As Elizabeth Broderick prepares to step away from her position as Sex Discrimination Officer in September she reveals the worst thing a man has said to her, in an interview with The Australian Financial Review’s BOSS Magazine.
“I’m sick and tired of incompetent vaginas being promoted around this place.”
Sadly this comment doesn’t stand alone with Broderick telling the magazine “there have been some crackers”.
The Sex Discrimination Officer also admits she has cried a lot on the job while listening to women’s stories.
“I hold on to that emotion, but now I try to use it in a way that fuels a strategic response to create change, rather than sit with deep sadness about the way the world is,” Broderick said.
While explaining her departure will leave her with the flexibility to take on a “small number of high-impact roles,” the world is possibly what the former lawyer will take on.
She isn’t ruling out the United Nations, the magazine reveals, with Broderick currently sitting as co-chair of the UN’s Women’s Empowerment Principles Leadership Group.
After holding the Age Discrimination portfolio before taking up her current position in 2011, Broderick worked first as a commercial lawyer.
Unlike many women in high-powered positions who dismiss the concept, Broderick claims “quotas will need to be part of the picture” if women aren’t sitting in 30 per cent of the board room seats in five years time.
And when questioned about women who prefer to get on with the job, avoiding playing the ‘victim card’ Broderick tells the AFR, women can’t “ever extrapolate that your own experience is every other woman’s lived experience.”
“Would you be happy for your daughter to go through exactly the same thing you did, today, or do you think there are ways it could be done differently?”
It’s clearly a rhetorical question for Broderick. And she isn’t raising the white flag anytime soon.
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