Blog profile
After learning that my high school stint at McDonald’s wouldn’t get me a job at a mag, I worked as a freelance journalist for a few years. With much haggling and many annoying phone calls, I got a job at Cosmo! As web ed, no two days are the same – some days I’ll be at a video or photo shoot, others I’m interviewing celebs or updating myself on the latest goss (all for research purposes, obviously).
Apart from that, I have a healthy addiction to cupcakes, clutches and Christian Bale. I once watched a VH1 countdown of ‘The 50 Most Awesomely Bad Songs Ever’ and was proud to announce that I loved every last one of them. I’m very good at tripping over, talking too loud and saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. Oh … and in an acrostic poem that my friends wrote about me, the “e” in my name stood for “embarrassing.”
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Tue 08
Success or stalemate?
Today, the Church of England voted to allow females to become bishops...
Here are the facts: the Church's governing body voted overwhelmingly to allow female bishops at a meeting in York, England. The vote followed an eight-hour debate, during which 1300 clergy threatened to leave the Church if the vote to include women was passed. Other items on the agenda? A proposal to create three male "super-bishops" who would have been made available to those who opposed women bishops, and a proposal to institute new dioceses for communities against the idea. Both proposals were rejected.
In the 21st century, women have more freedom than ever before. There are increasingly few jobs we're not (theoretically, at least) in the running for. Australia has a deputy Prime Minister for the first time ever (and there are seven female ministers in Kevin Rudd's cabinet), and until a few months ago, Hillary Clinton looked as if she'd be getting cosy in the Oval Office come January.
But under all of these very public advances there still exists a deep disparity between the career trajectories of men and women - one that only comes to the surface with news stories like this. Whether it's being denied access to a particular occupation like females in the church, or pay and promotion discrepancies, it's easy to ignore our society's failings because on the surface, everything looks fine.
That is, it's easy to overlook the big stuff (for instance, Australian men earn $1,176.30 a week on average, but women pocket just $991.50) when, on the surface, things look pretty good. Women have control of their own money, can own property, study at university, and can enter virtually any profession. Successful public figures like Hillary Clinton and Julia Gillard are regularly paraded as 'women who have it all' - proof that we, too, can be successful in male-dominated professions. But the statistics don't support the magazine copy - for instance, of the 200 Australian companies listed on the stock exchange, just six have female CEOs. Of the forty universities in Australia, only eight have female vice-chancellors. Of the ten richest people in Australia, just one is a woman.
So let's stop glossing over the important stuff here. Of course we should celebrate our successes - but in doing so, we should highlight the need for greater change.
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