Name: Serena Claringbold
Community/State: Brogo, New South Wales
School: Bega High School
Age/Grade: 16 Years, Year 11
Overcoming the odds – how can we push through barriers to achieve gender equality?
Gender equality theoretically should be a social norm and easy to accomplish, however it is increasingly becoming harder to achieve because of society’s ignorance and apathy.
To achieve gender equality, I believe there needs to be a shift in the internal structure of the Australian parliament. When making promises to voters in the electoral period, our current government did not promise anything regarding gender equality. Firstly, and foremostly, to achieve gender equality, it is vital that Australia has a government who will try their hardest to provide equality between the sexes. Alongside the aforementioned opinion, women in power and parliament need to have their voices heard! Australia’s worst area on the global gender gap report of 2018 is Political empowerment with a 76.8% gap needed to close. Only 35% of federal politicians are female, meaning that their collective voices may be unheard because of the large proportion of men in power.
Admittedly, males do face injustices, but females are facing more significant discriminations. On average, females are getting paid roughly $200 less than men per week. To try and achieve equality in this respect, I believe it should require a change of the legislation. Although such a suggestion would require a costly referendum, surely our government wants to support equality for all genders; men, women and those who choose to fall into any other category.
Australian women have petitioned, lobbied and protested for this cause and I believe that doing such a thing is a waste of time. No matter how many different arguments surface, the people in power choose to empathise without action and they need to do the opposite in order to achieve equality. Stereotypes are also an important factor that manipulate individuals to believe that they have to act, dress and be a certain way. I propose that these gender stereotypes are abolished at some point along the road to gender equality.
Norway ranked second in the world in 2018 for gender equality with a 16.5% gender gap to close, compared to Australia where there is a 27% gender gap yet to close. I believe that Australia needs to take note of what these top-ranking countries are doing to close their respective gaps. We need to send activists and passionate researchers to the top-ranking countries (Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland) and bring back ideas, methods and inspiration on how to finally accomplish equality.
References:
http://reports.weforum.org/global-gender-gap-report-2018/results-and-analysis/?doing_wp_cron=1567075987.4361159801483154296875