Councillor Column - 11 March 2026 - Cr Tim Drylie

Published on 11 March 2026

At our International Women’s Day event in Creswick last week, the stories shared by women in the room did more than inspire. They cut through.

This year’s theme, Balance the Scales, is grounded in a simple promise: every woman and girl, regardless of background or identity, should be safe, respected and free to shape their own life. Yet that promise is still denied to too many women, girls, trans and gender-diverse people through violence, discrimination and systems that continue to protect power over people.

That is why these issues cannot be treated as separate. Violence against women, hostility towards trans and gender-diverse people, war, climate breakdown and the impunity of the ultra-wealthy all grow from cultures that excuse domination, entitlement and the devaluing of other people’s lives. Renewed scrutiny around the Epstein case has again focused public attention on how the rich, famous and well-connected can evade accountability while victims carry the harm for years.

We can see the same brutal logic at work globally. In Iran, UN experts have condemned the strike on a girls’ school in Minab, where more than 160 innocent children were reportedly killed. At the same time, conflict in the region has intensified fears over oil supply, reminding us how war, fossil fuel dependence and climate injustice are bound together, with ordinary people, often women and children, paying the price in blood, trauma and a hotter world.

Balancing the scales will take more than asking strong and supposedly “difficult” women to do all the heavy lifting. Men need to listen, speak up, call out sexism, reject violence, and be part of building a culture grounded in peace, equality and real accountability.