While the last year has seen women all over the world stand up and say it’s time for absolute gender equality, local feminists are concerned that Wagga is lagging behind the movement.
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CSU women’s issues lecturer Dr Andreia Schineanu said she feared Wagga was still stuck in the past in many respects.
“In Wagga, our attitudes towards women and gender roles are quite conservative and traditional – for example, we don’t have many women in leadership positions, and not just political positions but community positions, too,” Dr Schineanu said.
“The good news is Wagga has a really good history of women starting successful businesses, so we clearly have smart women who can think out of the box, we just need them to not be constrained by conservatism.”
Dr Schineanu said a key challenge in Wagga is recognising the flow-on effects of gender inequality.
“Street harassment and sexual harassment of women is a big problem here – I have colleagues who have had to stop running because men driving around have catcalled them,” she said.
“What we need to understand is that this has flow-on effects – we talk about Wagga having an obesity crisis, and here are women being prevented from being healthy because of these men’s attitudes towards them.”
Mary Kidson, who was the only woman to serve on the Wagga City Council for a long time, agreed that positive change needs to start with more women in leadership.
“The fact that we have such poor female representation in the council is a reflection of how conservative our community is,” she said.
“When I was the only woman on council, I found that many women in the community came to me because they identified with me – so if you have more women in leadership, that can only benefit the community.”
This weekend, Wagga will livestream the Sydney Opera House’s All About Women forum, where prominent feminists including Tracey Spicer and Anne Summers will discuss gender inequality and the Me Too movement.
Ms Kidson will MC Wagga’s satellite conference and said the day will raise some challenging but important questions.
“I really hope some young women come along on Sunday and become inspired to take up leadership positions in our community,” she said.
The satellite conference will start at 1pm this Sunday at Wagga’s council chambers.
