Name: Jessica Larter
Community/State: Tumut, New South Wales
School: Tumut High School
Age/Grade: 16 Years, Year 11
Overcoming the odds – how can we push through barriers to achieve gender equality?
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single woman in possession of a good body, must be in want of a man.”
We women of the 21st century have been nurtured in an environment of sexual liberation and raised to objectify our bodies in order to achieve success. This has been painted in our thoughts through billboards, video game characters, the ‘Harvey Weinstein’s’ who sit in casting rooms with a woman’s self-worth in their palms.
Gender representation has shifted across time as women are rewarded with rights, but there is such a multitude of issues we still need to deal with. Our world needs to seriously attempt to redress the tragedies seen in western culture regarding the sexualisation of the female body, and in developing countries where millions of innocent women are dictated by men and viewed as submissive, acquiescent, domesticated beings.
Overcoming the barriers to achieve gender equality requires an international approach, and help from bodies such as the UN. We need funds to set up education programs and facilities which can assist across all corners of the globe. In most western countries, gender disparities are dealt with when we reach a mature age, and this is a driving factor which needs to be changed. If we worked with children at a young age, from pre-school through primary education and then into high school, there would be a significant improvement in confidence and aspiration of young girls and the sudden expectations from social media would not be as decimating to their self-esteem. In nations such as Australia, this educational focus could be promoted to parents show them how to be powerful without exploiting their physical assets, so they can lead by example. Because how can society escape this long-standing patriarchy when the people raising the new generation, lived in the old one.
A large part of overcoming the issue also includes working with men and young boys, as in many developing countries they hold the power of a woman’s fate. Child marriage is a shocking reality which is only becoming worse and developing countries who have the upper hand in negotiations hold the vital power to help these CHILDREN sold to sex slavery. Education is essential in equalising the world, and we need to unite in protecting women all ethnicities. Until human rights are available to every little girl, the feminist movement is not finished.