WIMMERA women will lead the way in creating a more equitable community through a new project.
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Women’s Health Grampians has launched Equality for All, an initiative to strengthen the organisation's work in the primary prevention of violence against women and their children.
The organisation has recruited and trained 11 women as project advocates, who will use their experiences of discrimination to inspire change. Four of these women are from the Wimmera.
Biny George migrated to Australia from India in 2012, and has since worked as a registered nurse with Wimmera Health Care Group.
She became involved with the Equality for All project through Oasis Wimmera, a multi-cultural social support network.
"As a woman and a migrant, I have faced a lot of discrimination and a lot of inequality in my life. I thought this was a great opportunity to be an advocate for people like me," she said.
"My workplace is really great, but I find it's in the community where there is unconscious bias - people are making judgments about others without realising."
Mrs George would like to see more cultural awareness training for organisations.
"Also sometimes when businesses promote themselves, it would be great if they used people of both genders and of different cultural backgrounds, because it can help make everyone feel included," she said.
Fellow advocate Shannon Secombe of Horsham has also faced discrimination on multiple levels.
"A little bit comes from being a woman, but more so being an intersectional woman, because I'm Indigenous and I'm gay. It's not just being a woman - it's having other diversities as well. That has been hard somewhat," she said.
"I think society's attitudes are changing a little bit, but there's still a long way to go."
Shannon wants to encourage people to be more open and understanding.
"Change is obviously hard for organisations. The main thing is for organisations to change their practices to be more inclusive for everyone, and to ensure they have information on best practice in their workplaces," she said.
"It's about people being aware and then putting things into place."
Shannon said people might not realise gender bias existed in even the simplest of circumstances.
"Even down to things like changing the water bottle at a water cooler. There's an attitude of, 'Oh the men have to do that', even though there are women who are quite capable," she said. "There's that bias that it would be too heavy for a woman to carry, so it must be a man's job.
"There's lots of things that contribute to gender bias. Even in industries like labour, in my experience it's not such much that women don't want to do that work, it's the environment they go into that means they never last because of attitudes towards them."
Katie Mutch became involved in the project after disability advocate Trudy Joyce suggested it to her.
Miss Mutch believes there is still much work to be done to achieve gender equality in our community, and hopes her involvement in the Equality for All project will change attitudes towards both women and people with a disability.
"As a woman who has a disability, you are more stereotyped," she said. "People just see a disability, and not a person who has a voice.
"I want to help others.
"Everyone should be treated as equals."