International Women’s Day 2021

Happy International Women’s Day!

A challenged world is an alert world and from challenge comes change.
So let’s all choose to challenge.

How will you help forge a gender-equal world?
Celebrate women’s achievement. Raise awareness against bias. Take action for equality.

To celebrate, this month we have asked our fellow women to share their views on international women’s day and this years theme #choosetochallenge
International womens day 2021

Introducing Hayley Sucic

Hayley Sucic

What’s your role at FVS?

Group HSEQ (Health, Safety, Environment Quality) Coordinator- AKA the (proud) ‘safety nerd’

What does international women’s day mean to you?

Celebrating and championing women – we manage to navigate through a world that has been set up to make it a bit difficult for us. Every day we should be recognizing that women’s rights are human rights but this is a special day that we get to shine a global spotlight on why this movement is so very important. This is a time when we can smile about how far we have come but also acknowledge that there is still a long way to go.

This year’s IWD theme is choose to challenge. How will you choose to challenge?

Gender and role stereotyping are social constructs and it makes no sense to enforce them or expect alignment to them. I ‘choose to challenge’ these every day because I hear, see and experience them so often. For example, It stuns certain people when I mention I love aviation, golf and AFL (horn tooting time – I can banana kick a footy straight through the uprights from next to the behind post). I get plonked into the ‘one of the boys’ category because I can put an IKEA flat pack together like a pro and within the prescribed time. Because screwdrivers are apparently for boy hands, not girl hands. I will call this out every time and I will also call out people who refuse to let their sons wear pink, play with a doll or tell them they ‘throw/run/kick like a girl”.

Who is your biggest female role model and why?

Dr Brené Brown – a professor / qualitative researcher / at the University of Houston. Brené holds a PhD in Social Work and is a brilliant and genuine speaker, story teller and writer. She has spent her life studying and rumbling with vulnerability, shame, courage and empathy and she is one of the reasons I am studying Clinical Psychology. I was at a retreat in 2018 and we were shown clips of her discussing boundaries. Something just resonated with me and I immediately scurried down the YouTube rabbit hole and watched every TED talk, interview, TV clip I could find. I’m so glad I did – she profoundly changed my life from that point. Everyone should google her right now – you will quickly understand why she is my biggest role model

Introducing Jay Hawkins

Jay Hawkins

What’s your role at FVS?

Service Manager – Cairns

What does international women’s day mean to you?

It’s about celebrating women’s achievement and how far we have come towards gender equality and also remembering the women before us that fought for what we have today.

This year’s IWD theme is choose to challenge. How will you choose to challenge?

Challenge and call out gender bias and inequality

Who is your biggest female role model and why?

P!nk has always been my biggest female role model, there are a too many reasons to name but the main being she’s strong, independent, she believes in being true to yourself, stands up for equality and believes that no one can tell women what to be. She is unapologetically herself.