This opinion piece by Carol Schwartz published this week in The Age highlights some important differences in recognition of men and women in our communities:  "As in previous years, fewer than a third of the names on the Australia Day honours list are women. As in previous years, women are given more awards in the lowest grades than in the higher...." and

"It's also notable that the areas of Australian life where women are dominant are almost completely missing from the awards. If we turn our minds to people who do good for others, just about the first images that come to mind would be nurses and teachers. Both professions are weighted towards women. Yet nursing gets a bare four mentions in the Australia Day honours list, while teaching gets three (all of them in the field of teaching the arts rather than firing the imaginations of 20 unruly schoolchildren desperate for recess). There's one therapist on the list. There are no social workers. It would be easy for a foreigner to come away with the impression that Australia had more professional sportspeople than care workers." 

(you can read the full article here and I've written before here about how you can nominate)

So what is it about the roles that women historically play?  Why don't we recognise that contribution more? And value it?

Or do we?

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this...

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Anonymous commented on 10-Feb-2012 01:52 PM

Congratulations to The Honourable Justice Diana BRYANT who has just been awarded an Australia Day gong! Officer of the Order of Australia for distinguished service to the judiciary and to the law, particularly to family law policy reform and practice,
through the establishment of the Federal Magistrates Court, and to the advancement of women in the legal profession.

TheSheEO commented on 10-Feb-2012 01:54 PM

Brilliant!! Congratulations go to Justice Bryant, what an inspiration :-)

Karen commented on 15-Feb-2012 02:49 PM

to be honest quit complaining about it, why do we need to have more women, does everything need to be a race between the races. Theses awards are awarded on merit not what sex you are. as we women we havent worked so hard for the last 25 years to be given
a prize by default.

luxbet commented on 27-Feb-2012 02:42 PM

I tend not to drop a comment, however after reading through a few of the comments here The Australia Day Honors, why enough women aren't recognised and what you can do about it. I actually do have a couple of questions for you if you don't mind. Could
it be simply me or does it look as if like some of the remarks come across like they are written by brain dead individuals? :-P And, if you are writing on other online sites, I'd like to keep up with anything fresh you have to post. Could you post a list of
the complete urls of your shared pages like your Facebook page, twitter feed, or linkedin profile?