I would throughly support women being on ceasefire negotiations and peace talks, but if it has anything to do with the Office for Women, then forget it.

Its one of the most sexist, feminist and bigoted of organisations in Australia, and there must be a better way of organising NAPS then through the Office for Women.

I am not HAPPY. I do not want to lose the Australian Office of Women but I feel a deep sense of betrayal by the Office of Women and Australian women in power generally. The problem I think is about our internal National "Cultural Struggles" as well as "Status". For this I claim we have gone backward.

Before I speak, I would like to endorse my admiration and respect for Julie McKay. Compared to speakers I have heard this year and last year from Australian Women, Julie McKay not only reflects the dialogue but the true conviction that is missing among the Middle Class Women who are dominating a lack of true engagement with ordinary every-day Australian Women.

Secondly, my respect, admiration and support for journalist Sally Sara. What is shameful is that more [ordinary women] women who need to hear her speak [such as I] are totally alienated because of the way International Women's Day in Australia is designed and the way it is intellectualised by those women who today wear the power.

Compare events of IWD around the world and it is about wide-scale engagement. Ie "All Welcome, free parking, register online. In Australia it is about pure fundraising. Not education, not broad community engagement, sharing and networking but rather hierarchy.

I don't accept this kind of culture, given my own experience is possibly more wholesome then the following contingent of those most educated, well paid and exclusively connected.

As a migrant woman.... I say, "Gender Equality" starts at home, among "us" women themselves. If emancipation means anything then the truthful engagement of women in the lower classes is paramount. [Bums on seats has more power jointly then a few, intellectual women behind closed doors representing the failed perceptions of an elite!]

It is not good enough that people like myself are excluded from the exposure of the intellectual world where local issues that ought to include us... the ethnically marginalised are merely projected.

If it were not for ABC News 24 today... I would not have seen the National Press Club. As with last year when I attempted to see the Human Rights Commissioner speak but couldn't due to the price, it is humiliating. Given I have met this Commissioner briefly by chance, I cant tell you what a crime it is that more of us.... Non-included women are not encouraged to engage given the impact of this kind of exposure would assist us "chronically" marginalised find the voice and the authentic support.

As Australian women we need to combat what Australia is now doing by design, as it advocates an exclusive culture of [economic-educated] "BEST". Humanity is not about BEST... it is about inclusiveness, magnanimous, validating our existence as women and the target we jointly wish to achieve. That is where we are all, as women "liberated" are going wrong. As marginalised women we are becoming observers of our own destiny while the privileged classes rep the benefits of our disposition. Worse is that many of us are invisible to the mainstream as our situation falls below the perception of participants who are in charge of policy targets. As I said it is about the culture of the hierarchy, that keeps the rest of us today in a ignominious void, socially isolated and beyond recommendation of persuadable support. Prehaps it is we, many are seen as difficult.

The problem is; I have met many women within this Middle Class network [especially in Canberra] who agree with me. Unfortunately however rather then rock the boat, to help make this special IWD Day more "aequalita," these women respond as if this is the way it is and that I ought to accept it.

Hence I call for Gender Equality from all women in Power who need to consider their own positions and how their actions are holding us, the aspiring ones, the less fortunate ones, the undisputed genuine one back in this developed Nation we call 'fair-go' Australia.

I call fo a more evenhanded kind of action that allows at least one day where slogans are put aside for the sake of "'having a common descent".

With this I end with an address to Ms Marie Coleman, National Foundation for Australian Women who asked the one question that needs addressing in this country. The single question most bungled as we watched the response at the National Press Club. The question pressing for myself and many of my peers. What actions and policies are we implimenting for the nations most marginised.

Finally I suggest there is a certain amount of tokenism presently occurring in the Australian Womens Movement. We have lost contact with the “grassroots”. It is part of the “gap” widening.... in our lower classes.

THANK YOU. Thank You Ms Marie Coleman, Julie McKay and Sally Sara.

http://www.miacat.com/

The female of all species are the most dangerous.

Elk don't fight to the death in spring for bragging rights and nations do not war just for territory

Fine put women on the SCR 1325 discussions, ceasefire negotiations, peace talks and peace agreements, but it will be like putting petrol bowsers in a round discussion with competing bushfires.

It will not be near-impossible but totally impossible to increase women's status and visibility in peace processes until women agree en masse that the planet is OVERPOPULATED, their right to bear children must be restricted to one child per lifetime (till populations retreat below 6 billion) and that although it takes two to make a baby it only takes the woman to selfishly have an unwelcomed child in an overpopulated world teetering on the edge of a petroleum led oblivion.

I know women are far too selfish to take note. But there will be consequences for women well beyond those experienced in past wars if we do not see a retraction in global population growth.

The cat's out of the bag! Women will not take responsibility for their own actions and are pleading fake ignorance. And NO double dealing security council or its toothless resolutions will make an iota of difference to the inevitable consequences.

Tommy T Elk.