Name: Bree Merrifield
Community/State: Seymour, Victoria
School: Seymour College
Age/Grade: 16 Years, Year 11
Overcoming the odds – how can we push through barriers to achieve gender equality?
My ideas about how we can push through barriers to achieve gender equality come from my own experiences as a girl in rural Victoria. As a young girl, I have struggled with two major issues that have made it hard for me to not only feel equal, but even just feel like a I belong at all. On one hand, I have always wanted to play football, ever since watching Andrew Krakouer play for Collingwood back when I was young. I wanted to be able to get on that field and play myself. But up until this year, I have always struggled with the idea that that would be impossible for me, because of the rules stopping women from playing competitively once they get older. On the other hand, I have never felt able to fit in socially with either the boys or the girls. The fact the girls were excluded from competitive football meant that many of the girls I hang around with never considered playing, so they usually keep their distance from me, because they think of me as “one of the boys”. But at the same time, the boys never really treat me the way they treat each other, so I don’t really fit in there either.
Because of these two experiences, I think the most important way that we can push through barriers in order to achieve gender equality is to take the example of the AFLW league and provide examples of highly professional and competent women in all avenues of life. No young girl should have to be forced to either compare themselves to men, because men are the only role models in the field, or give up entirely and accept the stereotypical roles of women. I think that for us in the country to break through barriers (of which there are many!) we need to say loudly to girls that it is ok if you aren’t really feminine, and that there are role models to show you how you can still succeed as a woman, in a man AND woman’s world, not just in a man’s world. If we want equality for each gender, we need to be working towards an understanding where not only society treats us the same, but even just our own families.