Name: Zara Grace Keller
Community, State: Tintinara, SA
School: Tintinara Area School
Age: Year 12, 17 years of age
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From primary school to Prime Minister, how can we create strong pathways to power for women?
Hello, my name is Zara Grace Keller, I am a year twelve student from Tintinara Area School. I live on a crop and cattle farm, which is 125km away from the nearest shopping centre, with my family of eight. I have four younger sisters and one older brother. Leadership has always been important to me, I have been part of the Student Representative Council several times, as well as taking on leadership roles within the council, and I am currently House Captain, as I have been numerous of times.
I believe to promote or create strong pathways to power for women, we should support the younger generation of women to take on leadership roles within their school and community. For instance, encourage younger female students to apply for the Student Representative Council and maybe even take on a leadership role within the student council.
Another important aspect to remember is that women should support and work together to achieve success, instead of cutting each other down in order to gain power. An excellent way of promoting this is encouraging the younger generation to join team sports such as netball. This is a terrific way for them to learn how to and practice being a team player or working with others. The support of one another as women can be such an incredibly powerful thing as well as building networks with other women.
I want to become a teacher so that I can support young women and teach them the importance of making sure that individually their voice is heard as well as that their genders voice is heard.
I was scrolling through my social feed the other day and I came across a quote from schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai, the quote was “Do not wait for someone else to come speak for you. It’s you who can change the world”. This just really reaffirmed my beliefs and made me feel so incredibly lucky that I have the absolute right to my education and to make the most of it.
Hopefully I will be able to go to Canberra and meet likeminded people as myself, who share similar thoughts on the importance of women leadership. Thank you for watching, and a big thankyou to my home group teacher and mother for being my idea sounding board.