How three women helped Jane Hume rebuild her life

Speaking at the FW Leadership Summit, the Liberal Senator told the audience about a particularly difficult period. It was a little over a decade ago and she found herself in a position she had never imagined she would be in.

“I was recently divorced, I was unemployed and I was a single mother of three,” she told the audience.

“And I thought, ‘Oh my God, what happens now’?’.

“Were my parents thrilled? Absolutely not. Was I thrilled? No, not in the least.”

Hume said there was only one reason she was able to dig herself out of this situation. It was the help of a small, but really important network of women – three women in particular.

“One of them was my best friend. She was a doctor, and she kept me healthy enough through some pretty tough times, both physically and mentally,” Hume said.

“One was a lawyer, an old friend who helped me get my affairs in order. And another one was a senior executive in the finance industry, a woman that I had employed once back in the day, who gave me a job.

“If it wasn’t for these three extraordinary [women] I don’t think I’d be standing on this stage and addressing you here today”.

There was a lesson Hume took from this and it was one she’ll never forget.

That lesson was the importance of pulling other women up along with you – both personally and professionally.

Hume described it as “a ladder” and urged the audience at the FW Summit to extend this ladder downwards.

She said it was “so frustrating” to see women reach senior leadership positions in their career and then “pull the ladder up behind them” so others cannot follow.

“It’s so important to lower that ladder, put the hand out and pull another woman up behind you because when you reach that critical mass of women in the workplace, culture genuinely shifts,” she said.

Hume said she sees part of her role as a political leader as helping to remove barriers and create opportunities for women.

“[It’s about] giving women more choice, to help them reach their potential, and also to deliver not just financial security across their lifetime, but also their physical security too,” she said.

“If we want to succeed, we want women to succeed in all areas of their lives, we need to make sure that they have the economic settings right to be able to enable them to reach their full potential.

“Good women’s policy is good economic policy and good economics policy is good women’s policy.”

She told the room that society as a whole would also benefit from women being economically secure as all women would be able to reach their full potential.

Or, as Hume put it elsewhere by quoting a line from comedian Hannah Gadsby: “There is nothing stronger than a woman who has rebuilt herself”.

IMAGE CREDIT: Vienna Marie Creative