The theme of International Women’s Day this year was Balance the Scales. At our annual MGGS Luncheon, held at the Lyceum Club, Old Grammarians gathered, alongside MGGS parents, staff and student leaders. It was a great event, where we heard from our 2025 Emily Hensley Award winner Hannah Pelka-Caven, as well as from Dr Toni Meath, our Chair of Council Diana Nicholson and School Captain Xanthe O’Loan.
Many of the attendees were impressed with Xanthe’s speech and her impeccable delivery of it. For the benefit of those who weren’t present, please see below a copy of Xanthe’s speech.
Xanthe speaking to the audience at our International Women’s Day Luncheon at the Lyceum Club, March 2026.
Alongside my notebook, classmates and dedicated teacher I was lucky to go with my legal studies class to the Victorian courts just yesterday. And posing for a group photo on the steps of the Magistrates gave me a perfect view of the Country Court, and her dramatically draped Lady Justice adorning the building. Embellished with her blindfold and sward she stands tall as a cosmic symbol of justice.
In her hands, a tilted scale.
Although she’s engraved across courts internationally, her genesis was in Rome where Emperor Augustis created her as a propaganda tool to promote his new ‘behaviour laws’. Such laws that penalised women who were unmarried for more than 6 months and bound them to the home by punitive statute.
A woman was holding the scales. But a man was holding the strings.
The truth is that Lady Justice is the greatest act of irony created by man, because she was created to continue a cycle of subjugation and the scales have never been in our hands.
Yet, Lady Justice stood tall on Australian courts when women where denied economic independence, she stood in Britian when it was written than men and women would have fundamentally different rights, and now she stands in American courts when we were denied the right to bodily autonomy.
The scale is in our hands, yet it is not balanced.
Perhaps the greatest enemy of equality is thinking that it has already happened. In a country like Australia, we will always have the debate of weather feminism is still needed. I am able to stand in my school uniform without question, I’ve had my own bank account since I was 15, I am in control of my bodily autonomy with the help of a doctor, I am able to see a doctor, I can speak in public, can speak at all, can look at men, can be seen in public.
There are still women across the world who have less rights than our animals do in Australia.
If justice is a woman than why does it seem that it has never been for women.
My scales have always been more balanced than other girls, but until we are all equal none of us are.
And that’s not to say that Australia is a utopia of gender equality or even respect for women. When I was at the Magistrates court yesterday, I realised that they have to dedicate an entire floor to family violence matters. 1 in 3 women will experience gender-based violence in their lifetime. A statistic that scares me more when I think of out MGGS girls being a part of that statistic. That is the world our year 5s are stepping into. Yet, we have relative legislative equality.
This tells us that there is a fundamental lack of respect for women in our world.
This is a difficult conversation and balancing the scales is difficult. But right now, that is exactly what we need. We need to be difficult.
Loud when the room is quiet and honest when the demographic would rather listen to lies. Especially when we are told that it won’t be received well.
I need to thank Dr Meath who has taught and continues to teach me that demanding respect means not being smaller for others. That a voice is the most powerful things that we have, perhaps it is our only tool.
Lady Justice was created by a man, but because of our voice, values and fight, she will be defined by women.
Xanthe O’Loan
2026 School Captain