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"Well, today is International Women&rsquo;s Day, so I&rsquo;m ready to be carried around in a sedan chair by semi-naked buff young men. That&rsquo;s how it works, isn&rsquo;t it? There is obviously still a long way to go in the battle for equality between the sexes but that&rsquo;s not what I want to talk about. Today, I&rsquo;d like to acknowledge how far we&rsquo;ve come. For starters, it&rsquo;s not that long since women had to stop working once they got married. While they were footloose, swinging single gals, it was acceptable for them to have a cute little typing job or work in the bank but, once married, they had a household to keep and a husband to iron for, so a career was obviously incompatible with that. So, well done everyone on progressing from that sorry stage. And while we&rsquo;re at it, well done to all the amazing women who have campaigned for the sisterhood relentlessly. To be honest, I&rsquo;m mostly so exhausted from working and walking my dog that fighting for a cause is beyond my mental and emotional capabilities. Even when I know it&rsquo;s worthwhile. So to those women who continue to fight the good fight, bravo to you all. I can only imagine how shattered you must be by the end of the day. And then there are the men. #notallmen, obviously, but there are plenty of good guys out there. There are men who not only believe that women have a lot to contribute, beyond making the bed and whipping up a serviceable spag bol, but they actively support them. I know it happens because it&rsquo;s happened to me. In my career, I&rsquo;ve had men who have backed me in and enabled and empowered me to do my job. When I first started working in radio, I had literally zero experience in the field. I had never been in a radio studio. I didn&rsquo;t understand the terminology, I didn&rsquo;t know how the hierarchy worked and I had no confidence in my abilities. But a couple of wonderful men had my back. They gave me the skills and allowed me to develop at my own pace. This is pretty amazing in an industry that literally operates on public opinion. More significantly, after about 18 months, I was informed by my bosses that I would be anchoring the show. This means I would be the person who would usually do all the business stuff like saying the time, giving the weather, telling the listeners what was coming up, as well as contributing to the general conversation. Here&rsquo;s the groundbreaking part: a woman had never held that role in metropolitan breakfast radio. I KNOW, RIGHT? I wasn&rsquo;t aware of this at the time. I just went along with what I was told to do. It hadn&rsquo;t occurred to me that breakfast radio listeners could be aghast at the notion of a woman telling them the time. What a breakthrough moment. Imagine all those hapless listeners utterly confused because the first voice they heard after a song finished playing was ... (gulp) ... a WOMAN. Happily, our listeners weren&rsquo;t shocked to their conservative cores. In fact, I&rsquo;d be surprised if anyone noticed at all. Mind you, there&rsquo;s still not a heap of female anchors floating around, so maybe there&rsquo;s still some room to move. But I&rsquo;ll always be grateful that a couple of blokes gave me the opportunity. Over the past 17 years in this job, I&rsquo;ve had male and female bosses and most of them have been amazing. One was utterly dreadful and practically a caricature. But for vast swathes of my radio career, I have had men in my corner who have been supportive and who have built my confidence and backed me in. They smashed limitations that I put on myself and handed me opportunities that they knew I was capable of seizing. So, remember this, girls. The good guys are out there and they&rsquo;re on our side. "
<https://thewest.com.au/opinion/opinion-the-good-guys-are-out-there-and-theyre-on-our-side-ng-b881479170z>