Gone are the days when women had to go on hunger strike to make a point, now they do lunch, said the Prime Minister Julia Gillard in her speech launching a nationwide search for Australia’s ‘100 Women of Influence’.
The PM was the keynote speaker at a lunch held last week at the Shangri-La in Sydney to open the Awards, which calls for outstanding and influential women in various sectors, including diversity, innovation and social change.
Nominations close Friday 27 July for an individual nominating somebody else and Friday 10 August for self-nomination. More information can be found here.
The full transcript of the PM’s inspirational speech can be found here and The Australian Filipina has handpicked 10 ‘quotable quotes’ that are particularly relevant to upwardly mobile Filipina women out there.
The Prime Minister Julia Gillard
INSPIRATIONAL WORDS FROM THE COUNTRY'S FIRST FEMALE PRIME MINISTER
1. What change means is that things that are unthinkable become thinkable, and ultimately the things that are thinkable become normal.
2. Thank heavens we’re not in the days that we had to go on hunger strike to make our point, now we can come out for lunch.
3. Women on boards are now at 14 per cent. Now admittedly that’s better than the 8 per cent two years ago, but it’s certainly not good enough.
4. We have to keep pushing to see more women take their rightful place on those boards of our major companies.
5. I think Hillary Clinton best caught this sense of progress but the need for more when she spoke after her defeat in the presidential primaries, and when she said, “although we weren’t able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you it’s got about 18 million cracks in it, and the light is shining through like never before.
6. For too many women, it’s still a struggle and a juggle.
7. Change is never easy, it always requires people to step up and say that they recognise the need for change and they’re going to make it happen.
8. Recently, I got the best compliment of my lifetime from an unexpected quarter when it was said about me that ‘Gillard will not lay down and die.’ To which I thought, damn right.
9. She uttered these immortal words, ‘You must have the stamina of an ox and hide like a rhinoceros and when they have kicked you in the teeth you must look as if you hadn’t noticed’. Well, in 19 years, the job description for high achieving women probably hasn’t changed.
10. We will reach days in this country when it is so norm for the Prime Minister to be a woman that no one even talks about her hair anymore.
Nominate a Filipina-Australian who you think should be in the '100 Women of Influence'. Find out more on www.afr.com/100women.
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