", a scene from the 1990s after-school program which surprised almost everyone by climbing to #19.

The bottom spot in the poll went to Ben Ross, who broke his arm on the Footy Show in 2015 and won only eight votes for the pleasure. Perhaps that horrifying moment of live TV was one everyone tried hard to forget.
View the full results of Guardian Australia's poll
UPDATE, 3pm AEST: We are not the only ones surprised by where Bronson placed. Our happy winner has announced she is "delighted" to have beat him.

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Julia Gillard's misogyny speech voted 'most unforgettable' moment in Australian TV history

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Former prime minister Julia Gillard's 2012 "misogyny speech" has been voted the most unforgettable moment of Australian TV history, after leading Guardian Australia's poll since voting opened on 24 January.

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Domestic Abuse - Non-equality puts women at risk!

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Domestic Abuse - Non-equality puts women at risk!

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Domestic abuse is an issue in many marriages, domestic partnerships and relationships in California. During a divorce case, allegations of domestic abuse, even without a criminal conviction, could be enough to alter the decisions a judge makes about matters such as child custody and spousal maintenance. Abuse does not have to be physical to constitute domestic violence in San Diego County. You might also be the victim of verbal or emotional domestic abuse. Schedule a free consultation with a divorce attorney near you to discuss your particular situation in confidence.

What Is Verbal Domestic Abuse?

Verbal abuse refers to using words to cause a victim harm. It can take many forms and look different according to each situation. It can refer to the beratement or belittling of a victim. Domestic verbal abuse occurs between two people living in the same household who have an intimate relationship. It can occur between two spouses, two people who used to date or two people who have a child together. It can also occur between two people related by blood or marriage. The definition of domestic violence from the California courts includes spoken, emotional and psychological abuse.

Name-calling

Embarrassing or humiliating the victim

Shaming or guilt-tripping

Gaslighting

Controlling

Giving the silent treatment

Isolating

Stalking

Threatening or intimidating the victim

Verbal domestic abuse can have long-lasting mental, emotional and psychological effects that can be just as serious as physical abuse. You may be unable to go to work and lead a productive life. You could also suffer from debilitating mental health conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder, trauma, depression and anxiety. The fear, anxiety, turmoil and stress of verbal abuse can ruin your relationships and isolate you from family and friends. It could also have effects on your physical health, causing issues such as chronic pain. Verbal abuse can give you feelings of powerlessness, hopelessness, shame, guilt or low self-esteem. Verbal abuse qualifies as domestic violence in the State of California.

What to Do If You Are Experiencing Verbal or Emotional Abuse

It can be difficult to ascertain whether you are the victim of verbal abuse in your relationship. It can refer to many different situations you might believe are normal of any relationship, when in fact they are signs of abuse. If your spouse wants to know what you are doing all the time, demands that you share your social medial passwords, constantly accuses you of cheating, tries to stop you from seeing your friends or family members, forces you to quit your job, controls your finances, calls you insulting names, or threatens to harm you, him/herself or people you love, you are the victim of verbal abuse.

If you are in immediate danger while in a domestic violence situation, call 911. Otherwise, reach out to a friend or family member you can trust and ask for help getting out of your domestic violence situation safely. You can also receive assistance from trained professionals by contacting a national hotline, such as 1-(800)-799-7233 (the National Domestic Violence Hotline). Professionals at the hotline will give you advice as to how to escape your situation safely.

If you wish to divorce your spouse or domestic partner, contact a San Diego family attorney for a free and confidential consultation about how domestic violence might impact your case. Explaining your situation to the courts during your divorce case could result in positive effects such as a restraining order against your abusive spouse, temporary and/or permanent alimony, sole custody of your children, and mandatory child support. The courts in California will take a history of domestic violence into account when deciding things such as parental rights and alimony. A lawyer can help you safeguard yourself and your children during and after the divorce process.

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Domestic abuse is an issue in many marriages, domestic partnerships and relationships in California. During a divorce case, allegations of domestic abuse, even without a criminal conviction, could be enough to alter the decisions a judge makes about matters such ... Continued

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Women could be set back by a decade in their battle to reduce the gender pay gap because of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on global economies, the agency charged with overseeing the problem has warned.

Australia's gender pay gap has increased to 14 per cent

The Workplace Gender Equality Agency is concerned coronavirus could impact on efforts to change that

More women have lost their jobs than men during the coronavirus pandemic

The Federal Government's Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) recently reported the nation's gender pay gap currently stands at 14 per cent, fractionally higher than 13.9 per cent in 2019.

That reflects a pay gap of $250 per week, and $13,000 per year.

As the country marks Equal Pay Day, the agency is warning that the struggle to make gains could be delayed because of the impact of COVID-19.

The national gender pay gap has hovered between 13.9 and 19 per cent for the last two decades.

While this year's pay gap sits well within that range, WGEA director, Libby Lyons, is concerned that the full impact will be felt in the next few years.

Ms Lyons said that during the Global Financial Crisis the gender pay gap increased by two per cent, to 17.6 per cent, which took a decade to lower.

"It took us 10 years to bring that pay gap back down to where it is today," she said.

"We cannot afford to see a repeat of this as we face our first economic recession in almost 30 years.

"It will be a disaster for the economy and a calamity for Australian women."

More women than men out of work

Ms Lyons said more Australian women than men had lost their jobs during the pandemic because "female-dominated industries have suffered the worst of the job losses".

These industries include tourism, hospitality, retail, the arts, aged care and disability sectors.

The Federal Government's Workplace Gender Equality Agency director, Libby Lyons.(Supplied)

The pandemic has also had a greater impact on part-time and casual workers - the majority of whom are women.

Adelaide-based musician Helen Ayres hasn't performed since March and, like many artists, isn't eligible for any government support payments.

"Seeing my superannuation go on hold has made me question my ability to support my children if I needed to," she said.

Ms Ayres is providing private violin lessons through the pandemic but, without her usual work, the family is getting by on one income.

"I'm really aware that I'm relying on my husband more and more ... and more than makes me feel comfortable."

Meanwhile, Sydney-based executive assistant, Jessica Ofori, is trying to re-enter the workforce after 12 months' maternity leave.

Sydney-based executive assistant Jessica Ofori is trying to re-enter the workforce after maternity leave.(Supplied: Jessica Ofori)

"One job I applied for had more than 200 applicants," Ms Ofori said.

Another role had a series of unusual requests.

"Within 24 hours of applying I received an email from the company, which said 'would I accept a salary of $70,000?' - $10,000 less than what was advertised," she said.

"The other question was 'would I still be interested in the job if one day per week was unpaid?'

"I've also noticed there's a lot of contract and part-time work, and not as many full-time roles."

Financial adviser Tania Tonkin from DMCA Advisory acknowledged many women are now finding themselves in similar positions - and warned there were long-term implications.

"If women are staying home because they've lost work, or to care for children, it's time they're not earning an income, or building superannuation," Ms Tonkin said.

"There's much less opportunity to build that balance at retirement."

'Unconscious bias' in pandemic response

South Australia's Commissioner for Equal Opportunity, Dr Niki Vincent, pointed to an "unconscious bias" in state and federal government responses to the pandemic.

Dr Niki Vincent is South Australia's Equal Opportunity Commissioner.(Twitter)

"We need a much greater government effort in generating employment in female-dominated industries hit hardest by the pandemic, like retail, tourism, events, fitness, beauty and hospitality," she said.

SA Chiefs for Gender Equity chair Matthew Salisbury said most economic responses have focused on male-dominated industries.

"A lot of the government support has targeted much needed infrastructure projects, and it's true to say those are still largely male-dominated industries," Mr Salisbury said.

Dr Vincent also pointed to the need to make JobKeeper fairer for women, who "are less likely to meet the eligibility criteria due to casual work".

She called for wide-scale reform across the public and private sectors.

"We need an overhaul of our superannuation system, which massively advantages men over women, and means older women are much more likely to be living in poverty when they retire," she said.

"We need access to free and high quality childcare, to increase women's availability to work. We need better and fairer paid parental leave.

"Things like carers leave, giving casual workers part time work for job security, and addressing workplace sexual harassment are all things that would make a massive difference."

Ms Tonkin advised women not to underestimate their skills and abilities when applying for work, and implored employers to consider the importance of gender-balanced workplaces.

"Equal opportunity means equal pay," she said.

"It means looking at what someone offers in terms of skills and ability, and then the pay aligns accordingly."

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Pandemic could set back gender pay battle by a decade, federal agency warns

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Women could be set back by a decade in their battle to reduce the gender pay gap because of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on global economies, the agency charged with overseeing the problem has warned.

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South Australia's Parliament has the worst female representation in the country and won't reach gender parity until 2050 at the current rate, a report has found.

In August just 29 per cent of SA's Parliament were women

The number of female MPs in SA has decreased since 2006

At the current rate, gender parity won't be reached until 2050

The Electoral Commission of South Australia's report also says the Parliament is the only one in Australia to fall below the "critical mass of 30 per cent representation, deemed by the United Nations to be the minimum level required for women to influence decision-making in Parliament".

Senior researcher Daniel Marx said despite the state being the first to allow women the right to vote in 1894, it now trailed the rest of Australia.

"The reality is that far from leading the country as it once did, South Australia now has the lowest number of female parliamentarians of any Australian jurisdiction," Mr Marx said.

"Since 1985, the share of female parliamentarians has risen from just below 12 per cent to 29 per cent.

"At the current rate, women will not reach gender parity in the South Australian Parliament until 2050."

State goes backwards

As of August this year, 29 per cent of SA parliamentarians were women - 7.9 per cent below the national average, 8.4 per cent below the Commonwealth and 28.5 per cent behind Australia's current leader, Tasmania.

Of the 47 MPs in the Lower House, only 12 are women, ranking last against all 15 Australian parliamentary chambers.

The state also has the second lowest proportion of female Cabinet ministers, behind New South Wales, but Mr Marx noted the issue was not ideological.

"South Australia's previous Weatherill Labor government also counted three female ministers out of 14 in cabinet from 2016 to 2018, and four out of 15 ministers prior to that," he wrote.

Mr Marx said while most parliaments around the world had increased the percentage of female MPs, South Australia had actually gone backward.

Independent MP Frances Bedford said quotas have helped SA's Labor Party reach parity this year.(Source: SA Parliament)

"Following the 2006 state election, female members held 17 seats in the House of Assembly, or 36.2 per cent of all seats," he said.

"But instead of continuing to progress towards gender parity, defined as 50 per cent of seats in Parliament ... the proportion of female representatives elected in South Australia has actually decreased."

He said if South Australia was a nation state it would rank 73rd in the world, between Algeria (currently 72nd) and Turkmenistan and Cape Verde.

Independent MP 'not surprised'

Independent former Labor MP Frances Bedford first won the seat of Florey in 1997 and said she "wasn't surprised" to hear the statistics.

"It's a sad indictment on where we stand," Ms Bedford said.

She said the major parties needed to do more to address the issue.

"The Labor Party brought in affirmative action, which saw a movement, and I think that's what's required," she said.

"While quotas are something that people sometimes frown upon, it has helped the Labor Party reach parity."

She said female candidates needed to know they were not going to be "prey to the party factional political system".

"It's about identifying people early and giving them the courage to put their hand up," she said.

Women candidates run, but not elected

The report states 788 women have run for State Parliament in the past 35 years.

Over that time, the number of women candidates has been on an upward trend, but they have not been elected at the same rate as their male counterparts.

In 1985 and 1989, roughly one in three male candidates were elected, compared to one in eight women.

At the 2014 and 2018 elections, one in four male candidates won, compared to one in seven women.

The Liberal Party has gradually increased its number of female candidates but has not passed the critical threshold of 30 per cent at any election since 1985.

South Australian Parliament has the lowest number of female parliamentarians in any Australian jurisdiction.(ABC News)

Labor has fielded women in more than one third of districts since 1997, peaking at 42.6 per cent in 2010.

Minor parties have nominated higher proportions of female candidates in the seats they contested.

But Mr Marx said this has little impact on lower house gender parity because "the Labor and Liberal parties have long completely dominated the state's Lower House elections".

"It is clear that the lion's share of the responsibility for reducing the deficit of women in the House of Assembly lies with the two major parties."

He said the reasons why women were under-represented in SA politics were varied and complex, with a lack of political support, the burden of outside responsibilities like family life, and cultural perceptions all playing a part.

"Responsibility for this lies with multiple actors: Parliament as an institution, parliamentarians themselves (both male and female), the Office for Women and other government departments, the Electoral Commission, civil society, the media, universities.

"That said, it is the state's political parties that have the biggest role to play given their key responsibilities in the democratic process: preparing and selecting candidates for election, and preparing and supporting them in positions of leadership."

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'A sad indictment': SA goes backwards with female MP representation

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South Australia's Parliament has the worst female representation in the country and won't reach gender parity until 2050 at the current rate, a report has found.

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Posted December 02, 2020 16:25:29

New research has shown women could be at a disadvantage when applying for work because the algorithms used to help employers select applicants could be amplifying gender bias.

Source: ABC News | Duration: 2min 42sec

Topics: workplace, women, university-of-melbourne-3010, australia

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Concern over potential gender bias in job recruitment algorithms

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Posted December 02, 2020 16:25:29 New research has shown women could be at a disadvantage when applying for work because the algorithms used to help employers select applicants could be amplifying gender bias. Source: ABC News | Duration: 2min 42sec Topics: workplace, women, university-of-melbourne-3010, australia

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Women on average earn $25,534 less than men every year, according to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency's latest gender pay gap report.

The gender pay gap has narrowed slightly, but men still earn more than women in every industry and occupation

The Workplace Gender Equality Agency's latest gender pay gap report is based on data from almost 5,000 employers

More employers are now offering their staff paid parental leave on top of the existing government scheme

The gender pay gap for total remuneration dropped just 0.7 percentage points to 20.1 per cent in the year to March, according to the report.

Women's average full-time base salary across all industries and occupations was 15 per cent, or $15,144 a year less than men's.

The report said while the gap was narrowing, all industries had a gender pay gap that favoured men, and more than 45 per cent of employers who undertook a pay gap analysis took no action to address it.

But access to paid parental leave is improving. More than 50 per cent of employers provided staff access to paid parental leave in addition to the government scheme.

Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) director Libby Lyons said even before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Australian employers had become "complacent" about gender equality.

She said "fatigue" was kicking in at many organisations, which had been reporting data since 2013.

"They have now got to the point where they tick the box, but in order to drive changes you have to take action," Ms Lyons said.

The WGEA's data is based on 4,943 reports from employers, covering more than 4 million employees, for the reporting period April 1, 2019 to March 31, 2020.

It indicates women's overall position in the workforce. It does not compare like for like roles.

And it excludes CEOs, with just 10 of Australia's top 200 listed companies having a female chief executive.

Pandemic could see us go back a decade on gender equality

Ms Lyons said in the two years of the global financial crisis the gender pay gap increased by 2 percentage points and it took 10 years to fix that.

"We can't afford history to repeat itself, for the gender pay gap to go up and for it to take a decade off what we have gained," Ms Lyons said.

"As we move into the post-COVID recovery phase, we must make sure that women's workforce participation is not sidelined.

"Our economic recovery depends on women having equal access to secure full-time jobs."

Ms Lyons said she was still against introducing gender-based quotas in the way other countries had. Germany this week made it compulsory for most listed companies to have at least one woman on their board.

Ms Lyons said employers who did not take action to address pay gaps and increase women's representation would fall behind.

"It will be to the peril of their business, to their shareholders' dividends and to the employees that they wish to attract and retain [if employers don't take action]," Ms Lyons said.

"I can't think of any better stick or incentive than to ensure you drive increased productivity, increased performance and increased profitability."

The report notes gender pay gaps are influenced by a number of factors that can include discrimination and bias.

But the pay gap is also influenced by women and men working in different industries and jobs. Women dominate part-time jobs (75 per cent) and casual roles (56.3 per cent).

Women also still take up a disproportionate share of unpaid caring and domestic work, spend greater time out of the workforce and are under-represented in senior roles.

Pay gaps by category and industry

A breakdown of the data shows every manager category and non-manager occupation had a gender pay gap for full-time employees that favours men.

The report said total remuneration gender pay gaps were influenced by a range of factors including non-salary benefits such as bonuses at senior levels, reliance on awards and collective agreements in some occupations, and the concentration of women and men in different industries.

The report recorded the largest decrease (1.8 percentage points) in the other executives/general managers category. But there was still a pay gap of $67,768 between men and women there.

And in the highest ranking "key management personnel" category, the pay gap was $89,141.

There has, however, been a narrowing of the gap in five of the seven occupational categories. The only occupation with an increased gender pay gap this year was labourer, with a 0.9 percentage point rise - a gap of $15,099 a year.

"Financial and insurance services" remains the industry with the highest total remuneration gender pay gap at 27.5 per cent, or a difference of $45,497 annually.

But that industry's gender pay gap has dropped almost 2 percentage points this year and has decreased 8.6 percentage points since 2013-14.

Construction has replaced "rental, hiring and real estate services" as the industry with the second-worst gender pay gap at 26.1 per cent or $36,361 annually.

The gender pay gap in the most heavily female-dominated industry - healthcare and social assistance - remained virtually unchanged (up from 14.7 per cent in 2015-16 to 15.7 per cent in 2019-20).

But even in this female-dominated industry the pay gap is 15.7 per cent, or $16,700 a year.

The gender pay gap in the second most female-dominated industry - education and training - went up 0.4 percentage points to 9.2 per cent, or a $11,562 difference annually.

Almost half of all employers took no action to address pay gap

There was another increase in the number of employers analysing their payroll data for gender pay gaps (up 1.7 percentage points to 46.4 per cent), but fewer organisations were taking action to close their gender pay gaps

Among organisations that conducted a gender pap gap analysis, there was a significant drop in the number which reported taking action as a result (down 6.1 percentage points to 54.4 per cent).

More than 45 per cent of employers who undertook a pay gap analysis took no action to address it.

The proportion of organisations reporting pay equity metrics to the executive dropped 4.7 per to 26.6 per cent and those correcting like-for-like gaps fell 2.2 percentage points to 26.7 per cent.

The only increase reported was a 2.3 percentage point rise to 9.2 per cent in the number of employers setting targets to reduce organisation-wide pay gaps.

And 68.9 per cent of employers who undertook a pay gap analysis and took no action to address it reported their analysis identified "no unexplained or unjustifiable pay gaps".

However, the number of organisations implementing formal policies and strategies on remuneration with specific pay equity objectives is increasing.

According to the report, 63.8 per cent of organisations said they had a formal policy. Of those organisations, 43.1 per cent now have pay equity objectives in their remuneration policy and strategy.

There was also an increase in the number of employers with a formal policy or strategy to support employees experiencing family or domestic violence. It went up 6.2 percentage points to 66.4 per cent.

Paid parental leave still taken mostly by women

There has been improved access to paid parental leave. It reached a seven-year high.

For the first time since WGEA started collecting data, more than 50 per cent of employers said they provided staff access to paid parental leave, in addition to the government scheme.

But access to paid parental leave was highly dependent on the size and industry of the employer, with bigger ones generally offering more generous incentives.

Almost seven in 10 (69.4 per cent) of the employees had access to paid parental leave for primary carers (3,047,441 employees) and 46.4 per cent of employers offered paid parental leave for secondary carers.

Women accounted for the vast majority (93.5 per cent) of all primary carer's leave used, with men accounting for only 6.5 per cent.

Of those employers offering paid primary carer's leave, seven to 12 weeks was the most common length of leave.

Only 4.7 per cent of employers offered 18 or more weeks of primary carer's leave.

Ms Lyons said it was positive that more than 50 per cent of employers said they provided staff access to paid parental leave, but overall employers needed to do more to ensure gender equality was achieved.

She said while the number of female CEOs and board directors was rising, "we are still decades away from achieving gender balance at the top levels of leadership".

"Australian employers are on autopilot when it comes to improving gender equality," Ms Lyons said.

"The issue is clearly not receiving the necessary attention to drive further change."

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'Employers fatigued and complacent about gender equality': Women on average earn $25,534 less than men a year

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The Workplace Gender Equality Agency's (WGEA's) latest report says all industries still have a gender pay gap that favours men and almost half of all employers are refusing to take action to address it.

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Mount St Benedict College, run by Good Samaritan nuns in Sydney's leafy north-west, is one of the city's most over-funded private schools. Last year, it received about $11,000 worth of government money for each student, which was only about $500 less than the amount allocated to each kid at the public school down the road.

But Mount St Benedict has an advantage over that neighbour, Carlingford High. It can ask for fees from parents too; they are compulsory, and this year nudges $13,000 per student. With about twice as much to spend on each of its students as Carlingford, it's no wonder that in 2017 - the year it received $5 million more in state and federal government money than funding formulas calculated it actuallyneeded - Mount St Benedict posted a surplus of $1.7 million.

The Gonski reforms recommended governments reduce excessive payments to schools that didn't need them. Credit:Quentin Jones

The disparity is the result of decades of patchy, inconsistent school funding policy, which for many years favoured middle-tier independent schools such as Mount St Benedict, nearby Oakhill College and Northern Beaches Christian School. The Gonski reforms, initiated in 2012, were supposed to fix this. They recommended governments reduce excessive payments to schools that didn't need them, and redirect funds to those that did. Seven years later, that still hasn't happened.

When it comes to education funding reform, Australia's greatest achievement in the past decade has been to unite behind the principle of needs-based funding. Its failure has been an inability to implement it.

As the Herald and Age reported this week, government funding boosts to private schools outstripped increases to public schools in the decade to 2017, despite Gonski. There are many reasons - power games, political expediency, and a level of policy complexity that stymies community engagement - but the bottom line is that "we have failed to live up to what we have promised ourselves," says Peter Goss, school education program director at the Grattan Institute. "This whole time we've been talking about moving towards needs-based funding, we have been heading in the opposite direction."

Federal governments of both persuasions have, at various times, taken principled stances on funding. Both parties have also buckled to political interests at crucial moments, leading to what one senior bureaucrat described as a "two steps forward, one step back" approach. The buckling tends to come before elections, amid fears that anger from the independent and Catholic sectors will lead to punishment at the ballot box.

Former Labor prime minister Julia Gillard, for example, commissioned the Gonski review and convinced the states to agree to its reforms, but buckled by promising that all schools would have their taxpayer funding increase, including those that already had too much of it.

Malcolm Turnbull's government revived the attempt to take money off wealthy non-government schools. "There shouldn't be special deals," his treasurer, Scott Morrison, said in 2017. "There should be one deal and it should be based on the needs of every single student." The government held its ground against a forceful backlash from the Catholic sector in the lead-up to several byelections. The Coalition fared badly in the July 2018 vote, the school-funding backlash was one of the reasons why Turnbull was replaced as prime minister weeks later, and his successor, Morrison, promptly gave private schools the $4.6 billion they wanted.

The result is, seven years after the Gonski report was handed down, school-funding policy remains a "grotesque policy disaster", says Adam Rorris, an education economist who managed the school resourcing taskforce between 2002 and 2008. Instead of getting closer to its goal of more funding for disadvantaged schools, Australia has moved further away. According to analysis by the Grattan Institute, real resources available to schools were increased by more than $2 billion in a decade but, when wage growth was taken into account, private schools got more than 80 per cent of it.

Part of the problem is that the public thinks funding has been dealt with. When Labor put forward an agenda and the Coalition eventually agreed to it, "everyone just assumed it would be implemented", Rorris says. But the reforms keep being quietly delayed and diluted; last year, the deadline for over-funded schools to lose that money was extended by two years, to 2029. In the same agreement, an accounting loophole was introduced that lets state governments include depreciation in their school operation budgets.

Then prime minister Julia Gillard and David Gonski at the release of the Gonski review into education in 2012. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Another issue is that school-funding policy is diabolically complicated, making it difficult for most non-educators to follow. Simply put, the Schooling Resource Standard (SRS) sets a base amount for each student, with loadings for different types of disadvantage, such as disability or Indigenous heritage. When the child attends a private school, the base amount is reduced according to their parents' capacity to pay. When a school is described as over-funded, it is receiving more than 100 per cent of its SRS as determined by that formula.

The state and federal governments pay different proportions of the resulting bill; for private schools, the Commonwealth pays 80 per cent, and the state pays 20 per cent. That is reversed for public schools.

Partly because non-government schools are not as expensive as public ones - there are not as many, for a start (in NSW, they make up about a third of schools) - and partly because it raises its own revenue, the Commonwealth has been better at meeting its financial obligations. The states are supposed to foot 80 per cent of their public-school bill, but they will all struggle to get to 75 per cent. At the moment, the ambition is to bring under-funded private schools to 100 per cent of SRS by 2023, and public schools to 95 per cent by 2027.

This year, the NSW public system was below 90 per cent of SRS, despite teaching needier children; in the 10 years to 2017, the number of students from the most disadvantaged quartile in Australian government schools grew from 81 per cent to 89 per cent.

But the biggest problem facing funding reform, according to many within the sector, is lobbying power. The independent and Catholic sectors have always been vocal in defending their interests (and in ensuring the other doesn't get a better deal). But the Catholic system, in particular, has stepped up its efforts in recent years. Now, neither of the heads of the national or NSW Catholic Education Commissions have backgrounds in education (although educators remain in charge of each diocese). NSW's is headed by a former National Australia Bank lobbyist and member of the Liberal Party state executive, while the national office is headed by a former Labor senator.

Until recently, the Victorian commission was headed by a former state Liberal MP.

When it comes to lobbying for its fair share of resources, Rorris says the public system is fighting with one hand behind its back. The Catholic and independent systems can send letters to principals and parents, arguing their case. Priests can extol the virtues and needs of Catholic education from the pulpit. But the public system is required to be apolitical. Its champion is the education minister, who is responsible for the other sectors, too.

"Private school authorities make full-blooded, unrestrained bids for public money for their schools, while state ministers of education are constrained and limited in their support for public schools because they are fighting their own treasurers," he says. "There is a governance issue with public schools that leaves those schools without an effective champion, which could forcefully make the case to defend and attain their resourcing requirements."

Adrian Piccoli, the former National Party MP, NSW education minister and now director of the Gonski Institute for Education, agrees. "The [Catholic] bishop can ring the premier or the prime minister - they are usually on a first-name basis. The bishop can say, 'We're going to put out a letter to our parents saying what a terrible government you are.' The secretary of the NSW Department of Education can't do that."

They have a more subtle power, too, Piccoli argues. Their parent bodies include some of the community's wealthiest, most powerful people. "If you heat-mapped Australia based on social capital, power and influence of parents, it's weighted towards non-government schools," Piccoli says. "They're smaller in terms of numbers but ... they are newspaper editors, politicians, judges, lawyers. This is where they have a disproportionate amount of influence."

A spokesman for the National Catholic Education Commission said public schools could lobby for their interests through the P&C Federation, while teacher unions spent millions on campaigning against funding for private schools. Catholic Education was bound by rules governing charities. "We represent and advocate on behalf of our schools and families," he said. "Our parents expect Catholic education to inform them about policy changes that will affect them."

The head of the NSW Association of Independent Schools, Geoff Newcombe (who points out that many independent schools are both disadvantaged and under-funded), disputes the suggestion that public schools don't have a champion. "I think the NSW Teachers Federation sees itself as the main lobby group for government schools, and they are outdone only on occasion by the Australian Education Union," he says.

Yet the influence of the union, which represents public school teachers and principals, stops at the school gate, and doesn't extend to parents and students, Rorris says. "[Catholic and independent] sectors have a machinery in place that directly engages parents and communities they serve," he says. "They can tap that, mobilise that, and apply pressure to the government far more easily than the union. That translates to a greater lobbying effectiveness on their behalf."

In today's federal election, the major parties are offering starkly different choices when it comes to education. The Coalition is pushing forward with its existing policy. It says it will pressure the states to increase their contribution to schools, but hasn't said how.

Labor intends to lift the Commonwealth contribution to state schools to 25 per cent of the SRS, injecting $14 billion into public schools and using the extra money as leverage to get the states to invest more. Goss said Labor's policy would go part of the way to reducing the equity gap. "If it achieved all those objectives," he says, "government schools would see a real increase over the decade of about $1500 per student, as opposed to $150."

The next test will be whether any government is brave enough to follow through with taking money away from over-funded schools. They might find that Mount St Benedict College (which refused to comment for this article) would not be as upset as they have been led to believe. "Changes to school funding, as recently announced by the federal government, will result in a decrease in funding," the school's 2017 annual report said, "however it is not expected that this reduction in funding will impact on the financial viability of the college."
Continue the conversation at our SMH Student Facebook group.

Jordan Baker is Education Editor of The Sydney Morning Herald

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Seven years after Gonski, why is school funding still inequitable?

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Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size Mount St Benedict College, run by Good Samaritan nuns in Sydney's leafy north-west, is one of the city's most over-funded private schools. Last year, it received about $11,000 worth of government money for each student, which was only about $500 less than the amount allocated to each kid at the public school down the road.

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Renowned author and educator, Dr Pasi Sahlberg, visited Australia this year and spoke about the need to value teachers, the 'excellent' Gonski model and why it makes sense to invest in equity. During his visit he spoke with Education Matters magazine's Kathryn Edwards.
In your opinion, what caused Australia's education system to lose its equity?
Let me say first that many education systems are losing equity, including Finland. This may be due to overall increasing income inequality in almost every nation. Inequality often affects education in negative ways as research by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett in their book Spirit Level shows. Equity is often defined as it is eloquently described in David Gonski's Panel Report as how much children's learning in school is determined by their family background, in other words their parents' education, occupation, wealth and some other aspects. More equitable education systems are those that are able to weaken this association of socio-economic situation and learning achievement in school.

Equity in the Australian school system is still a bit above the OECD average. But OECD's latest PISA survey found that Australia is the only country where differences in learning mathematics between advantaged and disadvantaged students are large, while the strength of the relationship between students' achievement in school and their family background is weaker than average. This indicates that there is an equity problem in Australia rather than a genuine lack of quality in its public schools.

International evidence suggests that adoption of market-based education policies that rely on school choice and competition between schools over enrollment often leads to segregation of children into different schools according to their socio-economic background, race or parents' awareness of educational opportunities. This, in turn, more often than not is harmful for equity of the education system. This is what has happened in Australia more rapidly than in any other OECD countries. Up to a third of all students in Australia now go to non-government schools based on choice. So, one could say that the price you pay for greater school choice is weaker equity. Global evidence suggests that the most successful education systems are those that combine equity with quality. Declining equity seems to be dragging also quality of the system down. Whether there is an equity problem in Australia is like asking is there a climate change problem in affecting Australia. Denying the former is like turning a blind eye to the latter.
What future could Australia's education system face if the full Gonski recommendations are not implemented and the current segregation continues?
I think that the Panel that David Gonski led did extraordinary work in bringing more light into the issue of why equity matters in Australia and what it takes to get equity back on growth track again. Gonski's key finding that fair allocation of resources to schools is the key condition of more equitable education is not actually new or revolutionary. Same appeal of investing more resources in schools with more difficult conditions and therefore more special educational needs has been repeated by commissions and reviews in the US, Europe, and also in Finland.

Well, I often say that successful education is not primarily about how much money is spent but how it is spent. Indeed, there is a weak negative correlation between cost and quality of outcomes among OECD countries. There are several education systems that spend far more money in schools than Australia but get less quality out of the system that is also less equitable. But as Gonski's Panel notes Australia's public school system is underfunded compared to most other OECD countries. It also raises a question of how non-government schools should and could be funded within a fairer school funding scheme.

It is adequate to conclude, from international perspective, that the most disadvantaged schools, especially those serving large proportions of aboriginal children and other children with special needs, should be much better resourced if equity is to be enhanced in Australia. Those claiming that the best way forward for Australia is more choice for parents and further privatisation of public education simply speak more from an ideology and mythology standpoint than from available evidence and facts.

We know now enough about how further segregation of children is not only jeopardising principles of equity and equality, but is also harmful to the overall quality of education systems. Australia is in a unique situation, compared to many other countries, with its previous joint agreements that provide excellent frameworks for the betterment of education for all Australians. The clearly articulated and widely shared idea of Educational Goals for Young Australians in the Melbourne Declaration provides a basis for development that other countries can only dream of. The Declaration proclaimed that the Australian governments "must ensure that socioeconomic disadvantage ceases to be a significant determinant of educational outcomes". Gonski's recommendation for fairer funding of schools clarifies how to accomplish this important national goal. From an outsider's perspective it would be unfortunate if either or both of these would fail because of lack of political will and appropriate funding that Australia as one of the wealthiest nations surely can afford. It would almost certainly mean that raising the learning outcomes of Australian students in international comparative surveys would not happen even if investments in 'quality' would significantly be increased.
Despite striving to be the best, PISA results show that Australian students are being outperformed. What advice do you have for the government and education professionals with regard to standardised testing?
First of all, my advice would be not to aim to be among the best in PISA in the first place. Such a goal often derails policies from focusing on strengthening equity and learning opportunities of all children instead of following the race-to-the-top mentality. Interestingly, none of the current leaders in PISA within OECD countries have had a goal to be in Top 5, and furthermore, none of those who have set such a goal have succeeded to get to the top. There are much smarter national goals than being in the international Top 5. One such goal is to have great school for every child.

Standardised testing can be a good servant but it certainly is a bad master. This is a clear lesson from many countries that have over-relied on such tests in recent decades. As a natural scientist I have always be excited by Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle that, roughly speaking, says that in the quantum world exact simultaneous values to the position and momentum of a physical system cannot be assigned. These quantities can only be determined with some 'uncertainties' and thus cannot be determined exactly simultaneously. In the world of education the Uncertainty Principle could mean that due to these uncertainty relations the act of observation (or a standardised test) affects the quality of the object (student learning) of education. In other words, the more precisely one tries to test what a student has learned, the more uncertain the quality of that learning becomes.

This said, in national testing policies we should have a smart balance between census-based standardised testing and sample-based standardised assessments. When teachers report that they cannot teach their students as they think this would be the best for them because of standardised tests in the horizon, I think we have a problem. Similarly, if students complain that there is too much studying-to-the-test in school, we should rethink current testing policies. Authorities should keep in mind that some of the most valuable outcomes of schooling - deeper understanding, critical thinking, creativity, teamwork or empathy - are beyond standardised tests currently employed in Australia and other countries.
The Australian Government is pushing for greater school autonomy and 'school choice'. Do you believe this is the right approach? Or is it simply just a matter of how the Government can better distribute funds across the sector based on student needs?
Again, international evidence suggests that greater autonomy for schools is often associated to better learning outcomes. The question is, however, what do we mean by 'autonomy' here? In Australia and many other countries schools have recently received more autonomy to manage their budgets, hire and fire staff, and even select their students. This autonomy almost always comes with tight bureaucratic accountability not only in terms of checks and balances but also holding teachers and schools to account of outcomes through standardised test scores. Such administrative autonomy rarely enhances teachers' access to the most critical judgments of their work - curriculum, teaching, and assessing students' progress.

OECD that reports the findings of tri-annual PISA surveys concludes that education systems that grant more autonomy to schools to define and elaborate their curricula and assessments tend to perform better than systems that don't grant such autonomy. So, what is my answer? If the Government grants more administrative autonomy to schools without increasing teachers' access to the most essential part of decision making regarding their work, it is likely to remain just a bureaucratic change. But if school autonomy means more flexibility at school level to think of and react on the needs of the community by crafting curriculum, teaching and assessment so that they benefit all children, then I think more autonomy can really enhance both quality and equity of education. At the end of the day, improving education is about how empowered teachers and students are in school to do what they desire for the best of themselves and one another.
Pasi Sahlberg is Finnish educator and scholar. He worked as schoolteacher, teacher educator and policy advisor in Finland and has studied education systems and reforms around the world. His expertise and research interests include global education reform movement, future of schooling, and teaching and learning. His best-seller book "Finnish Lessons: What can the world learn from educational change in Finland" (Teachers College Press, 2011) won the 2013 Grawemeyer Award. He is a former Director General of CIMO (Centre for International Mobility and Cooperation) at the Finnish Ministry of Education and Science in Helsinki and currently a visiting Professor of Practice at Harvard University's Graduate School of Education in Cambridge, MA, USA.

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Equity in the Australian school system - Education Matters Magazine

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Renowned author and educator, Dr Pasi Sahlberg, visited Australia this year and spoke about the need to value teachers, the 'excellent' Gonski model and why it makes sense to invest in equity. During his visit he spoke with Education Matters magazine's Kathryn Edwards. In your opinion, what caused Australia's education system to lose its equity?

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The United States ranks 53rd out of 153 countries in gender equality.

Globally, 78% of adult men are in the labor force, compared to 55% of adult women.

In 85 of the countries covered by the report, there has never been a female head of state.

World Cup champion Megan Rapinoe has vowed to fight for equal pay until she's "in the grave." But according to a new report this week, we'll all be in the grave before women earn the same amount as men do.

At current rates of change, the global gender pay gap will close in 257 years, according to the World Economic Forum. That's even worse than last year, when the organization estimated it would take 202 years to close the gap.

"None of us will see gender parity in our lifetimes, and nor likely will many of our children," the researchers wrote.

The annual Global Gender Gap Report, which launched in 2006, measures gender equality in 153 countries across four categories: economic participation, educational attainment, health and political empowerment. While the global education and health gaps have nearly closed - just 12 years left to go for the education gap - large disparities remain in the economic and political spheres.

Iceland topped the charts as the most gender-equal country in the world for the 11th time in a row, the report said, tailed by Norway, Finland, Sweden and Nicaragua.

The United States fell two spots from last year's gender equality, coming in at 53rd out of 153 countries. The country's "standstill" is the result of a lack of progress toward equal wages and income, the report says.
Gender pay gap: The 5 states where gender pay gap is the smallest
How are women doing economically?

Women earn less than men do, and it's getting worse, the report says. That's because women have been hit by a "triple whammy." Women are highly represented in many jobs that have been replaced by automation, are under-represented in emerging technology roles, and they shoulder a disproportionate amount of child and sick care work, the report says.

"There's a lack of affordable access to child care or sick care for elderly family members. It makes it more difficult for women to participate in the labor market," said Chandra Childers, study director at the Institute for Women's Policy Research.

While about 78% of adult men are in the labor force, only 55% of adult women are in the labor force, the report says.

Globally, women's wages are about 58% of men's wages for similar work, according to a World Economic Forum questionnaire of business leaders. Taking into account education level, age, full-time versus part-time, and private versus public sector employment, women's wages are three-quarters of men's wages, according to International Labour Organization data cited in the report.
Consider this: America's parents want paid family leave and affordable child care. Why can't they get it?
The global income disparity is even greater than the wage disparity: Women bring in an average annual income of $11,500, versus $21,500 for a man, the report says.

Women also hold fewer positions of power in the economic sphere. Globally, 36% of all senior private sector managers and public sector officials are women, and 18% of firms are led by women. In 72 of the countries included in the report, some women do not have the right to open a bank account or obtain credit.

Women had the most economic opportunities in Benin, Iceland, Laos, Bahamas and Belarus; there were the fewest opportunities in India, Pakistan, Yemen, Syria and Iraq, the report says.

US ranks 26th in economic opportunity

The U.S. ranked 26th in economic opportunity, down from third place in 2006.

Women make 82 cents for every dollar paid to men, according to Census Bureau data on the median annual pay for workers who hold full-time, year-round jobs. (That figure does not adjust for such factors as the degrees and jobs women pursue, but you can compare differences in pay by occupation here.) Of U.S. workers with a bachelor's degree, women earn 74 cents for every dollar men make. The disparity is even greater among minorities.

"We can see differences across different occupations. Women only earn 71% of men's earnings in retail salespersons. But there are other occupations that do pretty well. Registered nurses make 91% of men's earnings," Childers said. "Where we really see that gap widening is in higher-paying occupations."

Among the boards of listed companies in the U.S., women make up about 1 in 5 board members, the report says. Despite being relatively "well represented in middle and high management roles," American women still struggle to enter the very top business positions, the report says.
Women are seeking answers for equal pay: Ask HR
That's partly because women don't have as many role models, according to Kimberly Churches, CEO of the American Association of University Women, which advocates for gender equity.

"Men overwhelmingly seek out stronger mentors and sponsors to help them move up the gravy train. Women don't have the same level of mentors and sponsors that can advocate for them when they're not in the room," Churches said. "More robust sponsorship programs will help to level the playing field."

The report suggests that policies such as corporate child care and paid parental leave are likely to have a significant influence on women's career opportunities, as well as policies that incentivize women to purse STEM fields. Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren and former candidate Kamala Harris included some of these policies in plans dedicated to closing the gender pay gap.
Equal pay in Hollywood: Actresses of color are banding together
How are women doing politically?

The largest gender gap exists in the political sphere, where just a quarter of the global gap has been closed thus far.

Of all the parliamentary seats worldwide, women occupy just 1 in 4, and, in two countries, women hold no seats at all. A smaller percentage of women serve as ministers worldwide.

In 85 of the countries covered by the report, there has never been a female head of state, including in Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden and the U.S.

Unlike women's economic participation, however, women's political empowerment is improving, and the past year has witnessed the greatest global improvement since 2006. In Latvia, Spain and Thailand, the number of women in parliament increased substantially.

The U.S. ranked 86th in political equality, its lowest score among the four categories.

"We have to remember that (gender equality) takes constant and rigorous attention - that we will slide backwards, just as this report suggests, if we're not doing everything we can to promote inclusive climates and cultures," Churches said.

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When will women get equal pay? Not for another 257 years, report says

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The United States ranks 53rd out of 153 countries in gender equality. Globally, 78% of adult men are in the labor force, compared to 55% of adult women. In 85 of the countries covered by the report, there has never been a female head of state.

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Justice may be interpreted in different ways depending on your context. In my perspective justice is equity.

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Inclusive education is an ambitious project given that…Schools were never really meant for everyone. The more they have been called upon to include the masses, the more they have developed the technologies of exclusion and containment (Slee, 2003, p.172).

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This article really resonated with me because as an educator, I do my best to embrace all cultures and to learn as much as I can from my students. I never come into the classroom believing I am the bearer of all knowledge and I acknowledge the importance of everyone's diverse cultures being represented, valued and acknowledged within my classroom.

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Gary Foley talks about why impulsive actions to support Aboriginal people can be a problem. It is important to reflect on who you are, why you want to support Aboriginal struggles, and how to do this, and know about local struggles, not just faraway ones.

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Gary Foley: Advice for white Indigenous activists in Australia

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Arundhati Roy: ‘The COVID pandemic is a portal'

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Arundhati Roy: ‘The COVID pandemic is a portal'

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Arundhati Roy, acclaimed author and longtime activist for antiglobalization movements, explains how this pandemic is a unique opportunity to think about "what might be" for social justice....

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Arundhati Roy: ‘The pandemic is a portal’ | Free to read

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The novelist on how coronavirus threatens India — and what the country, and the world, should do next

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"How Studying Privilege Systems Can Strengthen Compassion": Peggy McIntosh at TEDxTimberlaneSchools

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By Melissa Crum

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A Tale of Two Teachers | Melissa Crum | TEDxColumbusWomen

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The difference between being not racism and being anti-racist

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Get a daily email featuring the latest talk, plus a quick mix of trending content.

By subscribing, you understand and agree that we will store, process and manage your personal information according to our Privacy Policy

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Ibram X. Kendi: The difference between being "not racist" and antiracist

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There is no such thing as being "not racist," says author and historian Ibram X. Kendi. In this vital conversation, he defines the transformative concept of antiracism to help us more clearly recognize, take responsibility for and reject prejudices in our public policies, workplaces and personal beliefs.

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"Women made 82% of what men made in 2018, compared with 60.5% in 1969, according to the American Association of University Women."

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equal pay day 2020: today is equal pay day for women and it's not a day to celebrate - cnn

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Today is Equal Pay Day for women and it's not a day to celebrate

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March 31, 2020 is Equal Pay Day for many women, but it's not a day to celebrate.

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It is outrageous that a woman with the same education, doing the same job, is paid less than her male counterpart. #EIE732

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The time has come to demand equal pay for the same work!