Guest Post: Do you support Gender Equality? Then Girl Guides Australia is calling for your help!

As part of Girl Guides Australia's response to The World We Want For Girls campaign we are running a petition calling on our government to support a separate post 2015 development goal to 'empower girls and women'. To help show our decision makers that Gender Equality is an important issue all over the world we are collecting signatures through an online petition. We are calling on gender equality supporters from all over the world to visit the petition, sign up and share it with their friends and family via social media. Please take 10 seconds to click for equality at http://www.change.org/en-AU/petitions/the-australian-government-and-opposition-support-post2015-un-goal-empower-girls-women-to-achieve-gender-equality Our aim is to collect as many signatures as possible by International Day of the Girl 2013 so we can help our Girl Guides take the lead in the fight for gender equality!

Girl Guides Australia is working hard to engage all our members in the Post 2015 Development Agenda my promoting the Gender Equality petition and My World survey to all our members, youth and adult. To try to catch the attention of the wider community we have started a social media campaign using Facebook, Twitter and Instagram as well as creating our own campaign video on Youtube! We'd love you to jump on board and help us share the amazing work that Girl Guides and Girl Scouts all over the world do to promote gender equality too. You can check out our campaign video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF79oF2Rvrg&feature=em-upload_owner and see the information hub we have started on our national website here http://www.girlguides.org.au/news-events/news-coverage/the-world-we-want-for-girls.html

We'd love to invite our Guiding and Scouting sisters to join us to shout out for gender equality. If you or your Guides/Scouts are empowered by our message please send us your own thoughts, photos, pictures or videos on the importance of gender equality! You can reach us at ewicking@guidesvic.org.au or through our blog at http://girlguidesclickforchange.tumblr.com/

This guest post was written by Erin Wicking.

We Discover, We Grow

A little over a year ago I visited the recently rennovated museum in Peterborough. It struck me as the ideal place to showcase the work of Girlguiding in the area - my hometown - and 6 months ago I enquired about using the community gallery (also the all importnat cafe).

One of the works from the exhibition.

After lots of discussions, collections of photos from local Girlguiding members, and some reorganisation to tell some great stories - we now have an exhibition!

Named from the new(ish) strapline of Girlguiding, "We Discover, We Grow" tells some of the many stories of three adult volunteers within the organisation. Through their experiences it showcases the discovery, growth and inspiration of being a volunteer, as well as the many varied activities that give these same opportunities to girls and young women - thanks to the hard work of volunteers!

The exhibition will run from the 24th September until the 3rd November with free entry for all. We'll have a Saturday event with a free trail for girls to take part in around the musuem (date to be confirmed). You can find out more about Peterborough Museum and how to get there here.

Vote The Change You Want To See In The World

As my time of between jobs comes to a close this weekend, I'm preparing for my exciting new role starting on Monday. I've tried to use the last two weeks (fairly) productively. As well as some market research visiting other historic houses and emptying my inbox of the backlog that had built up, I've been working on my communications role as a WAGGGS Post-2015 Ambassador.

The centre of this is the MyWorld survey - the main platform from the UN Millennium Campaign that aims to let every single person in the world have their say in choosing the top priorities for international development after 2015. I've mentioned it several times before so, if you haven't already, you really should vote now. And don't be thinking that just because you live in the UK or some other relatively wealthy nation you shouldn't vote!

What does the world you want look like?

My belief is that one of the problems with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs - the current international development targets that expire in 2015) is that they read as though countries like the UK are already the pinnacled of development, that we've got no more progress to make, and that our only role in development is to hand out aid to other deserving nations for them to move towards being just like us.

This is flawed. The UK is actually one country that won't meet all the targets of the MDGs by the deadline. But nobody is holding the UK to account by asking what is going to be done in the next 2 years to ensure equal representation of women in parliament because, from a UK viewpoint, the MDGs were seen as a way to help other, less fortunate people in other parts of the world. The UK isn't perfect, we need to develop to. That's why we need a new set of goals, with buy in from as many people in as many countries as possible around the world.

The MyWorld survey data is disaggregated by country and a couple of other factors, so decision makers will be able to see the different priorities for development in different countries.

So think about what you want to see change in the world. Then vote.

How Do You Present Women In Houses?

In preparation for starting my new job next week, I've been visiting a range of historic houses to see how they're marketed and also what's there.

We started out at Lyveden New Bield, a National Trust property in Northamptonshire. It was really interesting - I learnt a lot about the Catholic symbolism hidden in an unfinished Elizabethan house, and how it was never finished due to lack of finances and a son being implicated in the Gunpowder plot.The only bits about women that I remember are a) talking about the cooks in the kitchen, and b) talking about their large skirts brushing herbs on the paths making the gardens a sensory experience. I know that there's a lot more evidence relating to the men of the family in records and other sources, and that it was the male line that inherited in that day and age; however I do feel it is important that historic sites should at least mention the existence of women and why we can't say more about them.

Lyveden New Bield, Northamptonshire

I'm not saying every historic property needs to find an amazing women who escaped the expectations of her gender, I'm not saying that at all. But I think there is an important case for explaining the gender roles of women and girls in that era, rather than only making reference to the size of their skirts.

Next we visited another National Trust property, Canons Ashby, at the other end of Northamptonshire. The interpretation followed the family during the Victorian era this time, and a lot more information was given about the relationship between husband, wife and mother-in-law and subsequently father and daughter. We were also taken through the maids' quarters, so all in all a much fuller view of different women's lives during the time period. The maids' and daughter Alice's rooms are still in the process of being given interpretation - but what is currently there was enough to intrigue my partner who was with me to ask the steward in the final room (the Kitchen) 'and what about Alice?' as the current interpretation finishes with the father's death, or so we thought.

We were directed into a dimly lit basement where, if you strain your eyes against the lack of lighting, you can find out about the rest of Alice's life and the rest of the history of the house up to the present day. There's improvements to be made here, but they've at least started to shine a light on the many roles of women.

Lastly, yesterday, we went to Woburn Abbey. And I have to say that considering it is a Ducal family with the title and estates passing down the male line, the interpretation makes the women as memorable as the men. This site doesn't take the upstairs/downstairs approach, so you don't see the contrast in roles or lifestyles for people of the same gender in the same era so much. What you do see is the change over time. From the Duchess who invented afternoon tea, to the one who set up a military hospital and flew to India, to the current Duchess who you come to feel is spearheading the Garden renovation works - there are definitely strong female characters at this property. And they complement well with the stories of the male family members: the first Earl who was granted the former monastic property by Henry VIII, to the 6th Duke who renovated the gardens in the 18th Century with the landscape gardener Repton, to the 13th Duke who made the decision to open the property to the public.

My partner and I both came away from our day out yesterday, saying that it was the first property we had been at where we felt we didn't stick out like a sore thumb as a same sex couple. The diversity of the other visitors compared to those we'd encountered at National Trust properties was marked.

I can't exactly prove a direct correlation, but it is my personal hunch that presenting more diverse stories within a property will engage more diverse visitors. Step 1 is to talk about women as characters, not as skirts. Step 2 is to talk about other aspects of diversity in the interpretation.

Woburn already seems to be doing this. Now I'd like the National Trust to catch up.