National Congress honoured on International Women’s Day

The National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples has been recognised today, on International Women’s Day, for its dedication to gender equity.

The Congress was named the Gold Award Winner in the organisation category of the Australian Centre for Leadership for Women’s Sustaining Women’s Empowerment in Communities and Organisations Award.

The award commends the Congress for establishing gender equity as a founding principle in its constitution and implementing that principle in the everyday governance and management of the organisation.

Congress co-chair Jody Broun explained that the organisation’s constitution requires that there is equal representation at every level of the management structure. This means there is a male and female co-chair, male and female director from each of the Congress’ chambers, and that the organisation’s 120 delegates consist of 60 men and 60 women.

“You just make equal representation an integral part of everything you do,” Jody said.

“We also have high levels of women in our staff, and in our membership we’ve actually got more women than men.

“You contrast that with companies across Australia that have some real challenges getting women onto boards and women in senior positions. I think there’s some lessons to be learnt there.

“Obviously this is mandated in our constitution but that’s because it’s seen as a vital ingredient to having really good decision making and really engaging women at a community level. We’re setting, I think, a really strong example for community organisations as well as mainstream companies.”

Jody said the Congress’ focus on gender equity has been well received in communities and helped to boost membership numbers.

“What I’ve found interesting is when I go out to communities and talk about Congress and the structure of Congress and tell them about this, people are really impressed,” Jody said.

“Women at the community level find that quite refreshing to hear that the organisation has that as a principle.

 “I think it’s an encourager for them getting involved in Congress. I sort of think that’s why we’ve got so many women joining up, because they are seeing that we’re taking that seriously.”