Name: Jessica Addis-Shawyer
Community/State: Mulgrave, Victoria
School: Drouin Secondary College
Age/Grade: 15 Years, Year 10
“Life is a roadtrip with twists and turns. How can we support one another to navigate the road to gender equality?”
Every person can make a difference. Treating everyone as simply as a human being is just the start. What needs to happen is a worldwide collaborative effort towards gender equity however we must start small and local before we go global. Having short, medium and long term goals so that we can become a better community. Changing the attitudes of the children of the now so that the future adults can lead the charge towards finally achieving gender equality. An example of this already happening in the world is in Iceland where in private kindergartens they have boys doing more emotional and feminine activities for an allocated time while having girls doing more typically masculine activities for the same amount of time. This has already made a huge difference there so what’s to say that it won’t make the same progress here.
Within the government the leaders should lead by their behavior so that the rest of Australia can follow the example set by them. Workplaces should have discriminatory neutral policy where all are treated in equity no matter their gender, race, religion, etc. An example of a workplace such as this with the policy already in place is V-Line. People who are unable to accept gender equality would have support through re-education programs since most of the time the reason behind their belief is ignorance or cultural influences. Gender issues are a large problem in daily life. These include segregation, ridicule, sexism, stereotyping and abuse just to name a few. The one of the main topics that is talked about is discrimination, since it covers all areas including gender. When it comes to gender discrimination it means according to the Anti-Discrimination Commission in Queensland, that someone gets treated lesser than another person because they identify differently to their birth gender. Overall this is how I believe we can support each other on the road to gender equity.