Women and War: Lest We Forget

Through all the years of school in the isolated Outback Australian mining town of Broken Hill, one of the rituals I most vividly remember is the annual commemoration of the end of World War I.  In Australia, WWI is particularly associated with the ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) soldiers.  Every year at 11am on the 11^th day of the 11^th month, Australians bow their heads in silence to pay tribute to the young Australian men who endured months of senseless slaughter, and the subsequent silent, covert withdrawal after months of stalemated deadly, futile battle.  Generations of Australians since equally pay tribute to the humanity and courage under fire of men thrown into such tragic circumstances, who still managed to maintain their human connection with each other – friends and enemies alike. 

On this November 11, almost 100 years after those ‘men’ - many still teenagers - I particularly remember standing before a sea of some 2000 student and teachers at our high school (we were large, our school serviced thousands of square miles of rural outback Australian communities) to commemorate those who had fought at Gallipoli and so many other theatres of war since that “war to end all wars.”  My role was to recite the last verse of Ode to Remembrance, or Lest We Forget. Despite, as an English Literature major at university and in the decades since then,  having learned a plethora of poems, , plays and other writings, in the decades since then, the words of Lest We Forget remain indelibly imprinted in my mind:

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning,

We will remember them.

We do remember them.  We remember the men and women who have fought in all the wars since 1915.  We remember those who are fighting in the 40 or so armed conflicts that are raging today in various parts of the world, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan. We remember them at commemoration ceremonies like those at my high school.   We remember them with every new media story of another death in combat.

But we often fail to remember the hidden casualties of war.  The women who experience armed conflict in a multitude of ways not necessarily in the direct line of military fire.  We don’t remember enough, the women who carry the immeasurable weight of grief of their loved ones who died in those wars, nor the often sustained distress of those who devote the rest of their lives to caring for their soldiers who return wounded.  We often forget the women, who through the ages have carried the war within them, etched into their very beings, but still kept the home fires burning, raising their children, carving out a living as a single parent, often while still under horrendous war conditions, keeping their families together, despite their own pain and suffering.  We rarely remember the hundreds of thousands of refugees who fled their homes in attempt to find safety, only to find their new lives (often in refugee camps) filled with equally horrendous challenges, some forced into poverty, prostitution and suicide to escape their daily suffering.  We consistently find it too hard to remember the very young women, who at ages as young as 8 and 9, were forced from their homes and villages to become child combatants.  And we regrettably fail to remember those women who paid an untold price with their souls and their bodies, when armed soldiers raped them as a systematic weapon of war.

Recently, the United Nations (UN) revealed yet another convulsion of violence against women in Eastern Congo.  Only three years ago the UN reported that sexual assaults on women escalated to a scale never before seen, even in the bloody history of that violence-ridden country.  A recent intensely savage attack on the small community of Luvingi in which at least 200 women of the 2000 villagers were raped, some as old as 80, sickeningly shows sexual violence still runs rampant.  Sexual brutality against women cuts deep into the most fundamental aspect of our humanity – violence at the very core of our regeneration of the human species. Sexual violence against women can be searingly effective in subduing whole communities while they live in fear and distress; effective at ethnic cleansing by ‘mixing the blood lines’ of particular communities, invoking shame that violates the women and humiliates the men who cannot protect them.  Sadly, sexual violence metastasizes into a wider social fracture, sometimes destroying entire regions because the trauma and stigma remain long after the violent act – as one Croatian journalist said: “not forgotten, not forgiven.”

War also impacts women in more indirect covert ways.  This week, the New York Times reported a story about a surging epidemic of suicides among women in Afghanistan whose daily lives continue with war as the ever-present backdrop. Set against a landscape littered with tragic tales of horrific suffering, some tormented women see no escape except through a brutal death at their own hands  - using readily available gasoline to burn themselves alive.  In parts of the Middle East, other women have gathered their few belongings and families and fled to what they hoped would be more peaceful, hopeful futures, only to find their new realities equally although differently despairing.  To survive, they turn to sex work.  For others, the distress is too acute, and their minds and bodies dwindle away in slow, painful and sustained psychosocial suffering.

So for the rest of us women who may take for granted that we can sleep in our own comfortable beds at night, and all the accompanying luxuries of our first world lifestyles, it is our responsibility as members of the world sisterhood, to say something, to do something – to attempt to stop women’s bodies and brains from being the battleground for men’s wars. …..  Lest we forget those women who daily carry the burden of the horror they endured living in a war zone.  Lest we forget the price some women pay when the warzone is inside their own body.  Lest we forget those women who stoically carry on, raising their children and tending their community.  Lest we forget those women who bravely return to their communities despite stigma and shame about what they have suffered.  Lest we forget that each of us can do something, however small……

Chilean Miners: What Now?

At almost 10pm Chilean time last night, people around the world joined with the local mining community of Copiapo in Northern Chile to rejoice in the successful rescue of the last of 33 miners from deep below the earth. It was the 70^th day since the collapse of the mine in which they worked.

As journalists swarmed around the emerging miners and their families, words of triumph beamed through various media outlets to countries across the planet. While the Santiago Times modestly announced:  “Miners in Chile surface safe and sound, all 33,” newspaper headlines and television soundbytes across the globe were less restrained. “The Miracle of San Jose” proclaimed the UK Telegraph, “Celebration as life trumps death in Chile’s Camp Hope” announced Johannesburg’s Star newspaper; “Last Man Out!” shouted The Australian; “Prayers, Tears and Jubilation” said The South China Morning Post.   People everywhere were glued to their television or computer screens, breaths held as each miner appeared into the glare of the bright daylight, as well as the world spotlight.

As a pilot, I can picture what 2300 feet above the ground looks like. Having grown up in a mining family in a remote mining town in the middle of the Australian Outback, I can also picture 2300 feet deep into the earth. Not just the space “underground,” but also the long journey in the cage down to 2300 feet and back up again. Having worked at one of Broken Hill’s mines while studying at university, I have been privileged to “go down” on several occasions.  I always ascended with mammoth appreciation for those who worked in the bowels of the earth every single day.  For everyone who lives in mining towns, the potential for tragedy is an ever-present reality. Miners and their families live with the knowledge that accidents will happen.  “If” is never the question, just “when.”

The rhythm and life of the mine sets the rhythm and life of the town. In Broken Hill, where I spent my childhood, even the biological clocks of the town’s citizens were dictated by the mine “whistle” – a loud, all-pervasive horn that heralded the changing shifts of the miners. As school students, if we were not awake by the 8am whistle signalling the start of the day shift, we would probably have to hustle to make it to school.  At 3pm, when the afternoon shift began as the dazzling Outback sun baked everything in its wake, the whistle meant that relief from a long day at school was only a half an hour away.  By the time the whistle blasted through the desert night air at 11pm for the night shift, lights would be out and all kids were supposed to be sleeping tight in their beds. If the whistle blew at any other time of the day or night, especially if in a cadenced series of whistles, everybody in town braced for the worst.  In schools, a hush would descend upon the classroom as we waited to find out who and what.  If those whistles pierced the night while most of us were at home, the bush telegraph would instantly spring into action, the town’s airwaves buzzing with what had happened and how we could help the affected families.

Because it was, like many mining towns, hundreds of miles from virtually anywhere, our mining town was characterised by an intense sense of community, an inherent commitment to looking after each other, especially those who had befallen a tragedy that could just as easily have happened to us.  The level of connectedness amongst community members was therefore unusually strong, a characteristic that often had harsh social effects on anyone from “away” or outside the mining cliques. It was not until long after I left Broken Hill that I realised the uniqueness of the mining culture, how special the community spirit when deployed for the greater good. 

I can only imagine that the small remote Chilean mining town of Copiapo shared some of these same characteristics.   I can only hope that the media frenzy around the miners’ survival and rescue does not dilute the inherently healing aspects of their own community.  Less than 24 hours after the miners were hospitalized for immediate first aid and observation, television networks boldly announced: “Now that everyone has been physically checked, officials are now more worried about the miners’ mental health than physical health.”

Jumping to conclusions about the psychological well being of these men is way premature, and can even contribute to distress.  In our work with communities around the world who have experienced extreme hardship, including terror attacks, armed conflict and natural disasters, one of the key knowledges of Psychology Beyond Borders (PBB) is the inherent resilience of the human spirit and the human body. The research into responses in the aftermath of traumatic events shows definitively that most people are resilient in the face of disaster  – they know that fear, horror, and intense emotion, are part of the experience.  Psychosocial research also shows that while there is no universal response to a jolt like this, some people respond by retreating inward, some cry copiously, some use black humour, some get physically ill, some act out aggressively.  These are normal responses to abnormal events. Most people move through these and find a “new normal” as they integrate their experience in the overall fabric of their own lives. For some of us, typically only a small percentage, this new normal is harder to achieve.  We become “stuck” in the experience, with sustained distress reactions that may be best.

So let’s not expect “trauma” of the Copiapo miners and their families.  From all reports so far, the men and their families in Copiapo exemplify the innate quality of humans to endure and triumph over difficult conditions.  Their actions in the face of exceptionally trying circumstances, are an example for us all.

What stands out for me with these men and those who love them, is how, as they adapted to their grim situation, they quickly and assertively assumed the primary role as co-authors of their own futures – what happened from one day the next (within the parameter of the situation in which they were thrust), how they endured their living conditions, how they communicated to the outside world, etc. These miners clearly played a very active role in authoring their own destinies.  Specific examples abound: their establishing an organisational / social structure, scheduling their daily and nightly routines, their sequenced and strategic release of videos, notes; their organising of exercise activities; their setting aside time to pray and enact the rituals of worship that helped provide strength to those who believe. They made the best of a bad situation, and for that they deserve our awe and respect.

What stands out for me also is the undying patience of the families and local people who waited in hope while their fathers, husbands, sons, brothers, friends, endured both uncertainty and the unique challenges of living 2300 feet into the earth.  I know what it is like to wait a few hours to see how the mining tragedy in our town played out, but to wait 70 days is unfathomable. Those waiting on the surface had to equally manage the uncertainty - amid a town that was no longer their own as rescuers and media pervaded their streets and their lives. They too deserve our awe and reverence.

They equally deserve our grace and our respect for privacy in the days, weeks and months ahead.  Both miners and their families alike have a period of adjustment ahead. Their challenges will include newfound notoriety and even international celebrity status, as the world spotlight shines on their journeys to dissect every minute during and since… In mining towns the natural tendency to stick together, to help each other, to reach out to those in need, long after the media have gone away, are some of the most powerful healing recipes on the planet. While 2300 feet underground, the men utilised the insulation and isolation of their group to their advantage – strategically able to manage their messages. They no longer have that advantage.

As a world community, we can contribute to the adjustment of the Copiapo miners by allowing the Copiapo community members to continue to author their own journeys, to give them the space in their own surroundings to use the inherent skills and resources that have allowed them to triumph in the face of adversity, not just in the last two months, but in the entire history of their mining town.

Light and Death

September 10 is World Suicide Prevention Day, a day on which the World Health Organization shines the spotlight on a phenomenon that kills one hundred million people every year. These statistics reflect a "global" mortality rate of one death by suicide every 40 seconds.  

Every 40 seconds, someone is so engulfed by darkness that no light infiltrates…

Being the daughter of a man who was so overwhelmed by darkness that he was compelled to take his own life at the age of 48, news and research about suicide are often picked up by my mental radar.   So when the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention recently revealed changing trends in who is most likely to die at their own hands, I was curious.

The CDC report revealed that in the USA, older Americans (75 and up) have historically been most likely to kill themselves, followed by people between 35 and 44. American men succumb at almost four times the rate of women. As the baby boomer generation ages however, these trends are changing. New statistics reveal that since 2006, middle aged Americans (45-54), again, particularly men, are now the most likely to kill themselves.  Morbidly, my dad was ahead of his time…

In some countries, self-inflicted death ranks among the top three leading causes of death in some age groups. For every successful suicide, there are up to 20 attempted suicides. In the last 45 years suicide rates have increased by 60% worldwide.  As with all statistics, these suicide numbers are fraught with problems of diverse definitions and reporting methods, but even with problems, the numbers tell a compelling global tragedy.

The numbers also tell us that the propensity to take one’s own life does not just vary with age.  Who we are - our gender, ethnic background, our nationality, as where we live - all make a big difference to our psychosocial health and our capacity to manage through emotional darkness.  For example, in the late 1990s the World Health Organisation analysed regional differences in suicide rates across Europe – noting the contrasting high rate of suicide in Finland (30 per 100,000) with Greece (only 3.5 per 100,000).  Hypotheses abounded.  As the northernmost country in continental Europe, maybe Finland’s higher rate of suicide was a product of its citizens spending too many hours in literal darkness each day?  In contrast, the quintessential postcard image of sunny Greece connotes images of a Greek citizenry bathed in light on sandy beaches for hours, days and months on end…  While such hypotheses resonate with research about changes in mood according to season (some people report experiencing depression as the days grow shorter in the autumn and winter – reacting negatively to less sunlight and the colder temperatures).  But sunlight does not explain the massive suicide rates in the outback-Australian mining town where I grew up. Historically, Broken Hill has two to four times the national Australian suicide average, yet with only 9 inches of rainfall annually, sunlight rains down on Broken Hill year round.  Researchers suspect Australian regional cultural differences are at work: in places like Broken Hill similar to that in the military or some Asian countries – in such macho mining town cultures, any signs of weakness, particularly psychological, are preyed upon with vengeance.  Combine this with limited problem solving or support resources and continued stigma of depression and psychological illness, and the combination can be fatal.

Cultural differences are reflected in higher suicide rates in countries like Sri Lanka, Japan and South Korea. Over the last twenty years, the tendency for South Koreans to take their own lives has escalated from relatively low to the highest rate among industrialized countries.  This meteoric rise is attributed to inordinate amounts of stress that have accompanied South Korea’s rapid journey to modernity combined with their innate cultural aversion to publicly acknowledging psychological distress, seen as an admission of failure. According to the OECD, South Koreans work more, sleep less and spend more money per capita on “cram” schools than residents in any other industrialized OECD country. Combined with their tendency to struggle through the darkness alone, this modern mixture has proved fatal for too many South Koreans.

Apparently when we move countries or regions, we can take with us the same patterns of suicide as our country of origin… giving new meaning to the word “baggage.”

Suicide rates also vary around extraordinary traumatizing events whether individual – such as the loss of a loved one, a divorce, a major accident, a business failure; or collective – such as exposure to a natural disaster or violent conflict or terror attack. A recent report documenting New Orleans health issues since Hurricane Katrina note that the percentage of people suffering from psychological difficulties, mostly depression, has tripled since 2005, and the suicide rate has doubled.  Many of these problems also relate to other related factors such as increased poverty, reduced employment opportunities, ongoing environmental threats, and few resources for managing the distress.

The way tragic events are reported in the media can also dramatically affect suicidal behavior.  Over 50 international studies reveal strong support for the relationship between media reporting and 
increases in successful and attempted suicide rates.  In Australia, one key study found that rates of male suicide increased following media reports of suicide, peaking on the third day after the story first appeared.  These imitation or ‘copycat’ suicides are more likely under certain circumstances.  The more prominent and repetitive the coverage, the more the reader or viewer identified with or admired with the person, the greater the incidence of subsequent suicidal behaviour.  Young people and people experiencing a mental illness may be particularly vulnerable.

The good news is that just as media reports can exacerbate suicidal behavior, there is also evidence that the way suicide is reported can reduce suicide rates.  For example in another Australian study following Kurt Cobain’s suicide, rates of suicide among 15 - 24 year olds fell during the month following reporting of Cobain’s death. Researchers attributed this to the highly critical media coverage of Cobain’s decision to kill himself.  Equally important, where reports include simple strategies for coping with seemingly unbearable distress, such as telling someone who can help, or seeking professional advice; and referencing local support resources, suicide rates can go down.

The further good news is that the overall picture about suicide is not as dark as it might appear from the statistics – although we clearly have a long road to travel to prevent so many preventable deaths. Improvements in suicide rates have and can result from a diversity of sources - and diversity is apparently the key.  Where multi-sectoral approaches are adopted, involving many levels of intervention and activities, substantive reductions in the number of people taking their own lives can and does result. In developing countries, the World Health Organization has noted that strategies involving restriction of access to common methods of suicide, such as firearms or toxic substances like pesticides, have proved to be effective in reducing national and regional suicide rates.  Equally important, there is compelling evidence indicating that adequate prevention and treatment of depression and alcohol and substance abuse can reduce suicide rates in both developed and developing countries, (although most developing countries, still struggling to achieve gains in the most basic of health indicators, have few resources to apply to psychosocial health). In industrialized countries where psychosocial health is increasingly assuming its rightful place equal to physical health, great strides have been made at improving national and regional suicide rates. Successful strategies include increased medical practitioner awareness and treatment of depression; increased follow up contact with those who have attempted suicide; and increased community awareness and education, although results of such programs are mixed.  In some cases, high school education about suicide has actually correlated with increased post program rates of suicide – suggesting that in some cases that increased awareness about suicide just adds a more potent solution for the distressed teen. 

My father’s tragic inability at the time of his decision to kill himself to see beyond the black abyss of that fatal alternative, I also noted that the rest of my family, despite being at times deluged by darkness, could and do see the light every day.  Our challenge, as a global community, is to do what we can to help people not only detect the light in their darkness, but to expand that light so they can see alternatives to the angst that so engulfs them.

WAR

As the plane descends through the puffy clouds of white, a hushed silence pervades the cabin as the horizon bursts open before us. The spectacular green majestic mountains, resplendent with streaming waterfalls, give way to long white sandy beaches and the shimmering blue ocean beyond.  As the pilot banks the plane for our final approach to the runway, stark grey structures, blatantly incongruent with the lush surroundings, increasingly dominate the view.  Large grey concrete semi circles – reminiscent of gigantic 44 gallon drums cut in half – line one side of the runway.  It does not take a pilot to recognise these shelters as airplane hangars.  But these are no ordinary hangars.  Inside some of the dark foreboding semi-circular spaces, fighter jets can be seen looming out of the darkness, instantly evoking the bloodied history of a city that has born witness to carnage to its geography and people in the not to distant past.  The city is Da Nang on the central south coast of Vietnam, now one of Indochina’s five major cities. 

In 1965, Da Nang was purported to be the busiest airport in the world. At its peak, this runway bore up to 2500 landings (plane and helicopter) in a single day - a mind-boggling air traffic control feat of 100 planes coming and going in any one hour. At that time, Da Nang was one of the epicentres of a nation at war with itself (and with many other countries including the USA and Australia).

What stands out so starkly as a Western visitor to Vietnam is how alien the environment must have been for the US and Allies soldiers stationed here to assist South Vietnam. It is not too difficult to stretch the imagination to forty or so years previous when other Americans and Australians descended into the jungles that surround Da Nang. The most instant reaction to such a scenario is: “What on earth were we thinking?”.  The heat and humidity alone are debilitating for those not conditioned to it.  Combine this with the rigors and challenges of life in the depths of the jungle (while carrying 70 lbs of gear on their backs), and it seems like a recipe for disaster … a long drawn out disaster that as a species, we repeat in its basic form, again and again and again.

When Vietnam officially released the number of war dead, they revealed that some 2 million civilians died on both sides, along with 1.1 million North Vietnamese and Viet Cong (the guerrilla force who fought against South Vietnam) fighters. The US estimates that between 200,000-250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers also died along with 58,000 Americans.  Hundreds of thousands more were injured. Of the 8,500 Australian soldiers who fought in those lush jungles, 521 died, and another 3,000 were physically wounded. 

And these statistics of death and destruction are from just one war. Earlier in the twentieth century, the fledgling new democracy of Australia lost 50,000 men at the Battle of Gallipolli off the coast of Turkey during World War I – 50,000 men from a country whose population was only 5 million at the time. The bloody beaches of Gallipolli represent just one small chapter in one war in one century… Just a small dot in a world history littered with the dead, products of man’s brutal aggression against fellow man.

Wars are initiated and justified for a whole host of reasons – dynastic, political, religious, economic.   We have developed words and phrases to disguise the brutal gruesome horrors of war: “collateral damage,” “friendly fire,”  “civilian casualties.”  We see media coverage with program titles like: "Showdown with Iraq," "Countdown to Iraq," “Operation Shock and Awe" (echoing government terminology for was an invasion of a functioning city by armed forces), all masking the reality that people from opposing forces as well as innocent bystanders were killed, dismembered, eviscerated... many physically and emotionally scarred for life.

Renowned Texas television journalist and author, Bill Moyers, described his experience when stationed at the Kuwait border with the US Marine Corps during the first Gulf War.  He notes: “There were waves of Vietnam-era B-52 bombers dropping hundreds of thousands of tons of iron fragmentation bombs all over Iraq. We watched these huge fireballs and could feel the concussions go through the air. … Yet, the way the air campaign was portrayed was very different, because of the packaged video clips that were handed to the networks and then quite willingly disseminated… People had a vision of precision-guided weapons hitting specific targets, when in fact that was a tiny percentage, I think about four percent, of all the ordnance used on Iraq. We devastated Iraq. The Iraqi dead were nameless, faceless phantoms.” 

The many internally and externally displaced Iraqis are equally nameless and faceless - at least 5 million spread across Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon.  These millions of Iraqi refugees are hardly noticed by the rest of the world.  They struggle with: the horrors of what they witnessed during the war, their loss of loved ones, of homes, of livelihoods.  They suffer through an ongoing battle to make new normal lives after their savings have depleted.  The goodwill of their hosts is stretched to capacity; their opportunities for meaningful employment virtually nonexistent - a plight made all the more painful by the fact that many of these refugees were educated middle-class Iraqis who had the resources to leave Iraq early.  They once were contributing members of society, many of whom now feel destitute, both financially and spiritually.

In his searing portrait, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, New York Times journalist and author, Chris Hedges wrote: “The enduring attraction of war is this: Even with its destruction and carnage it gives us what we long for in life. It can give us purpose, meaning, a reason for living.  Only when we are in the midst of conflict does shallowness and vapidness of much of our lives become apparent.  Trivia dominates our conversations and increasingly our airwaves. And war is an enticing elixir. It gives us resolve, a cause.  It allows us to be noble.”  Like Bill Moyers, Hedges proposes that the meaningfulness of combat depends on the perpetuation of the myth that portrays war as noble, the myth that disguises the bloody carnage to humans and infrastructure that war leaves in its wake. When war is examined in its harshest reality without the euphemisms, no matter what grand cause it is supposed to serve, war is ultimately the basest form of aggression of human against fellow human: "organized murder."

While writing this blog, I play in the background the haunting sound of The Green Fields of France (also known as Private William McBride and No Man's Land) written by Australian songwriter, Eric Bogle and sung by Davey Arther and the Fureys.  The stirring ballad portrays the imaginings of a visitor to the grave of a dead soldier, Private Willie McBride, who was killed on a “green field of France” in 1916.  Bogle’s evocative words crash through the mythical narrative of war to the essence of one 19-year-old man’s senseless death, relating his death to all senseless deaths in the name of war:

The song starts with a question to young Willie McBride:

“I hope you died well and I hope you died clean … or Willie McBride was it slow and obscene?"

... and moves on to questions for humankind:

Well the sun's shining now on these green fields of France,

The warm wind blows gently and the red poppies dance.

The trenches are vanished long under the plough

No gas, and no barbed wire, no guns firing now.

But here in this graveyard it's still No Man's Land

The countless white crosses in mute witness stand.

To man's blind indifference to his fellow man

And a whole generation who were butchered and damned.

And I can't help but wonder now Willie McBride

Do all those who lie here know why they died?

Did you really believe them when they told you the cause?

You really believed that this war would end war?

But the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame -

The killing and dying - it was all done in vain.

For Willie McBride, it's all happened again

And again, and again, and again, and again.

http://www.aftermathww1.com/stream/fmcbride.html

I am Woman

What a moving site this week when Australia’s first female Prime Minister, Julia Gillard (pictured), was sworn in by Australia’s first female Governor General, Quentin Bryce. Australian women all over the planet are roaring in celebration of this unprecedented show of sisterhood in Australia’s halls of power… Two strong women, technically three if we count the Queen, now hold the highest office of one of the world’s major continents.

Non-Australians are often surprised to hear that Australia is a constitutional monarchy --- our official head of state is Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II. The Governor General of Australia is the Queen’s representative, appointed by the Queen at the advice of the Australian Prime Minister. It can be confusing! At its simplest, the Governor General’s role has historically been mostly symbolic and ceremonial (although not without controversy). As Australia’s 25th Governor General, Quentin Bryce therefore exercises a range of procedural, executive and ceremonial powers similar to those of the Queen in Great Britain, such as granting Royal assent to laws passed by Parliament, signing regulations, signing and ratifying treaties, and swearing in of new Prime Ministers. The Prime Minister of Australia is the practical Head of State – the head of the government. The PM chairs the Cabinet, determines the Cabinet agenda and oversees the executive work of the government.

To have a female Governor General swear in a female Prime Minister in a country where testosterone still dominates is worth of voluminous collective roaring! Only 27 of 76 Senators (36%) and 37 of 150 Members of the House of Representatives (almost 25%) are women. Sadly for us idealists, these statistics are actually considered impressive against many benchmarks. The stark reality is that even in some of the world’s most evolved and stable economic and political contexts, women still lag way behind men in their assumption of equal decision-making positions in the corporate and government sectors.

While women have proved equal to their male counterparts, their salaries and their representation at the top levels remain abysmal. The biannual Australian Census of Women in Leadership consistently highlights the under-representation of women in top executive and the gross “under-utilisation of the talents of the vast female workforce.” In 2008, the Census revealed that the number of women on boards and in executive management positions in some areas has actually declined. Australia now trails - although not by much - the USA, UK, South Africa and New Zealand. In Australia’s top 200 companies (an Australian equivalent to the US Fortune 500), there are ten men to every one woman at the Board of Directors level, and 49 male CEOs for every female CEO. Over 50% of these companies have no female board members at all. When women do make it to the top line management echelons, they are overwhelmingly clustered in support roles that don’t provide access to the profit-and-loss or direct client services, crucial pre-requisites for the top jobs. Women in other countries fare only marginally better. In Europe’s top 200 companies women occupy only 8%. Not surprisingly, Nordic countries clearly lead the way. Norway has 22% of its board seats occupied by women, closely followed by Sweden with 20%. In annual studies by Catalyst women Board members constitute 13%-15% of Board membership of America’s Fortune 500 companies. More heartening, only 10% of the Fortune 500 companies lacked a female board member. Similar statistics abound for women in executive roles in the corporate, professional and political arenas. Some large US firms (ex: Goldman Sachs, American Express, KPMG, Accenture) are recognizing this chronic waste of resources, and have been experimenting with alternative ways of encouraging women’s career trajectories – such as the “off ramp/on ramp” model where women can power down for a few years while they raise families. However, the pace is glacial…

In the Australian political arena, it has taken over a hundred years for a female to rise to either of the two most powerful and crucial positions in the country. But women are no strangers to Australian politics. South Australia in particular, was a world pioneer – land-owning women could vote in local elections as early as 1861. In 1894, some 25 years before American women and 34 years before British women were granted the right, all South Australian women could vote and stand for elections to State parliament – a resounding symbol of equality in a land where men and women stood side by side to carve a modern democratic country out of red dirt and rocks. In 1901, along with their West Australian sisters, South Australian women voted in the very first Australian federal election. By mid 1902, all “white” Australian women (excluding Aboriginal Australian women, Asian, African or Pacific Islander Australian women) had the right to vote and stand in national elections. It was not until 1962, some 14 years after Aboriginal Australians were officially recognised as Australian citizens, and 5 years before they were counted in the Australian Census, that Aboriginal women shared the same rights as their “white” sisters.

Given this history, it seems only fitting that a law graduate of one of South Australia’s prominent universities, be the first female to reach the top. But Julia Gillard’s rise to the pinnacle of Australian politics, as for any female who has reached the top echelons, has not been easy. In typical Australian ‘tall poppy’ smashing style, the Welsh born Aussie has been mocked on multiple fronts - - from her strong nasal accent, to “living in sin” with her hairdresser partner, having a pristine untouched kitchen (obviously not cooking dinner for her man when she arrives home late at night after a day at the office), to being a “Footscray fishwife,” to being a “ruthless barbed tongued left winger.” Conservative Senator Bill Heffernan asserted that Julia was unfit to lead a political party because she was “deliberately barren” and that leaders need to understand “the relationship between mum, dad and a bucket of nappies (diapers).” Many wonder how past and present male Members of Parliament would describe their relations to buckets of nappies, and how that might qualify or disqualify them for the nation’s top job.

Julia Gillard has combated such barbs by earning a reputation as a formidable debater, a professional operator, a high performing Minister. Until her assumption of the PM role, she was an effective and loyal Deputy PM to Kevin Rudd. The pairing of Gillard and Rudd, as left and right compliments, delivered a Labor Party landslide in the 2007 election, bringing screaming halt to eleven years of conservative government. (In Australia, the conservative party is, ironically for Americans, named the “Liberal” Party). With a start in political life at the University of Adelaide, a stint as a lawyer in an all-male law firm, then as Chief of Staff for a Victorian State Opposition leader, Julia was first elected to Federal Parliament in 1998. Her Ministerial portfolios have included Minister for Education, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and Minister for Social Inclusion. She has also served on Parliamentary Committees for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs and Public Accounts and Audit. Proponents of a continuing Labor government with Gillard at the helm argue that these combined experiences provide a rich history ensuring Gillard is not only highly qualified and experienced for the PM’s role, but well prepared for the brutality of life at the top of Australian politics.

Upon assumption to the Prime Minister’s role last week, Julia announced she would not move into the official Prime Minister’s residence until she was “fulsomely” elected by the Australian people. She has now called an election for August 21st to give voting Aussies their say. Julia’s assumption to the PM position was through a party leadership ‘spill.’ In Australia, the person chosen by the governing party as leader, becomes the Prime Minister. Equally the governing party can excise and replace the leader before their term expires, as was the case when Julia took over from then Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd. As one journalist cynically noted, Australians have never been afraid of slaughtering leaders who look like losers. Such spills often leave in their wake, bruised egos, bitterness and festering plots for revenge, all potential wedges for opposing parties to exploit ferociously.

Other aspiring Australian Prime Ministers have been asked in the past if they have the ‘ticker’ to stand up to those who will no doubt vociferously and artfully attempt to bring them down. As a woman, Gillard will almost certainly face more than her share of tall poppy slashing. Many Laborites argue she has already displayed strong ticker by being where she is today … her steady track record in opposition and then in government. She clearly holds her own in the gruelling and notoriously colourful Australian Parliamentary Question Time, from which she was once ejected for calling the man who is now Leader of the Opposition a “snivelling grub.”

Regardless of the outcome on August 21st, we bear witness at the end of this first decade of the 21st century, as two strong women enact their responsibilities in the highest offices of our country, giving hope to females of all ages and political persuasions that women can indeed aspire to be whoever they want to be, no matter how many “snivelling grubs” they encounter along the way…

WORDS

I love words. I particularly love the written / typed word. I love how words sometimes effortlessly come together to express a thought, expand an idea, relate an observation, convey an instruction. I am equally in awe of how at other times words can fail us completely -- when the experience we are trying to capture or the scene we are trying to describe ventures so far beyond words that any attempt to use them to represent the experience renders us verbally impotent. As the great fourteenth century Persian poet, Hafiz (Shamseddin Muhammad) wrote in I Wish I Could Speak like Music:

I wish I could speak like music.

I wish I could put the swaying splendor of the fields into words

So that you could hold truth against your body and dance.

I am trying the best I can with this crude brush, the tongue.

But even with limitations, the mere word has so much potential! Depending upon their context, words can be frivolous and transitory visitors to a conversation or permanently and indelibly imprinted in the deepest recesses of our brains. Words can be infused with light or encumbered by overpowering darkness. Words can precipitate unimagined joy or unbearable pain. Just one word can trigger a cascade of electrochemical reactions throughout the human body … they can ready our muscles for action or render us incapacitated and unable to move. Just one word can send our minds down a myriad of associated neural pathways, transporting us in time, place and space to the furthest realms of the universe, of our beings. Equally potent in the opposite direction, words can paralyse us inside circuitous, well-trodden mental highways, closed circuits of psychological imprisonment that lead us further into darkness.

There are so many words from which to choose! In the English language alone, there are at least a quarter of a million distinct English words. If we include all the versions of words – determined by tense, sense, number, gender etc. -- the Oxford English Dictionary reports a total of 750,000 English words. A multitude of choices when it comes to which words we use and in what combination, and which ones ultimately make it onto paper or a computer screen.

Neuroscientists tell us that the average English speaker has a working vocabulary of 60-100,000 words, depending upon our education. In contrast, our canine companions know up to 250 words (depending on their education!). Although one of my rebellious Irish Setters vehemently denies his vocabulary is that extensive, choosing to respond only to the words that fit with his plan for any given moment.

Whether human or canine, and regardless of the extent of our vocabularies, so much of what a word means when it is perceived or uttered, depends on the context -- both the interior and exterior landscapes of the person speaking (or writing) and the person listening (or reading). Word meanings continually change. In the English language particularly, words sometimes have multiple meanings, they change depending upon who uses the word, with what tone, timing, placement and intent. In this age of emails, Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, etc … the meaning and intent of words can be grossly distorted with unintended impacts far beyond the initial utterance.

Words can inflict pain. Just one word – like cancer, schizophrenia, divorce – can be so heavily laden with meaning and so weighted by misinformation, misunderstanding, and misinterpretation. Just the word itself can change a life, a relationship, a future or a past. Words can be used as weapons. Research on bullying reveals the deadly impacts words can have when deliberately, relentlessly and maliciously used to harm. When deployed as all encompassing labels, some words can lock us into an identity that negates the many other aspects of who we are.

Words can heal and bring great joy. An exquisitely timed compliment, a sincere praise of a job well done, soothing utterance of empathy, strident expression of support, a genuine offer of apology -- can equally transform a relationship, a life, a future or a past. In some circumstances, the words don’t even have to be in context to foster healing and sustenance. Research in social psychology reveals compelling evidence about the beneficial impacts that simple daily journaling can have on our immune systems, on our general and mental health, on our capacity to cope with traumatic events. In these instances, “brain dumping” – a stream of consciousness delivery of words onto the page or computer screen -- for just 20 minutes a day for three consecutive days – unleashes the power of the written word to positively influence the human body, mind and spirit.

The exploding field of neuroscience is only at an embryonic stage in understanding the neural machinery in the brain that allows us to encode words and string them together into meaningful sentences and coherent thoughts, let alone how the verbal expression of emotion mobilizes the very neurochemicals that can soothe our psychic wounds. Neuroscience research reveals that while words are predominantly represented in the left hemisphere, right hemisphere abilities, such as visuo-spatial processing, emotional processing and emotional tone, affect how words are expressed and received. A wide range of words can elicit a response in any given neuron and consequently trigger the activation of a cascading number of neural networks, resulting in all sorts of reactions in the body. All of these word-related brain activities are dependent upon both the inner landscape of the mind as well as the outer landscape of the external environment at the time the word is uttered. It is both these inner and outer landscapes which imbue any given word or group of words with meaning. And our brains organize language in ways that reflect this more complicated, nuanced and emotional ways we humans think. Rather than store words as in a dictionary or a google search, we encode and store categories of meaning. And it is all of these meanings, with thousands of potential associations, down thousands of potential neural pathways, which can be evoked with the utterance of one word.

So any given word is the conveyor of thousands of possibilities. Fundamentally however, any given word is ultimately just a vehicle – a vehicle that can convey pain or joy, horror or humor, distress or comfort; a vehicle that can relay information or misinformation; bestow meaning or confusion; a vehicle that can advance ideas or stunt them. While I acknowledge the capacity for words to display their dark side, I am drawn to their light side: the potential for facilitating joy, humor, comfort, information, meaning and the advancement of ideas. So for the words and ideas waiting to tumble onto the screen of future blogs … I am excited by the opportunity for my mind to meander down the neural pathways of both my right and left brain, to play with ideas, to see how they evolve as the 60 -100,000 words in my mind compete with each other and string themselves together to form a sentence, evolve into a paragraph, a chapter, a book … or hang there in cyber space to just be…