post #1 Gender Equality

For a long time women have been treated with unequal rights to men, and not in a good way. 1901 was the year when women were given the right to vote in Australia, but I’m not just talking about the right to vote, I’m talking about women not being paid as much as men. Australian women are being paid 77-88 cents (give or take a cent) for every dollar a man earns. That means that in an hour if a man is paid $60 a woman is only being paid $49.80.

​Women’s rights have improved a lot since 1901 but there is still a long way to go until we have equal rights. Some people believe that women are disadvantaged when it comes to jobs that involve heavy lifting. For example some people might think that a trade centre like Mitre 10 is not the place for women because of all of the physical work, but in actual fact we could be saying the same about some men.
Once a year it is international women’s day but why should we need our own day if people believe we are equal? Gender equality means a lot to me in a way that it feels it is my problem to solve. I know it isn’t but I can’t help feeling there is something I can do to help it stop. I am only an eleven year old so I don’t have a voice that is listened to and taken seriously when it comes to big issues like this. But if you spread the word this can be read by people that do have a voice in society, and who are listened to by their peers.
“You throw like a girl” is something I hear a lot and it’s not usually used as a compliment, but when you think about it women compete in the same Olympics as men, compete in the same events as men (not exactly the same events, I mean they’re not competing against men) and do just as well as men, because it’s not about who comes first, or third, it’s about times. Plus why only just this year was a female Australian football league introduced when male football has been around for ages, is the reason because people don’t want us to get hurt, or is there another that hasn’t been explained. But it’s not just women being treated unfairly when it comes to sport, its men to. Sometimes men are teased for wanting to play a sport like netball, but it’s perfectly reasonable to want to. Last year my school netball team was an all girls’ team, by choice of the boys (they all wanted to play football). But this year we have about five boys that have not been teased at all. Which is exactly what we want from everyone. Women are stereotyped in a lot of ways like; all women can cook, if by that they mean smoke out the kitchen and burn the once non-combustible (it was frozen) piece of toast, I can cook. And that women don’t play sport because they might ‘chip a nail’, but in actual fact a lot of women don’t mind if they injure themselves playing a sport they love, just ask my class mates. One of them chipped one of her teeth skating, but that didn’t stop her from doing the thing she loves. Another broke her leg (also skating) and that stopped her from doing everything for eight weeks and she still skates. Stereotyping is not all right and we all need to understand that.