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Summers brings ‘Misogyny’ to the dinner table

SHE has chaired Greenpeace International, advised two Prime Ministers, written eight books and edited magazines such as “Ms.” and “Good Weekend”, and she’s speaking in Canberra next Wednesday night.

Dr Anne Summers AO.
Dr Anne Summers AO.
Dr Anne Summers, one of Australia’s foremost activist-intellectuals and a key figure in the feminist movement, is the guest speaker at next week’s ACT Law Week dinner, hosted by the Women Lawyers Association of the ACT.

Her speech will draw on the ideas she explores in her latest book, “The Misogyny Factor”, which is available now through NewSouth Books.

The book, she says, explores one question in particular: “Why is it that 40 years after equality between the sexes was put on the agenda in this country by Gough Whitlam, we still don’t have full equality?”

“I make the argument that we certainly have made a lot of progress – women are being educated in greater numbers than used to be the case, they’re in the workforce in greater numbers, and they’re doing incredible jobs like the Prime Minister and the Governor-General – but we still don’t have true equality,” she says.

The cover of "The Misogyny Factor" by Anne Summers.
The cover of “The Misogyny Factor” by Anne Summers.
“Women don’t get paid as much as men and face discrimination, the most extreme kind, of course, being violence. Violence against women is a terrible problem in this country. We’ve had 40 years to address this, so how come we haven’t been able to do it?”

The short answer, she says, is in the book’s title. The “Misogyny Factor” refers to all negative attitudes about women that run through society and combine to resist equality between the sexes.

In the book she demonstrates that inequality still exists through quantifiable outcomes, such as the pay gap between men and women.

For example the results of a “gender pay audit”, released last year by NAB, showed that women across the bank were paid 29 per cent less on average, a decrease from 37 per cent in 2007-08.

A survey of graduate starting salaries shows female law graduates are routinely paid less than their male counterparts, she adds.

In the book, Summers uses the word “misogyny” – which traditionally refers to a pathological hatred of women – in its newer, broader sense.

The meaning of the word became the subject of a national debate last year, after Julia Gillard used it to chastise Tony Abbott in a speech that went viral on the internet.

The editor of the Macquarie Dictionary, Susan Butler, then said publicly that since the 1980s, the word had “come to be used as a synonym for sexism, a synonym with bite, but nevertheless with the meaning of entrenched prejudice against women, rather than pathological hatred”.

“I use the term “the misogyny factor” rather than just plain “misogyny”,  because I think it’s broader than just individual attitudes, from outright hatred of women to, if you like, disdain – not wanting women to be part of the corporate world, not wanting women to be part of the ‘boys club’,” says Summers.

“I think excluding women from taking part in the workforce equally, is a form of misogyny.”

The ACT Law Week Dinner is on Wednesday, May 15, 6.30pm, at The Boat House by the Lake. For more information, go to actlawsociety.asn.au/events/event/law-week-dinner

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