IWD; meh

International Women’s Day each year is a bit like Groundhog Day for me. I poke my nose out of my burrow, then go back in, after seeing that 51% of the population are expected to be happy with some tokenism, and just to stfu until next year when the mainstream will pretend to care again.

We start with Channel 10’s The Project. The regular panel is two males (Waleed Aly, Peter Hellier) and one female (Carrie Bickmore) plus a guest (rotating/one-off). So ok, they are starting from a position of 66% male, 33% female, but you would think that on IWD they would make some kind of effort to have a female guest (not even asking for a feminist here either!). But no.  The Project’s IWD panel was three males, one female. Oh, and a little piece tacked on the end about five women. That’s it. A pathetic token effort if ever I saw one.

We celebrate #WomenSmashingIt this #IWD2016! Which woman in your life is smashing it? #TheProjectTVhttps://t.co/JyxJaggASQ

— The Project (@theprojecttv) March 8, 2016

Smashing what-now I ask? It certainly is not the status quo.

@theprojecttv Poor effort for IWD, having a panel of three men and one woman. Try harder, m'kay?

— DavinaSquirrel (@DavinaSquirrel) March 8, 2016

Anyway, scoring The Project’s IWD effort as a 1/10. Perhaps for 2017 they might just even consider a panel of 50/50?

This is probably why I have not bothered to watch television for the last few months. Whilst watching tonight, an ad with IWD theme came on for the ANZ Bank.

Published on Jul 28, 2015
ANZ has partnered with award winning Director Jane Campion to highlight the need for systems to better support women. While neuroscience shows girls’ brains develop ahead of boys, this advantage is not maintained through life, with women too often falling behind. ANZ is launching a range of initiatives to inspire, educate and assist women and is encouraging other organisations to explore what they can do to help build an equal future. To find out more about ANZ’s #equalfuture Women’s Initiative, visit anz.com/equalfuture

The ad that went to air was a little shorter, with a graphic and voice-over on the end about ANZ topping up their female employees’ superannuation payments by $500, and encouraging other companies to do the same. I do not recall seeing a per annum on the end graphic, but this shorter version that I found afterwards does indicate per annum.

$500 per annum per female employee sounds like a lot, right?

The ABS says the average individual wage in Australia in November 2013 was $57,980 before tax. The average full-time wage is $74,724 before tax. Those figures may seem high but keep in mind it doesn’t include people whose only income source is government payments or pensions, which would drag the average down significantly.

Source

So just taking the lower figure there, the $500pa represents a mere half-a-week’s salary for the average individual wage. Most bank tellers (still majority female) would be earning just above that. Frankly, it is still a token effort, and won’t go far in addressing the following life-long disparity (please check out the full ACTU press release).

Retirement:

–The average superannuation balance for women at retirement is $138,150 for women compared with $292,500 for men;
–60% of women aged between 65-69 years have no Super at all;
–It is estimated that 38.7% of single women will retire in poverty;
–Twice the amount of Superannuation tax concessions from government flow to men than women.

Most likely a good percentage of ANZ’s female employees will leave the workforce for a period of time due to child-rearing or looking after elderly parents.

Put into perspective for ANZ’s last year’s after tax profit of $7.5 billion, I mean, seriously dudes, $500 pa per female wage slave seems a tad stingy, and is nowhere near going to address the life-long financial discrimination that women face.

Speaking of life-long, both in the ACTU report and ANZ’s other video, each mention that the discrimination against females starts out at the pocket money level.

Watch the micro expressions on the girls. They are angry, and rightly so. Perhaps if all girls were raised knowing the truth of discrimination against females, then more girls would get angry and get into proper feminism. And not fall for the gaslighting of “women have equality now”.  Because no, we do not.

Of course, any mention of IWD always brings out the legions of MRA trolls, whining with “But When Is International Men’s Day?” usually accompanied with cries of “reverse sexism!!!” and a whole river of Man Tears.

Well, apparently IMD does exist, and it is the 19th of November (you know, during “Movember“, because one day just isn’t enough, they have to make the entire month about them).

With each successive year it becomes clear that women are not making progress, and we are actually going backwards (from the ACTU again):

Women are earning less on average to men than they were 20 years ago

For me, IWD is really IWDDR (International Women’s Day of Depressive Realisation). Certainly, that is my reaction every year.

Roughly 3.5 billion of these printed every year, for the male population