Written by students at Eltham Hill School, London
At Eltham Hill School, we have been involved with the Gender Action project since the very beginning and we are now a Champion School. Here, at the Equality Champions club, we were faced with the difficult task of deciding what topic we were going to focus on, bringing awareness to our school community. Ultimately, we settled for gender equality as we felt passionate about educating others on this crucial and global subject. We know that the school is totally committed to promoting gender equality and as Equality Champions, we wanted to design a project based on this.
Since researching gender equality, we have learnt about the progress of women’s rights, however we were shocked and appalled by the limitations of gender equality still happening today. It is still rather rare to see a woman is in a position of power or in a leadership role in a place of work. And still too often a woman’s voice is left unheard and women are often cast out from society just because they are female.
The empowerment of women and girls is not just a goal but a key to development, economic growth, peace and security. Research has shown that society will be better for everyone if women’s rights are evolving in places of study and work and taken seriously. This shows that although women are nearly half of the earth’s population (49.6%), we are still being taken for granted, cat called and stereotyped.
Additionally, we interviewed and sent out surveys to students and teachers around our all-girls school to hear their opinions and ideas about gender equality. Our plan is to empower women, to achieve their potential and improve their confidence, through informative presentations, collaborative projects, self-defence workshops and charitable work such as bake sales. Our first step is to make a video about equality with staff and students performing a version of ‘Independent Women’ together. We feel that this will be a positive statement about rights and equality and reflect the fact that our community works together towards equality.
As Equality Champions, not only do we want diversity, equality and inclusion to be implemented in everyday life, but also equity – to recognise that each person has different circumstances and needs to be allocated tailored resources and opportunities to reach an equal outcome. Investing in gender equality is about creating a world where all women and girls are empowered and can enjoy their human rights.
The Sixth form and Year 11 students have also been involved in a project around progressive masculinity. This is because we believe that all students in the school should be trained on equality. Even though we are predominantly a girls’ school, we have boys in the sixth form and also some of our students identify as non-binary. As we are an Equaliteach Gold Award school, we are fully inclusive and celebrate our gender diversity. We want to explore all aspects of gender. Boys in the Sixth form and students in Year 11 have taken part in workshops reflecting on our gender identities.
The first day of the workshop was heavily focused on how we feel as men and how we can express our emotions as well as how we see ourselves in society and what we ‘should’ do in terms of social stereotypes. What impacted me the most was the section on the subject of “Boys Don’t Cry”, as I think that for me, and many others in the room at the time, this is a very strong stereotype that was pushed onto us from a young age, not necessarily through parents, but also through media and popular culture. The leader of the workshop was very welcoming and made sure that we all felt comfortable sharing our thoughts with each other and himself, and reassured us that we had a right to our own opinion. The second day was more focused on positive masculinity in everyday life, providing examples of toxic masculinity such as the Tate brothers and Harrison Sullivan, and why they appeal to so many young people and how to avoid falling into this trap of hate and toxicity.
We continue to work hard on listening to student voice on gender and we are going to develop further projects as a team of students to ensure that gender equality is always on the agenda. The staff and leadership team are very supportive of us working on particular aspects of the theme of gender and this year, our drop down ‘Make a Difference Day’ will be focused on identity, including aspects of gender.