Friday March 12th, 2010
International Womens' Day Monday March 8th.
This is a speech given to the two assemblies held this week by one of our senior leaders, the President of the Student Representative Council, Saba Amir Goudarzi.
"Monday the 8th of March was International Womens' Day. Some of Crestwood's senior students and teachers attended the International Womens' Day Breakfast on Friday March 5th as a way of showing their support and to raise awareness in relation to the issues that women face. The main theme of the seminar was to gain gender equality for women and to end poverty by 2015.
70% of the world's poor are women, every minute of the day a woman dies from pregnancy complications and 1 in 3 women around the world has experienced some sort of violence leaving them with emotional and physical suffering.
Empowering women and education are key solutions to such problems. Empowering women is not just limited to ensuring their financial well being but it is also about giving them the opportunity to make independent decisions without any type of discrimination or pressure.
The Australian government and some Non-Government Organisations are committed to ensuring the rights, priorities and needs of women. We may think that women in our community have a high quality of life but we must look at the bigger picture; crimes such as human trafficking, sexual assault and domestic violence are still very common in our modern society. There are women who are forced into slavery or who are being sexually abused. These women see a completely different side of our society. Sadly, many of these crimes are never reported.
Therefore it is of great importance for us, as young members of our society to raise awareness about women's issues and to try to protect their human rights.
Professor Burn, one of the guest speakers on Friday shared this interesting thoght.
Women are the victims
Women are the solution
And
Women are the future
So let's hope for a better, brighter future."
Thank you Saba for sharing this with us. It is especially important in today's world where there is so much conflict and many natural disasters affecting so many - especially women.