Australia Day awards: Gender split is evening out

While the Australia Day awards have traditionally been male-dominated, women are getting recognised in the annual awards more each year.

 

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Women are taking a bigger share of Australia Day awards, which has traditionally been a male-dominated race.

This year, all four Australian of the Year 2015 awards - Australian of the Year, Senior Australian of the Year, Young Australian of the Year and local hero - were given to women.

A clean-sweep of the award has not happened since two women - Cathy Freeman and Tan Le - took the only two available awards in 1998.

Men have taken every available award four times since 1998.

However, the balance has now shifted to 50:50.

In the past five years, 50 per cent of award recipients were women, compared to 36 per cent during the past three decades.

To be eligible for the national awards, people must receive nominations before they can be considered for the state awards.

National Australia Day Council chief executive Jeremy Lasek could not comment on the representation of women in years past, since he held his role for less than two years.

"I can talk about the here and now," Mr Lasek said.

This year was an historic year with four female winners, who were role models, Mr Lasek said.