- New survey shows that girls aged 15-19 still feel they are unequal to boys
- Only one in 10 said they are equal to boys in the survey of 600 girls
- Youth ambassador Sherry-Rose Wattf said it’s saddening, not surprising
- She said that Australia could be doing more to fight gender inequality
A new survey of Australian girls aged 15-19 has revealed that there is a long way to go when it comes to gender equality.
The research, conducted by Plan International and Our Watch, was released on Tuesday on the International Day of the Girl.
It found that only one in 10 of the 600 girls surveyed felt that were treated equally to boys.
Shocking statistics: A new survey has found that only 10 per cent of girls aged 15-19 believe that they are equal to boys
Sherry-Rose Wattf, a 20-year-old youth ambassador for Plan International, said that she was saddened by the survey results.
‘I wasn’t really shocked or surprised, I was just saddened,’ she told Daily Mail Australia. ‘We could be doing better.
‘How is it that in 2016, in a prosperous country like Australia, one in 10 girls feel like they’re not equal to boys?’
ther results of the survey found that 69 per cent of girls felt that gender inequality was a problem in Australia, and one in three girls felt it would be easier to get their dream job if they were a man.
The survey also found that sexism starts early, with one in three girls saying they did more housework than their brothers.
‘Every girl throughout her life, through her childhood has the experience where she realises about the inequality, it’s not from one single incident,’ Ms Wattf said.
‘Realising that being a woman disadvantages you in society, that’s really disheartening for any young girl.’
‘I wasn’t really shocked or surprised, I was just saddened’: Youth ambassador Sherry-Rose Wattf said that the survey results were a wake up call to do better
Being valued for their brains is also a huge issue for girls, with half of all girls saying they are ‘seldom or never valued’ for their brains over their looks.
The survey, according to Ms Wattf, is a wake up call to Australians and the government about gender equality.
‘Nothing being said here is new, we know that we have an unequal society and we know that this isn’t what we deserve, but it persists,’ she said.
‘We could be doing much better than we are. We have made progress, and we have the potential to have an equal society, but right now we’re not doing ourselves justice.’