International Women’s Day reminds us of the challenges, successes and milestones in our history, and the transformation that has enabled women in Australia today to enjoy equal rights and opportunities.

Over time, our nation has made consistent progress in ensuring the equal standing of both men and women.

So it is both astonishing and outrageous that these gains – hard fought for over decades – are now under threat. What began as a construct in sociology, became an academic argument, then a political fad. It has now, through activist campaigns and the cowardice of our elected officials and corporate leaders, become reality, in a way that would baffle and horrify previous generations of campaigners for women’s rights.

Until recently, the advancement was undeniable. In 1894, women in South Australia (including Aboriginal women) gained the right to vote and in 1902, the Commonwealth Franchise Act extended the vote to all women in Australia. We became the second country in the world to give equal voting rights to women. A noble and forward-thinking achievement!

Better still, Australia was the first nation to give women the right to be elected to a national Parliament in 1902. Vida Goldstein, a proud Western Victorian, was the first woman in the British Empire to stand for Parliament as a Senate candidate in 1903.

Women on my side of politics have always led the way: the first female in any Parliament was Edith Cowan OBE in 1921; Hon Dame Enid Lyons AD was the first federal female MP in 1943; and the first female Cabinet Minister in Australia was Hon Dame Florence Cardell-Oliver, in 1949.

Women’s success has not been confined to democratic participation, but includes equal rights to work, equal pay for equal work and equal rights to education and job opportunities.

The 21st Century Australian woman has greater freedom and opportunities afforded to her than at any other time in history, and to truly honour this legacy, we must reflect, be proud and thank those who led the way.

However, in the abundance of blessings, women face a new battle. It is not to do with votes or pay but an attack on our very being – an attack on the identity of a woman.

What is a woman? An adult female human.

Plain and simple I would have thought. Not so, according to some. Sadly, the movement to let men parade as women and demand female recognition has erased the uniqueness, beauty and femininity of a woman by claiming that womanhood is merely a subjective feeling that can be experienced by any person, notably men!

This modern tendency to question basic biology places women in greater danger than even the suffragettes would have thought possible. It disgraces the hard-fought battles women have mounted and won, to achieve equality.

Women deserve to feel safe and respected. We have achieved this through removing the marriage bar, criminalising marital rape and legislating against sex discrimination.

However, despite this progress women today now find themselves in a fight for the right even to be recognised as biological women. The right to safe spaces including single-sex toilets, change rooms and female-only prisons has now also been denied.

It is becoming increasingly common to have all-gender and trans-inclusive bathrooms to cater to a minority of men who feel like women. Women can’t even be guaranteed a safe place to champion women’s rights, including on the steps of Parliament House in Melbourne. This idea would outrage suffragette women and the early feminist movement and rightly so.

The fact is that today, feelings trump women’s safety and very existence. And for what?

The logical fallacy that people should choose the restroom that they feel most comfortable using over the protection of vulnerable girls is unacceptable. The fact that women can be raped in a woman’s prison by a man masquerading as a woman is deplorable.

The dignity of women is further disgraced by rhetoric that distorts the truth of motherhood.

The ability to produce and nurture life is a phenomenon that only women can experience. But today, inclusivity has overridden our right to be called a mother, in favour of ‘person who gives birth’, ‘chest-feeder’, or simply ‘parent’. For the record, I’m not a birthing parent but a proud mother.

Gender blindness, including the use of gender-neutral language, destroys the significant differences between men and women, a basic biological factor in life.

Our over-sensitivities today strip women of their dignity and right to existence.

I never thought that upon my entrance into the Victorian Parliament in 2018, I would have to fight to uphold the definition of womanhood and argue for the protection of rights for women and girls.

We do a great disservice to those women who achieved equality and respect by allowing the identity for which they were really fighting to be erased.

As we approach International Women’s Day, let us celebrate the achievements of women yesterday, be thankful for the blessings we have today, and proudly and boldly proclaim the uniqueness and dignity of womanhood for tomorrow and the foreseeable future. And we must also applaud our modern-day heroes, fighting at the barricades of social media and legislative halls to preserve the unique and precious identity of what is, a woman.

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