Is it the fault of women?

She went on to describe: “… that deep seated desire not so much that she shall remain inferior as that he shall be superior ...”.

Could that still be the case in 2009? Christopher Pyne’s recent response to a “glass ceiling” question on the ABC’s Q&A suggests it is. He said (and full credit for his frankness): “I don't know why, it's the culture of politics perhaps, or it's the culture of business. The more women become threatening perhaps the more the boys club together. I'm not sure.”

It also remains useful to consider Woolfe’s historical comparison of women as men imagine them and women as they are treated:

Indeed, if women had no existence save in fiction writing by men, one would imagine her a person of the utmost importance; very various; heroic and mean; splendid and sordid; infinitely beautiful and hideous in the extreme; as great as man, some think even greater. But this is women in fiction. In fact as Professor Trevelyan points out, she was locked up, beaten and flung about the room.

A very queer, composite being thus emerges. Imaginatively she is of the highest importance; practically she is completely insignificant.

These observations and analyses reinforce my belief that most men - with some appalling exceptions - are not angry or hostile towards women until women step outside their “pattern”, the subtly entrenched mental classification men have of the role of women and of the relative social positions of women and men. And although I do not excuse those women who decry and who would secretly sabotage the efforts of deserving women, the sad fact is that many women have an innate pattern similar to those of most men.

The end result is that women are still "very queer, composite beings", most without financial independence and many without intellectual freedom, comfortable within their social arrangements and feeling little solidarity with women outside them, and happy to live within the control of a male provider whose ego is salved by that subservience.

Why else, when a deserving man and an equally deserving woman candidates for a position, do females vote for the man and not the woman? And why else can our politicians get away with acknowledging women's rights and promising just outcomes one day, but blithely put them on the backburner the next?

We don't have to look very far for examples. On International Women's Day last year Prime Minister Rudd said of Australian women:

... And as I look into the faces of the young women here today … it makes me enormously optimistic about the nation’s future, when I see so many talented, ambitious, broad hearted, clear minded young women wishing passionately to make a contribution to this nation’s future.

You do our hearts proud every time we engage you across the nation. And we encourage you in taking on the challenges of the nation.

I welcome the leadership of all those women who are here in so many ways and so many places and so many different times, because you have made a contribution to making this country a better place with a greater and more effective participation in the affairs of the nation. I congratulate you for it.

And I thank you very much for this opportunity to be among you today to celebrate the role of women in our life, our national life, today in Australia, and to advance further the opportunities of women in the period ahead ...

If Mr Rudd really believes that, why isn't he actually doing something to address the realities reflected in Australia’s gender statistics? Perhaps Prime Minister Rudd gets caught up in the moment, carried away on his own rhetorical flourish, and sobers up afterwards?

He said in relation to paid maternity leave: “We are still some way off resolving the financial policy detail, but what I am saying to you loud and clear today is that this Australian Government believes the time has come to bite the bullet on this and we intend to do so.” But nowadays he seems to avert his eyes and says: “we would look at the Productivity Commission report, it’s due soon, and then we’d consider it in the Budget context.”

And his Government takes an apologist’s position on paid maternity leave in Australia’s formal report on the implementation - or more accurately, “non-implementation” - of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (PDF 352KB) (July 2003 to July 2008):