Dear ABC News
Last night when you were reporting on the Governments decision to launch an inquiry into work place discrimination around pregnancy and maternity leave you decided to spin it as ‘the Government attempts to reignite the gender debate’.
ARE YOU FLIPPING KIDDING ME!
You are the damn ABC you are not supposed to be saying things like this. I mean I expect it from Andrew Bolt but I had higher hopes for you.
I mean the Government looking into the fact that women who are ‘of child rearing age’ don’t get hired for jobs simply because the employer doesn’t want to have to take the risk they may decided to have a child and then have to pay maternity leave, or the fact that many new mothers returning from maternity leave are told they must go full time or face redundancies. Or new mothers returning to the workforce not being granted more bathroom breaks or being put on less physically demanding duties. Its all obviously just the Government trying to restart the gender debate– not make life fairer and easier for women, not to ensure that the workforce is safe for women and certainly not to attempt to make a dent is the sexism that women in this country still face. It is most certainly just them trying to start up the gender debate once again.
But seriously when did working towards equality end up being part of the gender debate. What even is the gender debate? All I think of when I hear you use this stupid term is arguments that were accompanied with boy germs and cooties being whipped from whoever was touched by the other sex onto some poor child who happened to not be holding their fingers in the ‘germ lock’ position.
And oh how you have me in a rant now ABC! Like the children I know who used to feel this way about other boys and girls, I wish you would grow up!
Grow up and acknowledge that women still aren’t treated the way men do.
Grow up and realise that the ‘gender debate’ is not a real thing its what mens rights activists think feminism creates.
Grow up and stop viewing anything the Government does for women is not directly related to the fact that we have a women as Prime Minister.
Grow up and accept that the Government isn’t out to win brownie points but rather help women to have a fairer go at life.
And stop bloody breaking my heart with you ill informed, factually offensive, and down right disgraceful reports around women’s issues.
Mikaela Wangmann
National Womens Officer 2013
NUS Women's Department 