When Sarah Kirlew was pursuing her Master’s Degree at University, she wrote an essay on women in corporate leadership. At the time, she noted that there were more men named ‘Peter’ than there were women who were the CEOs of ASX 200 companies. She says, “Thankfully, that is changing. The statistic now is that women are in 28 per cent of senior roles, but obviously, there’s a lot more to do.”
In her current role as the Australian Consul General for South India, Kirlew is committed to advancing gender equality, and the rights of women and girls at home and abroad. Excerpts from an interview with HerCircle.
Gender equality is among the key focus areas of your work in India. How do you think our countries can work together to bridge the gender gap?
It is an important part of our value proposition and who we are as a country. The Pacific, in particular, is a region where Australia feels developmental responsibility. With India, we work as partners to enhance gender equality. Last week, I attended the Women 20 meeting in Mahabalipuram, Tamil Nadu. Previously I had attended one in China. It’s wonderful bringing together smart, intelligent, curious, creative women to discuss the big problems of the world and how women can rise into global decision-makers.
In terms of gender equality, there are a few facets we can think about, such as how the value of women’s work is calculated through the gender pay gap. This a metric that doesn’t strictly look at one man and one woman doing the same job, but are paid differently. It looks at the aggregate of salaries of women compared to the salaries of men. In too many societies, Australia’s included, women’s work is less valued than the work that men do; whether in childcare or healthcare. One of the ways we can do that is by gathering and publicising data, so that companies realise what’s going on.
Another is through women in leadership. When we think about decision-making, those positions are more powerful and highly paid as we rise up the ranks. There’s data that demonstrates that organisations with diverse leadership pools perform better and are more profitable.
You’ve been actively working towards supporting women in sports. Tell us about some of those initiatives.
Women playing sports is crucial because it teaches them many important skills. It teaches you teamwork, independence, hard work, the ability to take a few knocks on the field, and resilience. It breaks the nexus that women should be valued for being fair and beautiful, and it shows that women can be valued for their strength, athleticism, their ability to contribute to a team, and those are powerful lessons. It’s also good for general health, development, and well-being.
The joke is that it’s cricket, Commonwealth, and curry that both our nations share in common. Cricket is the real binder – the other two less so, unless the curry is cooked by a MasterChef Australia contestant! We were all excited to see the success of the women’s IPL in India this year. Word is going around that from next year, the matches may even rotate. I would love to see a women’s IPL match played for Australia. Women’s cricketers have had a pay rise in Australia and it’s getting closer to parity with men’s games. These women are also role models for girls in both our countries. We all look up to cricketers as our heroes. There’s this saying that women can’t be what they can’t see. Girls can’t dream in a void. When women cricketers are financially remunerated for their work, when they’re given a leadership platform to speak, it helps inspire girls everywhere to aspire for their own dreams.
Australia will also host the FIFA Women’s World Cup along with New Zealand in the second half of this year. Soccer is the most popular sport for women in Australia and is extremely empowering. We did a bit of programming to encourage everyone to cheer for women in soccer. During the 2022 AFC Women’s Asian Cup held in Mumbai, we encouraged people to watch the match on television at the same time. As spectators when we value sport, it helps to get those advertising dollars.
We have also launched a programme called Women in News and Sport, in partnership with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. It encourages women to enter sports training and provides training for them as well. Women thrive in professions where we can find each other and create a strong support network. If I can bring those groups together – both Australian and Indian women – it would be great.
Can you tell us about your efforts to reduce the gender gap in education and careers such as STEM-based fields?
I have always made it a point to try and engage with young women. The first major event we did was for International Women’s Day last year when we had a debate between young women from Stella Maris and Women’s Christian College. They were so good; they were engaged and had worked hard. It was a supportive atmosphere and we’ve undertaken a number of similar initiatives. With MOP Vaishnav College for Women, I’ve participated in their community radio station. I also have a background in that field, since I studied a media degree, so I identified with it.
You raised the subject of women in STEM, which is also so important. In Australia, girls are not equally represented in STEM subjects and I think it’s laudable that in India, parents encourage all their children, boys and girls, to pursue careers in STEM and give them the support that they need so that people are less daunted by it.
I have been impressed with some of the major IT firms in India as well, about supporting women through their career and life stages. They may recruit batches with a 50:50 gender ratio, but the women are dropping out once they get married or have kids. So they conduct specific programmes to keep people connected through the maternity leave period or to even bring back women who may have had a career break. We also think about other fields that don’t have enough female representation, such as strategic policy or defence. We’ve done a few events where Australian women in uniform came down and spoke with girls who may be cadets or interested in a military career. Last year in October, we had our Indo-Pacific endeavour, where two ships with 1,200 Australian troops came to Vishakapatnam. We arranged for a bunch of young women students to come onboard the larger ship. They were given a tour and had an interactive session with some of the Australian women in uniform. Even though they come from different cultural backgrounds, they all share similar challenges. The Indian Navy is doing impressive work to make their ships more hospitable for women and encourage them to take it up a career, and there was a healthy exchange between the Australian and Indian Navies.
Another recent initiative, Jarracharra, was an exhibition of art by indigenous Australian women presented across India. Can you tell us a little about this, as well as the dialogue between Indian and Australian craftswomen?
The Jarracharra exhibition went to a number of places in India, showcasing pieces of First Nations textile art. We wanted people to have a broader understanding of Australia’s national identity. There are three strands to modern Australia. The best-known is probably our inheritance of Western institutions and Commonwealth connections. But we have this First Nations continuous culture of 65,000 years, living with and practicing the same cultural beliefs and language. There are a diverse number of nation groups in Australia, but these are not world-known. We are grappling with our own journey of reconciliation.
There’s the third stream, which is multi-cultural Australia, and I think that’s perhaps better known in India, now that there are a million Australians of Indian origin who carry that message. We wanted to put a spotlight on our First Nations Australians, and also highlight that Jarracharra was entirely done by women artists from the Babbara Women’s Centre, which began as a women’s refuge in 1987. It brings together different community groups in a township called Maningrida, which is in Arnhem Land, a remote part of Australia.
Once the women were coming together, they started to look for ways to express themselves and support their community economically. They already had traditional designs passed on, which would have been done initially in the sand, as part of storytelling, or as cave paintings or body paintings. Only around 50 years ago did our First Nations Art start to do art on canvas or on typically Western mediums.
They were then taught print techniques and one of these was screen printing of textiles. You see that the designs still live and are interpreted with different colours, and created at different scales -- small and big. The pieces are super-vibrant. That, for us, was a lovely connection to India’s own textile culture. A couple of Babbara artists came to India for the launch in Kolkata, and then travelled to Bengaluru to do a collaboration with the Tharangini Studio in Bengaluru known for wood-block printing. Tharangini is deeply committed to the preservation of India’s own textile culture of wood-block prints, and they use environmentally sustainable dyes and organic cotton. They’ve been connected to Babbara, working with women to transfer their designs onto wood blocks and creating works with Tharangini artists. They didn’t speak a common language, but they had this shared connection because of their love of textile art. We were able to exhibit those creative pieces when we had the show in both Chennai and Bengaluru and we hope this kind of exchange continues.
Are there any other programmes that place a spotlight on the gender gap?
Whatever programming we do, we try to have a gender lens. Even if we're doing something corporate-focused, I try to make sure we have women’s voices on stage. But more specifically, we have something called the Direct Aid Programme, running for decades around the world, where Ambassadors, High Commissioners or Consul Generals have a small fund that they can use to support groups. Here in South India, we do a number of projects every year with groups that work to support and advance women’s issues.
For instance, we supported the Sethu FC, which is the Indian women’s professional football club based in Madurai. I had the chance to visit them when I was in Madurai last, and kick a ball around with the girls. This year, we announced a project in Kerala through the Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India. We work with women from Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, bringing their entrepreneurship ideas into being.
When I was in the Andaman & Nicobar Islands with the High Commissioner, we also announced programmes that will help young women access career counselling. In this small way, we can make a difference. I look at my role as both internal and external. Internally, here in my office, we have 50:50 men and women at all levels. But we still have to work at it. The staff has been trained on women’s financial inclusion and how women can manage money on their own. We also conduct training programmes on unconscious biases and talk about LGBTQIA+ issues and transgender issues, because gender equality isn’t just about men and women. It is about allowing people to recognise that gender is a spectrum and people have the right to identify where they want to. It’s a multi-faceted approach.
How far do you think we’ve come?
In no country does change happen quickly. It’s a generational change and I can see it in my own family. My husband and I have always been equal parents with our children, but that wasn’t the case with either of us growing up. So, we have benefitted from being products of a society that’s having these conversations. It’s also important for us to give back because we have received so much. I have received so much in the course of my career – from women in my own family who supported me having a career, to my children, who are both girls, and think it’s great that they have a mum who works and has a public profile. I want to normalise that and make it an option for all women.
What dreams do you have for your own girls?
I don’t want them to feel that their worth is tied to their beauty. I think that was a strong message for me and my peers growing up, and I just don’t want the same for them -- to think that that’s what they contribute to society. In some ways it’s much harder now though; it’s much easier to convince them to become astronauts. So much of the praise for girls is about their looks and is so superficial, and not something we impose on boys. I also want them to feel like they have all the choices, without it being a struggle.