Balancing the Scales: Change Taking Shape
Each year, International Women’s Day invites us to pause and consider the real progress in gender equity – and what changes are still needed.
This year’s theme, “Balance the Scales”, asked us to examine experiences of inequality, and how it is created, reinforced and, crucially, shifted. At the MLC Old Collegians’ Club event, guests were fortunate to hear from Professor Christine Kilpatrick AO (Hogg 1970), Chair of the Royal Children’s Hospital Board, whose reflections anchored the theme in lived experience.
Professor Kilpatrick’s address offered a long view of how these forces shape a career. From an MLC education that instilled confidence, to entering medicine when women were a minority, to becoming the first female Chair of the Royal Melbourne Hospital Senior Medical Staff and later CEO of both the Royal Children’s Hospital and the RMH, her journey showed how support networks, resilience and opportunity are all required to have any hope of balancing the scales.
Imbalance is not always experienced through overt exclusion; it is more subtle – found in assumptions and conventions about who leads, who waits and who should be grateful simply to be included. As OCC President Alex O’Keefe (1999) observed, balancing the scales is not about lowering standards but “finally using the same ruler”. Talent is everywhere; opportunity is not. The work lies in building pathways, networks and visibility so women can fully and equally embrace opportunity.
Change is shaped not only by systems, but by strong human relationships. Encouragement, advocacy, opportunity and the willingness to stand beside someone as they rise – these are the strengths of our connected MLC community, and embodied in the OCC, an intergenerational network of women supporting each other, and lifting one another so we balance the scales, because we know the scales won’t balance on their own. Chair of the MLC Board, Lucia Cade (1984), asked a deceptively simple question that shows us how we can all play a part: “Where do you see the need for the scales to be rebalanced, and what are you going to do about it?”
The message of the evening was simple: balancing the scales takes commitment from individuals and society. It is not a slogan for a day but a choice to be lived. It unfolds through culture, through community, and through the choices we make about who we lift and who gets to be heard. And it is strengthened by networks like MLC and the Old Collegians’ Club, committed to a future in which every woman and girl can shape her own life with confidence and freedom.
Alex O’Keefe (1999) OCC President; Professor Christine Kilpatrick AO (Hogg 1970); Lucia Cade (1984), Chair of the MLC Board; Julia Shea, Principal
Alex Waddell (2010) OCC Past President moderating Q&A with Prof Christine Kilpatrick AO (Hogg 1970)
Sanuki Kulatunga (2024) delighted audiences with her performance.
David Loader OAM (Principal 1979 - 1996) with the OCC Council and Past Presidents who were students during his time.
