“That ain’t no way to treat a lady,” scolds the ad from the back of taxis, the side of buses and on television. Thank goodness for this national campaign, because Australian ladies are getting some pretty poor treatment of late.
Women in Australia are being killed, in increasing numbers, by their partners. They are being advised to keep safe by not walking in public parks. They are working as hard as the gents but the gender pay gap is getting wider.
One woman did rise to the top job in the country. As prime minister she was called a “witch” and “bitch,” and told to “make an honest woman of herself.” She was also one of a handful of women accused of “destroying the joint.”
That ain’t no way to treat a lady.
Another woman is our current foreign minister. Recently she was questioned on national TV as to whether she would use her bare breasts as a tool for diplomacy.
That ain’t no way to treat a lady.
(Whether it was intended as a joke or not, the fact that a woman posed the bare breast proposition only proves that this is the one area in which we may have actually achieved equality.)
Some Australian women, like Olympic medallists Anna Meares, Sally Pearson and Lauren Jackson, are the best in the world at their chosen sports. Yet in 2012 – an Olympic year no less – no Australian female human was named Daily Telegraph’s Sportswoman of the Year. That honour instead went to a horse.
That ain’t no way to treat a lady.
The president of Australia’s Human Rights Commission is a woman. She was ridiculed by certain media outlets and several cabinet ministers for reporting the damage done to children inside Australia’s immigration detention centres.
That ain’t no way to treat a lady.
Some women in Australia’s care, behind bars and fences in a detention centre on Nauru, are, according to reports, being forced to expose their bodies to male guards in order to use the shower. They are also reportedly being raped. One young woman in a Darwin detention centre was so distressed by the conditions she’d experienced in Nauru that she thought it a better option to throw herself off the roof of a building.
That is certainly no way to treat a lady.
The plight of females forcibly detained is not lost on the “That ain’t no way to treat a lady” campaign. One of the commercials provokingly asks,
When you wake up in the morning, what’s the first thing you see? What if it was a cage? What if every morning it was a cage?
Then again, life outside detention is no great example of how to treat a lady.
Australia has denied some asylum seeker women residency in Australia but has granted them the opportunity to live in the community in Nauru. These women have resorted to sleeping in their jeans as a means to protect themselves from sexual assault by the locals.
Australia’s minister for women is Johnny-on-the-spot on all these issues. Whether it is cutting funding to homeless shelters and family violence services or dragging his heels on a new childcare subsidy system, Tony Abbott has his finger on the pulse of what matters to Australian women.
And, boy oh boy, does he know what women want to hear when it comes to reports of rape, sexual harassment and assault in government-sponsored detention facilities: “Things happen,” he shrugs.
Perhaps it is not a surprising response from a minister for women who thinks the best way to treat a lady is to spare her the burden of paying a carbon tax.
To be fair, the minister for women does always protect one particular woman, his chief of staff, from sexist criticism. Perhaps it was the subtle influence of Peta Credlin that shifted the minister’s response to rapes and assaults on women from “things happen” to the solemn declaration a few days later such things are “very disturbing.”
Australia certainly could benefit from a national campaign aimed at improving the lives of the “females of the species”. Unfortunately, though, the species benefiting from the “That ain’t no way to treat a lady” campaign is not Homo sapiens.
It is chickens. Yes, that’s right. Hens, and not the kind who go out for a big night the week before their girlfriend’s wedding.
I’m all for the humane treatment of animals. If you can afford it, buy free-range eggs. But I’m even more in favour of the humane treatment of humans. When you buy those free-range eggs, please spare a thought for what else you can do to ensure that Australia improves its treatment of the ladies.
