Yesterday, news broke that the LNP plan to hold their International Women’s Day event at a men-only club in Brisbane.
Shortly after this news broke our Prime Minister for women described this as the LNP “smashing the glass ceiling yet again”.
Earlier LNP women vice-president Peta Simpson asked: “how can we celebrate international women’s day knowing that there’s not an international men’s day – and then when the men do want to have something that’s for themselves, we can’t respect it?”
Why can’t we just let men have something for themselves? Why do women demand their own day? Why is there no International Men’s Day? Honestly? Because as things stand every day is International Men’s Day. As Michaelia Cash argued yesterday men and women in Australia are not equal. This might change however so in the spirit of keeping an open mind we’ll barrack for a Men’s Day when:
1. There are more women named Elizabeth and Mary holding CEO positions than all male CEOs combined
2. When promoting one man to the federal cabinet doubles the men’s representation overall
3. There are so few male CEOs in Australia that they don’t even form a statistically viable sample size
4. On average, men earn 18.8% less than their female colleagues
5. Male managers earn just over half what female managers earn
6. Despite this widening pay gap the government seeks to wind back reporting intended to narrow this gap
7. A male sports star is asked to “give us a twirl” after an impressive world-standard performance
8. A male author is described as “plain of feature and certainly overweight” after selling a million copies of a single book
9. Two men are killed every week as a result of gendered violence
10. When, despite this, the government funnels federal funds away from critical support services helping men at risk of harm as a result of this epidemic of violence
So that’s our 10-point plan for International Men’s Day.
If the day comes that all of these ugly facts are true for men, then, yes, certainly, we should have an International Men’s Day. I’ll put my hand up to organise it myself.
Until that day comes, anyone advocating for an International Men’s Day desperately needs to research International Women’s Day.
An earlier version of this story incorrectly attributed a quote mentioned above to Fiona Simpson. We regret the error and apologise for any confusion.