Name: Heather Proud
Community/State: Roma, Queensland
School: Roma State College
Age/Grade: 16 Years, Year 10
Overcoming the odds – how can we push through barriers to achieve gender equality?
What a loaded question to ask a 16 year old girl to answer, am I right? No. That very thought process is the reason why gender inequality still remains in our modern-day society. While the journey to gender equality was always going to be long and treacherous, and has had many victories, there are many ways society can eradicate the current barriers still in our way . We just need to break through these barriers that have been standing in the road for too long.
Unfortunately, the list of barriers could go on forever, but we need to focus on the larger issues that cause the most problems in our world. Discrimination against all genders, making sure all males, females, LGBT, unspecified, are being treated like people. Domestic violence and the fact that one in three women in Australia have experienced physical or sexual violence since the age of 15. Education for all. Stereotyping girls and boys as two completely different species. Safety in our communities. Everyone having access to health care. The gender pay gap being currently at 14% in Australia. The reality that women represent 58.4% of students in Universities across our nation and out-number men in higher education completion rates, and yet are less likely to be employed. Australian women having to work an extra 56 days a year to earn the same pay as men, even though the exact same work is being completed. All these barriers need to be demolished urgently.
So how do we do it? How do we overcome the odds and achieve gender equality? My answer may seem simple, but it will make the biggest difference. Speak up. Talk to the youth, to the senior citizens. Be role models for the next generation, show them that being segregated by your gender isn’t the way of the future. The lack of knowledge about gender equality is unbelievable, especially in rural areas like where I live. It was only a few years ago when I learnt what gender inequality was, up until then it was just the norm that I would never be as good as the boys. This sort of mindset is so old fashioned and needs immediate updating. As Ruth Ginsburg once said, ‘Women will only have true equality when men share with them the responsibility of bringing up the next generation’ and she couldn’t have been more right. No more segregating women’s jobs from manly jobs, the ‘girl’ sports from the ‘boy’ sports. Educating people that we are all equal, regardless of our gender, that’s how we break through the barriers.