They make up almost half the workforce, are better educated than men, but they earn up to $20,000 a year less, are more likely to retire poor and currently occupy only 30 per cent of seats in Federal Parliament.

Only one in five are in the ministry across all parliaments and only one in five have made senior roles in Australia's top 2000 companies. Since 1901, women have made up only 11 per cent of seats in the Australian Parliament.

We're not alone in the gender stakes. Internationally, women occupy an average one in five seats in all parliaments.

It makes one wonder. Is having children a brake on career advancement? Sexism, discrimination? Are we simply a nation of male dominant misogynists?

Australian men take issue with the apparel required of women in Islamic culture, as if to point out glaring oppression and sexism in non-western countries. But, for a supposedly sophisticated and developed country, our treatment of women raises comparable issues of systemic discrimination.

The Labor Party has sought to remedy this with quotas for women, stemming from the traditional affirmative action strategy. The Liberal Party dismisses this as backhanded sexism and tokenism, and it may have a point, but as a nation, we have to do something.

Maybe it is not a question of offering women career handouts, but working to rid the nation of the obvious impediments to women being successful.

The proverbial men's club still exists. The "blokey" culture of sexism is thriving. Despite obvious education advantages, the statistics prove that women are under-represented in the upper echelons of the Australian workforce.

We can do better in the 21st century. Australia is so much the poorer for these miserable statistics.