While The Australian Women’s Weekly Qantas Women of the Future awards were established to seek out Australia’s most inspiring young women – women that will most definitely change the world – it also meant Australia’s most powerful women were handing out sage advice.
From the biggest barriers to females in leadership positions to the importance of taking inspiration from surprising places, Ita Buttrose, Turia Pitt and Hon. Julie Bishop explained how they’ve overcome their toughest hurdles.
WATCH: Meghan Markle is another fierce feminist we have all the time in the world for.
Prepare yourself for the future
Everyone knows the times, they are a changing. While more women are claiming top positions in the workplace, if we have any hope of shattering that pervasive glass ceiling, we need to be armed with the right artillery.
“A lot of the jobs that exist today will be replaced by robotics and artificial intelligence,” explained the foreign minister.
“So I think the challenge will be making sure women have the skillset to have the capacity to undertake jobs in a very uncertain world.”
Ita agreed, encouraging women to make the move into the IT space.
“But I think the most important thing for women to do is believe in themselves,” the journalist added. “Believe in your own ability and the right to be there and have a right to strive.”
Be resilient
Turia Pitt is the personification of resilience. The woman’s been through hell and back and her dry sense of humour never faltered.
With a baby boy due in December, Turia has a litany of values she wants to instil in her son, but one more so than the rest.
“I want him to be resilient – I think that’s the most important thing,” she said definitively.
Julie agreed, adding that it’s resilience that makes sure she gets out of bed every morning.
“It’s not for the faint-hearted, politics,” she said.
“If I believed everything that was written about me, I would put the doona over my head and never get out of bed in the morning. So you’ve got to be very resilient. But that’s where women can support each other. And say we can do this.
“We can be legislators, we can be policy makers. We can be leaders.”
Take inspiration from unlikely places
A lot of us look to strong women that achieved things we would have never thought possible as our inspiration. Read: Lisa Wilkinson becoming editor of Dolly at just 21 – queen. But Ita thinks we should look at the younger generation. They haven’t been worn down by the world and the “we can do whatever we want” attitude is something we should aim to grab again.
“I’m inspired by my granddaughters – I have three of them,” she disclosed. “They’re all little, all under nine, but I’m inspired by their inquiring minds and they really have a can-do attitude and I’m going to do everything I can to ensure they keep that.”
The biggest barrier to female leadership
No one’s denying that women’s rights have come along in leaps and bounds. Australia now has more female GPs than male ones, we’ve had a female prime minister (who gave an iconic misogyny speech in Parliament) and we’ve removed prohibitive gender restrictions on ADF combat roles. But to pretend there’s 100% equality across the board would not only be naïve, it would be harmful.
What is the biggest thing stopping women from claiming those leadership roles?
“I think the unconscious bias that exists,” Julie said.
“We’ve had a female governor-general, a female prime minster and female premiers and I’m sure that we will continue to have female leaders, but there is a level of unconscious bias that presents barriers that are unseen.
“You can deal with the barriers that are seen, but it’s hard to deal with those that are submerged in people’s subconsciousness.”
Strong women have always shaped our country and they’ll continue to do so. While these women are already firmly in the history books, we can’t wait to see what our Women of the Future do to make this world a far better place.
