Australians presume a special national pride that we live in our long celebrated “Lucky Country” – a rich, prosperous, first world western civilised nation built upon civilised Protestant values.

But are we reminiscing an idealised tradition or just dreamin’?  Ask our women folk today about workplace opportunity, pay rates, harassment, career ceilings, media stereotyping, domestic violence.  There are many kinds of and names for violence against women, such as:

• Domestic violence or family violence
• Sexual violence, sexual assault or rape
• Sexual harassment
• Child abuse
• Paedophilia and incest.

In Australia, one in five women have recently reported experiencing sexual violence since the age of 15.  Domestic violence is the biggest cause of homelessness for Australian women, with almost half of the women with children staying in homeless assistance services escaping domestic violence.

Australian women are four times more likely to experience sexual assault by someone they know, rather than a stranger. News today from the Australian Crime Commission finds that almost 75% of female homicide victims (between 2008 and 2010) had been killed by their male partner.

..and that is before Immigration has let in backward muslim and patriarchal cultures, taking on a whole new depravity against women.

Today, the celebrated International Women’s Day is a cause needing attention in Australia more than ever.   International Working Women’s Day on March 8 is fundamentally to remind men folk of the need to respect women.  The day extends from personal appreciation of our female folk to strong feminism struggles for equal rights.  The recognition dates back to the Suffragette Movement since 1908 in Chicago.

“The story of women’s struggle for equality belongs to no single feminist nor to any one organization but to the collective efforts of all who care about human rights”  (Gloria Steinem)

But in 2014 young women still struggle to be treated even the same as animals, let alone as fellow kind of their menfolk.

In Sydney last night, a man set fire to a Thai woman (34) in level 6 of the Regis Towers highrise, an asian enclave of inner city Haymarket.  The man doused the woman, his partner, with flammable liquid and set her alight.  The Thai woman is a subtenant of the Regis Towers and has sustained serious burns to her head and upper body.

Neighbours found the woman screaming for her life and covered in flames in the sixth floor lobby. One resident smothered the flames with a gym towel before security guards and emergency services rushed to the scene.  Another neighbour said she opened her apartment door to see the woman’s face completely “shocked and red”, while another said he saw the man sitting in the lobby looking “emotional” before he fled the scene.

Detective Superintendent Mark Walton labelled the act as “vile”, revealing the couple had a history of abuse in their relationship.  The man is being held on suspicion of attempted murder.

Regis Towers building manager Alex Pappas said about 30 per cent of the complex’s 650 apartments housed more than the permitted maximum number of tenants, with some two-bedroom apartments housing up to twelve people.  Regis Towers has a record of drug dealing and prostitution.

Shortly after the incident, emergency service crews found a 28-year-old man in Ultimo with burns to his arms. He is currently in police custody at Royal North Shore Hospital.

This is Australian women’s lot, still in 2014.

A day to celebrate or protest?

•  The Australian Bureau of Statistics confirms Australian men earn an average of 17% more than women with a weekly average of $1,500. The figure is higher compared to women who have an average of just $1,250 a week.

• Feminists fear draft Zoe’s Law” criminalising destroying a foetus could lead to more trauma and injustice, potentially imposing restrictions on pregnant women’s behaviour and restricting women’s access to abortion.

• Homosexuals Mark and Matt of Adelaide, both 29, paid $80,000 in 2012 to buy Thai babies Tate and Estelle through commercialised offshored surrogacy in Thailand.   The babies were conceived from eggs extracted from a single Caucasian donor woman (country not identified), separately fertilised with the men’s sperm, then implanted into two Thai women who acted as surrogate mothers.  Commercial surrogacy is illegal in Australia, and adoption by homosexuals is outlawed in South Australia, yet the men have contractually erased the mother by “womb-renting” her.