“Students will learn about “gender equality’s ties to domestic violence, media representations of gender, statistical breakdowns around the pay gap, and female visibility in sport” over 30 lessons.

A dozen or so of the students began by forming what they called The Fitzroy Feminist Collective, where they gathered to make posters to put up around their school and “rant” about their frustrations.For 16-year-old Zsuzsa, it was the lack of public recognition of women’s sports, while for Nia, 17, it was feeling beholden to stereotypes of women cooking and cleaning.



“It’s not teaching kids to be feminists, or a political ideology, it’s teaching kids about gender inequality and that it does exist,” Nia said.

The curriculum is aimed at female and male students. Briony O'Keeffe assures she’s “trying to get young men and women to think a bit more critically about the sorts of sexist behaviours they might either engage in or see on a daily basis."

"Feminism has had some fairly legitimate criticisms levelled at it about it being directed at very white middle-class women,” Ms O'Keeffe said.



“We wanted to make sure we didn’t reinforce that and show that gender inequality is just one side of discrimination, there is race and sexuality - and you can experience it at an intersecting basis.”

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