Name: Nayani Navaneethan
Community/State: Griffith, New South Wales
School: Marian Catholic College
Age/Grade: 16 Years, Year 10
Bio: Click here
Nayani’s Power Trip is kindly being sponsored by AgriFutures Australia!
“Life is a roadtrip with twists and turns. How can we support one another to navigate the road to gender equality?”
Lisa Wilkinson, an Australian journalist and television presenter, host of the project was being paid 0.9 million dollars less than her male colleague when she was a host at channel nine news because of her gender. She states, “Then in my exit interview with HR I mentioned the pay gap, and they said they knew about it but gave no explanation or excuse for why they paid a man nearly 25 per cent more than me.””
6 years. Or 2190 days. Or you can say even 52, 560 hours after The Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012 replaced the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Act 1999. You would have hoped that it would “strengthen legislations and aim to improve and promote equality for both women and men in the workplace”, however, women are still earning less than men in 17 out of 19 fields of study and across 9 out of 13 industries as of March 2018. Gender inequality still remains a harrowing issue in our society today, and we as women are not being given the equal amount of strong pathways to achieve where we want to get as men are.
From a global level to even a local level, women’s political participation and leadership skills are frequently masked and restricted by the public as they are unrecognized. Despite us proving our abilities to be able to lead the world and showing the want to have our right to participate equally in democratic governance, we are still underrepresented in whatever position we hold. Statistics show that women are less likely than men to have the resources, contacts and education we need to become effective leaders. The structural barriers through discriminatory laws and institutions limit women’s options for a position of authority. Not only should we ensure that we as women continuously support one another to help us to get on the road to success but men should too. Gender equality is a human fight, not a women’s fight.
We can ensure that we support one another to navigate the road to gender equality by encouraging each other to participate in public activities, attend trainings which build up our capacities, speak about gender equality topics at school, eradicating and speaking up whenever stereotypes are mentioned and informing parents to raise children to respect one another as individuals and to keep questioning the traditional roles they’re assigned as boys or girls.
Yes, life is a road trip with twists and turns, but shouldn’t it be equally as rocky for every individual?