Australia’s sex discrimination commissioner has called on men to play a prominent role in promoting gender equality by championing women’s rights to other men.

Elizabeth Broderick said on Thursday the only way to create change in a patriarchal society was by “powerful and decent men stepping up and taking the message of gender equality and women’s leadership to other men”.

During a public conversation with the journalist Anne Summers in Sydney, Broderick singled out workplaces as a key site of gender inequality, highlighting the lack of women in leadership roles, the pay gap, sexual harassment and the role of companies in tackling domestic violence.

Broderick called domestic violence “the most significant gender equality issue in the world”.

In the first four months of 2015, it is estimated at least 34 Australian women have died at the hands of intimate partners or formers partners.

“If there were 34 people being killed by terrorist attacks of falling off the train, we’d be doing something about it,” Broderick said.



Until recently Broderick found companies averse to discussing domestic violence. “I could speak about sexual harassment, but the minute I talk about domestic violence it was like, ‘whoa, that’s a private matter between him and her’.”

But she noted a significant shift in attitudes, in part due to the work of domestic violence campaigner and Australian of the year, Rosie Batty, whose 11-year-old son Luke was murdered by his father.

In 2010 the commissioner launched Male Champions of Change, a group of 23 leaders and chief executives committed to improving gender equality, and included the chief of army, David Morrison, and CEO of Telstra, David Thodey. Broderick invited Batty and Kristy McKellar, who survived a choking attack by her husband, to speak at one meeting.

Some members of the group, including Telstra, have introduced paid domestic violence leave, and implemented policies that allow domestic abuse survivors to change telephone numbers and workplace locations.

In place of firing perpetrators, which Broderick said could lead to a greater incidence of violence in the home, the group is investigating behavioural change programs.

Broderick said the male champions were “more bold in the collective” and together showed more commitment to gender-equality strategies, such as making all roles available in a flexible work arrangement.

The men, who between them speak at around a thousand events each year, have also signed a “panel pledge” requiring they inquire about the gender balance of any panel they have been invited to speak at.

“That’s opening things up for female speakers to step up, be seen and therefore start to build their profile,” Broderick said.

Broderick called closing Australia’s 18.8% gender pay gap an “intractable issue” and said there wasn’t “one lever you can move” which would solve the issue.

The gap was “a result of the fact that women are not promoted to the same extent as men” and “women are in what we call ‘occupational segregation’ – so in lower-paid employment and they trade off money for family-friendly work conditions.”

Broderick said research showed the pay gap widened the more senior a woman became and the burden of responsibility should lie on employers to close this, rather than individual women who faced the risk of being ostracised or known as a “troublemaker” if they asked for better pay.

A 2015 government report found the lowest pay gaps were in public administration and safety (7.2%), and the highest in financial and insurance services (29.6%).

Broderick said the keys to closing the gap were increased transparency around different pay rates and the advocation of sharing paid and unpaid work, such as child-rearing, between men and women.

Broderick said if more men were more involved in the life of their children and families, women would have more time to build experience in paid work and their economic independence. But also that “work and care should not sit at opposite ends of one hard choice”.

Caring was “the ultimate expression of our humanity”, Broderick said. “We have to have workplaces where people can both work and care.”

Broderick was appointed sex discrimination commissioner in 2007, with her second term due to end in September 2015.