RESPECT and gender equality was the focus of the Year 10 students at The Hamilton and Alexandra College on Thursday, as they completed a workshop to promote respectful relationships and behaviours in young leaders.
The workshop ran all day and involved the Year 10 students listening to talks from a guest speaker, before being split into groups to have open discussions about what respect meant to each of them.
The workshop was led by the co-founder of not-for-profit organisation, Future Leaders for Gender Equality, Jack Jacobs, who said his main message for the students was everyone had a responsibility to contribute to healthy respectful relationships.
“I think it’s really important that we approach respectful relationships from the perspective of leadership but also from the perspective of ordinary friendship in the way our young people interact,” he said.
“I think it’s as important to involve young men in that conversation as it is young women.
“I think there can be a tendency to sometimes think that only women are the ones who have to solve this issue which is absolutely wrong.
“If we know anything we know we need the young men involved in it and that’s partly about telling those young men that they are part of the conversation that they’re valued and they can make something happen just as much.
“We need to build our way back to each other by involving young people in it together.”
Mr Jacobs said the workshop was separate to his work at the Future Leaders for Gender Equality organisation, but that it followed the same principles and structure.
“It’s the same format, what we’re doing today is essentially talking about why respect matters and then breaking students up into small groups so they can actually break down what that looks like for them now,” he said.
“What the student’s are doing right now is literally talking about why respect matters to them, what it means to them, what a respectful relationship looks like and these aren’t just kind of romantic relationships, we’re talking about friendships and ordinary interactions mainly.
“And then they’re going to go away from that and try to build on what they share with each other to try and build on it and make something out of it moving forward.
“It looks like it’s going really well.”
Mr Jacobs said he thought the topic of respect and gender equality was particularly relevant given the recently highlighted crisis of sexual violence and sexual harassment in schools.
“It’s a really important time for where we’re at with these issues as a nation because these issues are becoming a big deal around sexual harassment and sexual assault prevention and what I’m trying to do in a small way is get young people activated about them and actually start to take responsibility for shifting culture,” he said.
Mr Jacobs said targeting students in the senior years of high school was “pivotal” as during these years they were often exposed to more issues regarding respect and gender equality.
“I think conversations about respectful relationships should start as early as possible and I think when you’re talking about respectful interactions you can do that straight away,” he said.
“You can do that with a student who is five or six years old if you do it in a way that makes sense to them and is relevant to their world and where their lives are actually at.
“But I think Years 10, 11 and 12 are where the urgency and need for respect becomes so pronounced you really have to sit down with kids and make it a priority because they’re at a stage in their lives where these issues become real to them in a way they weren’t before.”
Mr Jacobs had dedicated his career to gender equality and respect, leading a gender-equality campaign at Newington College in 2016, working as a research assistant on a cultural renewal project with the University of Sydney’s residential colleges for Elizabeth Broderick AO, working on the Independent Review into Commonwealth Parliamentary Workplaces at the Australian Human Rights Commission and co-founding Future Leaders for Gender Equality.
