‘You don’t depend when you’ve got no voice’: Behind Jo Stanley’s radio community for ladies

We nonetheless have an extended solution to go in relation to gender equality – which is why it’s important to make sure ladies’s voices are heard, Jo Stanley writes this Worldwide Girls’s Day.

I’ll always remember assembly Renee.

It was at an Worldwide Girls’s Day lunch final 12 months. We’d all gathered to have a good time the achievements of ladies and listen to how we are able to preserve working in direction of gender equality.

We’d raised vital funds for ladies going through homelessness. We’d heard from trailblazers within the constructing trade and sport.

Throughout a beautiful piece of salmon and a crisp glass of pinot gris. It was an awesome day.

Renee occurred to be seated subsequent to me so whereas we didn’t know one another initially of the lunch, by the tip it felt like we’d recognized one another for years. Girls are good like that.

An all-too-familiar juggle

Renee advised me about her life, in a matter-of-fact method.

However the image she painted for me made me unhappy, partly as a result of it was such a well-known story.

Perhaps it was the fatigue she felt, juggling a really demanding job with parenting two daughters, and caring for aged mother and father.

And the actual fact these calls for will make progressing within the profession she loves very arduous. Some weeks she will’t even snatch 60 minutes for a pilates class.

Or maybe it was the nervousness that typically overwhelms her as a result of the stresses of life simply really feel an excessive amount of to handle.

I believe everyone knows a lady like Renee, struggling to handle underneath the load of a life that causes real ill-health.

The truth is, ladies expertise twice as a lot despair as males, and 4 occasions as a lot nervousness.

It’s one of many causes Worldwide Girls’s Day is so related, even in a rustic as lucky as ours.

Placing ladies’s views and voices entrance and centre

We’ve an extended solution to go.

However we every can shift the dial on gender equality, in large and small methods, wherever we stay, work and play.

For me, a small factor I do isn’t touch upon just a little woman’s look, as a result of I would like her to develop up understanding her price will not be in whether or not she’s fairly or not.

And a giant factor I’m doing?

Effectively, I’m constructing Australia’s first radio community for ladies, by ladies.

It’s referred to as Broad Radio, and after we launch later this 12 months we will probably be stay web radio delivered through our very personal app.

You is perhaps stunned to be taught that gender inequality within the media is a giant drawback.

In radio, of the voices you hear, solely 27 per cent are feminine, and the imbalance carries over off air as effectively.

The affect might be higher than we think about. Not simply because ladies need to take part in each occupation as a lot as males.

However as a result of the ultimate feminine voices on radio, we’re listening to a skewed model of society – one that always reinforces dangerous gender stereotypes or erases ladies’s tales and experiences.

Simply because the outdated adage goes – “you can’t be what you can’t see” – you don’t depend when you’ve got no voice.

So I’ve set about getting extra ladies’s voices heard in radio, by making a model new radio community. I’ve lofty targets, and it’s a giant job!

However I like radio for its energy to make you are feeling linked and provide you with a very good outdated chortle.

So each time I meet a lady like Renee I’m re-energised to maintain going.

As a result of I would like Renee to really feel nice, and to know she’s not alone.

Jo Stanley is founder and CEO of Broad Radio, an creator and a TV and radio presenter. Catch Jo on The Home of Wellness TV present at 2pm on Fridays and midday on Sundays on the Seven Community, and on The Home of Wellness radio present on 9 Radio at 8am on Sundays.