On Student Presidents and Gender Equality
Two things happened yesterday that helped me reflect on gender equality. Firstly, Danish Women started working for free for the rest of the year. Secondly, we discussed equality of voice with our newly convened student presidents and vice presidents in both middle and high school.
You probably need a bit more context for the first point. This post on linkedin points out that as women, even in Denmark one of the world's most equal societies, earn on average 12.9% less than men, it is the equivalent loss of earnings to working for free from the 12th November until the end of the year. As the post said the reasons are complex, but the outcome is pretty unacceptable. It will take a lot of imagination and effort to make sure women on average are paid until the end of the year (in the analogy) just as men are.
With our new student presidents in place, I am delighted that we have both a female and male president (Middle School and High School respectively). As we introduced the team to each other, Karim, Teela, Alessia, Daniel and August shared a little about what they care about and who they are. They all shared rich experiences, from growing up in Aberdeen but wanting an international outlook, to experiences in Lebanon, Oman, Dubai, Texas, Malaysia, London, and more. Gender is only one of many kinds of diversity, but it is one of the ones that students who voted for president asked us to explore, and see if the presidents can help us understand where we might do even better as a community. If you want to get to know the presidents better, here is a post of our new High School president and vice president.
One thing we talked about as we begin the work, is getting equality of voice in the group - after all, if we are not doing it, how could we help others to make a more just community. There are lots of strategies for helping get more equal voice in a team or group. Firstly talking about it helps! Using protocols to support quieter voices to be heard (going 'around the group', 'speaker chooses', speaking sticks, counters for contributions which you can 'spend' like 'spend a buck', etc. etc.). The reasons why sometimes voices are not given space are complex, like the reasons Danish women despite having the vote since 1915, are still paid less than men after more than 100 years. But the way to start addressing both problems is to make sure we are talking about it. We will keep you updated on the presidents' journey over the year.
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