It’s 2019 and we’ve seen a boom in the number of women nominated for the Australia Day honours – from 500 in 2009, 30 per cent of nominations, to more than 1200 this year, nearly 40 per cent. Not quite as good as the UK, which has been running just about even for a few years now, with no noticeable fallout.

That increase is good news and a product of a number of efforts.

One, senior members of the honours and awards secretariat are now doing fly-in, fly-out missions all around Australia to make sure government organisations understand how the process works and to ensure the message is broader than Canberra; two, the current governor-general and his wife have been full-on promoting the concept of honouring women; and of course, the Honour A Woman campaign, run by three tireless advocates, Elizabeth Hartnell-Young, Carol Kiernan and Ruth McGowan. They too travel around the country running workshops.

As Sharon Prendergast, the director of the secretariat, put it: “Senior staff have travelled to meet with state officials to encourage them to identify and nominate women and states are getting on board".

So they mean business. Yet there are some industries and professions which could not find a single woman to nominate this year and many of these are repeat offenders: architecture, dentistry, industrial relations, library and related occupations, mining, surveying and mapping; and vet science. In architecture, dentistry, librarianship and vet science, the student body has been female dominated for years. Even those peak bodies are run by women, even if women don’t currently occupy the top job.

The existing gender imbalance may soon get a boost. The Labor Party says that if it’s elected, it will ensure women receive 40 per cent of honours by 2020 and 50 per cent not long after. Today’s figures of 37 per cent of awards going to women show the ALP’s goal will be easy to achieve. Meanwhile the Liberal Party says, once again, that we don’t need quotas.

But a determined mindset makes a difference. Helen Lochhead, the dean of built environment which includes architecture at the University of NSW, the incoming president of the Australian Institute of Architects and the woman I mentioned before who looks around at meetings wondering where all the women are, understands the problems and is now determined to make change – and she’s been successful in her own neck of the woods, shifting the gender balance of leadership roles in the faculty of architecture at UNSW.

She says the AIA should make it a priority.

“It’s changed quite radically in the last few years. We have more women AIA state presidents, more women on our national council and board, government architects, more women deans of architecture across Australia, more women directors and partners in architectural firms than ever before, so there are definitely more women who should be great nominees,” she says.

“You can’t rely on existing systems to identify and promote equity, you do have to have affirmative action plans and you need to make them public.”

Karin Alexander, former national president of the Australian Dental Association and now on its awards and honours committee, believes the reason dentistry is slow to nominate its women is because the profession itself has been male-dominated. That too is changing. Now university graduates are two-thirds women. Alexander says the shift in honours nominations is not far behind.

But one thing we have learned is that being proactive works. Last year, the then minister for women in Victoria, Natalie Hutchins, appointed a dedicated awards officer to work with groups such as Honour A Woman to organise an additional 200 nominations of Victorian women each year for gender balance.

The results have been amazing. It’s thrilling to see what an actual affirmative action strategy will achieve. In Victoria, women were awarded about 40 per cent of this year's honours, compared to about 30 per cent last year. The new minister Gabrielle Williams wouldn’t comment, probably courteous not to be too smug.

The rest of the states and territories should step up unless we want to see a total domination by Victoria. And maybe those folks from architecture, dentistry, industrial relations, library and related occupations, mining, surveying and mapping; and even vet science could get their nomination skates on too.

Of course those are the ones with zero this year – but there are other professions where women run the place but get far fewer nominations.

Law. I’m looking at you.

Jenna Price is an academic at the University of Technology Sydney.