by Eliana Darroch & MZ
- It’s when a woman walks home from the bus and someone wolf-whistles at her
- It’s when we see half-naked women on billboards, usually advertising something completely unrelated like burgers
- It’s when magazines tell us, as men and women, how to behave, how to look and what to desire
- It’s when a woman feels unsafe to walk alone at night
- It’s when rape survivors are blamed for the abuse they have suffered, assuming “they asked for it.”
- It’s when women are destined to have a life of up to 2/3 less pay than men and significantly more difficulty in advancing in their jobs
- It’s being EXPECTED to be strong and tough, or to be sweet and defenceless
- It’s assuming a nurse will be a woman and a doctor will be man
- It’s when a woman playing with children is seen as a natural maternal activity, but a man playing with children is regarded with suspicion
It happens everyday, it’s all around us and worst of all, many of us pretend it doesn’t exist —Sexism
Sexism is the oppression or discrimination of a person based on their sex or gender. It reinforces attitudes and behaviour based on traditional stereotypes of sexual roles in our society. Sexism can be anything from pay inequality to a music video that portrays women as sexual objects. Sexism affects us all, but particularly women, as it is engrained in our patriarchal (male-dominated) society. Sexism is an attitude that can affect women in almost every aspect of their lives and can prevent them from achieving their potential.
Language
Sexism manifests itself in our society in many different ways, from the accepted gender roles to the language we use. When you think of the word “master” and “mistress”, which meaning holds more power? They both mean the same thing, apart from the gender that is attached to it. What about bachelor or spinster? Which would you rather be? Almost anything can become an insult if you add like a girl’ to the end of it. “Ahhhh you throw like a girl.” Music videos, TV programmes and the mass media give women a variety of labels from ho’ to chick’ or doll’. There are also many words used to describe people who do not conform to socially accepted gender stereotypes, like poofter’ or tomboy’.
Beauty
Media and advertising is a powerful medium in our society and virtually impossible to escape. Everywhere we go, we are bombarded by sexist images that subject women to a certain ideal of beauty. While using women’s bodies to sell you something, the airbrushed images tells us what beauty is. Women start to measure themselves against these impossible and unrealistic standards. The cosmetic industry uses women’s insecurities to their own advantage, by selling us products to help us achieve this beauty ideal. The underlying message of many ads is, “you’re not beautiful unless you buy our product.” These insecurities can develop into lack of self esteem or even psychological disorders, often related to eating. Anorexia nervosa and bulimia are eating disorders suffered mostly by women. One in four girls may suffer from the symptoms of an eating disorder and 52% of teenagers begin dieting before the age of 14.
Aotearoa New Zealand
Globally Aotearoa New Zealand has led the way in promoting women’s equality, being the first in the world to give women the vote and first in the world to simultaneously have a woman governor general, woman mayor and elected female prime minister. Although many improvements on the position of women have been made, sexism still exists in this country in many forms. Women are still associated with passivity, weakness, submissiveness and being emotional. They’re often seen or treated like sexual objects. Men are stereotyped to be aggressive, powerful, strong and rational. Particularly in New Zealand culture, men are expected to be tough and rugged and not show emotion. These stereotypes are blatant sexism, but are usually accepted- subconsciously or not.
We still have a long way to go. Women all over the world still struggle for justice, equality and respect. Next time you see sexist behaviour- don’t just accept it! Do something about it, challenge this behaviour and let people around you know that sexism will no longer be accepted or tolerated.
Five Facts
- The majority of people worldwide who live in absolute poverty (that is, living on less than one dollar a day) are women.
- Women do 75% of the world’s work, including unpaid, yet own only 10% of the world wealth.
- Out of over 180 countries, only 11 are currently led by women.
- 1 in 4 women will experience domestic violence at some point in their lives.
- Female graduates are likely to earn less than their male counterparts and take, on average, twice as long to pay back their student loans. (Meaning they could pay up to 20% more for the same education!)
Learn More
Women’s Rights - Human Rights Commission
Prejudice
Violence against Women, Global Bits Issue 09
Eating Disorders
Take Action!!
Be informed, read, think about the language your use, be respectful, discuss issues around gender, sexuality and discrimination
Challenge your friends and your own stereotypes
Help create an atmosphere at work, school or home that doesn’t tolerate sexism
Learn more about human rights and go along to the Human Right’s Film Festival
A version of this article was originally published in JET magazine.
Many of the world’s environmental problems have been caused by multinational corporations and states in their constant drive for profit and control of humanity. Across the globe there have been many brave acts of resistance against those exploiting both humanity and the environment. Unfortunately as global awareness of environmental issues increases so does repression of those brave enough to stand up.
Across the majority world large numbers of people have been imprisoned for daring to stand up to multinationals destroying the environment. In West Papua, which has been the scene of violent Indonesian Military operations since 1962, there has been large scale repression against students protesting the operations of US mining company Freeport McMoRan. Every day Freeport’s Grasberg copper and gold mine dumps 700,000 tonnes of mining waste into Papua’s rivers. According to the New York Times this has destroyed nearly 90 square miles of wetlands, which were once ‘one of richest freshwater habitats in the World’. This has angered many indigenous West Papuans, so Freeport pays the Indonesian Military to provide security. The Military has murdered many mining opponents.
On March 16th 2006 university students set up blockades in Papua’s capital, Jayapura, demanding the closure of the Freeport mine. The Military and Brimob (paramilitary police) violently attacked the demonstrators, leading to clashes in which three policemen and one soldier died. Brimob entered the university arresting scores of students, who were then beaten, tortured and forced to admit to taking part in the killings. Students’ families were also targeted. One student, who has since fled to Papua New Guinea, told an Australian human rights activist “After the March 16 clashes Intel [Brimob] arrested my mother, then took her from the house to the university. They wanted to kill her in front of the university but she was struggling and shouting hard, and so they took her to POLDA [Police Station] and tortured her, burned her with cigarettes and beat her up for three days at the gaol”.2 Some of the students have since been given lengthy prison terms, even though no evidence to suggest they took part in the killings was produced. Hundreds are still in hiding.
It is a Sunday and I am inside my first ever mosque. Today is a learning day where all the young people gather to learn about their faith. Happy laughing kids run around the corridors and burqa wearing women cook up a mean sausage sizzle. I am greeted by a pākehā woman (also in a burqa) who leads me to a group of teens willing to talk about growing up as Muslims in NZ. Where are all the terrorists, I wonder slightly disappointed by the obvious joy in the mosque. Clearly they are not all into blowing themselves up and abusing women. But I had to find out for sure. What is this thing called Islam?
But as much as I dislike Saddam Hussein, I dislike the hypocrisy of his death sentence even more so. After all, the death he was so apt at condemning upon his Iraqi people, would not have been possible without our good western generosity. Shouldn’t we feel proud!
Or the infamous “Dick Cheney Hunting Incident”? US Vice President Dick Cheney was out hunting for quails with Harry Whittington, a 78-year-old lawyer, when he accidentally shot Whittington! Since then, people have speculated on whether or not it was really an accident.
I boarded the tiny plane in Westport on July 14, nervous and unprepared. I hadn’t even read half of the information we’d been sent. I was excited to finally get a chance to go overseas, but by this stage I had convinced myself it was going to be terrible. They wouldn’t feed me enough (I like food), the people would be super brainy and super snobbish (how could a little West Coast girl ever compete?), not to mention old (I’m only 18 and the people going were aged from 16-30), and I’d get lost (the amount of youth going to the festival was more than the population of my entire town)!
I was immediately welcomed by the 16 other New Zealanders at our one-day workshop in Auckland on the 15th (they weren’t mean after all). And I soon realised I was the only one who was feeling nervous and ill-prepared. And I was one of the youngest people there, but it never became an issue. We all came from different backgrounds, and different parts of the country, but here we were all equal.
Another highlight was meeting three Moriori youth from New Zealand. I never learned anything about the Moriori people at school. All I knew was something about “the Moriori being eaten by the Māori”… It was interesting learning about how the Moriori were still very much alive and the efforts being made to resurrect their language and culture. Their fight to rectify the shame people felt in being identified as Moriori (even more than Māori, Moriori people in the past were looked down upon and forced to hide or forget their culture) was incredibly inspiring.
Ngā iwi e, Ngā iwi e
On the last night of the inaugural Pacific Youth Festival held in Tahiti between 17 and 22 July, it was revived as ninety New Caledonians cheered the end of the festival and sung for a new day in the fight for self-determination in the Pacific. They sang for freedom, their banner bearing the words “Delegation of New Caledonia” (a reminder to the festival of their refusal to march under the French flag). The song, echoing in the outdoor stadium as the sun went down over the harbour of Pape’ete, and the warm Pacific wind stirred the Kanaky flags they carried in their hands and wore around their necks.
On Saturday morning Charmaine and I prepared the hall for the around one hundred youth and interested observers, including two members of the French Polynesian Assembly, who came to discuss colonisation and decolonisation. It turned into a very successful forum and we were able to put colonisation back on the agenda of the festival. Samoans came to talk about their dark past at the hands of colonial New Zealand; Kanaky, Maohi, Cook Islanders, Palauans came to discuss their islands’ experiences; Australians came to vent their frustration that there was only one aboriginal in their delegation, Papua New Guineans remembered their brothers and sisters in West Papua, who the government had warned them not to talk about at the Youth Festival. The pain of the Pacific peoples flowed through the room, the hurt, frustration and anger at last beginning to be discussed in an open way instead of being swept under the rug.
New Zealand nearly became the only country of the 132 nations who are party to the Cartagena Protocol to block an agreement on labeling GE organisms traded between nations. The Protocol is an international agreement that allows nations to decide whether to regulate the introduction and trade of genetically engineered (GE) crops or seed if they believe it will endanger traditional crops, biodiversity or indigenous farming communities.
