GENDER JUSTICE: EQUALITY AND EQUITY The report’s four thematic areas cut across multiple policy and community spaces and are deeply embedded in Close the Gap24 priorities and targets: 1. Leadership and decision-making for self-determination. 2. Language, land, water and cultural rights. 3. Societal healing and intergenerational wellbeing. 4. Economic justice and empowerment. PHOTO: Wiyi Yani U Thangani (Women’s Voices report) Perth workshop (Collin Murty) “We had just three framing questions: What are your strengths? What are your challenges? What are your solutions to those challenges? Beyond that, women and girls were free to speak about whatever they wanted June and the team to hear,” Kimberley said. “And they spoke about everything from housing to health to child protection, to employment and matters relating to the care and protection of Country and culture.” Now their stories and aspirations shape the landmark Wiyi Yani U Thangani (Women’s Voices): Securing Our Rights, Securing Our Future Report 2020.20 The 500-page report is a revolutionary pathway to gender justice in Australia that demands ambitious structural change and interrogates the impact of colonisation, racism and sexism on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and girls. It spotlights their incredible caring work, going beyond Western concepts of care, from kinship care to caring for Country and culture. One of the report’s major recommendations will now be put in place, with the backing of the Australian Government. In 2023, June will host Australia’s first Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and girls’ national summit. As part of this, June will be working with women and girls across Australia to develop a national framework for action to advance Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander gender justice and equality. Wiyi Yani U Thangani’s pathways forward include raising the age of criminality from 10 to 14 years,22 working to keep children with families and communities, and supporting birthing on Country.23 Wiyi Yani U Thangani is the blueprint for change that we all need right now. It comes at a moment in history when Australia and many nations are reckoning with systemic racism and sexism and far-ranging gender inequalities that perpetuate harm against women and children – abuse that First Nations women and girls have been the most impacted by for centuries, since colonisation.” 21 June Oscar AO, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Transforming Power: Voices for Generational Change 31