Gender Diversity In Australia

Australia is a very diverse, multi-cultural nation with the majority of the population having migrated from Asia, Africa and Europe. Almost every single home in Australia has a television and almost every single Australian watches free-to-air television daily.

Scholars have been critical of the medical establishment’s and state’s involvement in constructing and policing of transgender identity. These kinds of pressing issues have occupied the small existing literature. There is not much information and studying what is being done on transgender in traditional areas, family studies research, such as their dating behavior and formation of intimate relationships in adulthood. There is little research on the issues around being parents, their children’s experiences with having transgendered parents, as well as relationships in the family as a whole, and relationships in work and school.

[The Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) organization at my high school, which meets twice per month, generated a list of concerns that they shared with school administration. The focus was specifically about gender identity, the lack of support from school staff, and the daily scrutiny they face as a result of their sexual orientation and gender identity. Through collaboration with my colleagues it was evident that there had been an increase in teacher and student referrals surrounding gender identity. The feedback from GSA clearly identified that as a school we are not meeting the needs of our LGBT students and those struggling with sexual orientation. Members of the GSA clearly feel that teachers ignore negative comments like “gay” and “faggot” when they hear them in class, that teachers may not clearly understand gender neutral language, and that our Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) students do not feel safe and protected in school. Students needed support advocating for their right to use a restroom, correct pronoun, etc., requiring district, community, parent, and colleague

It was only in late Stage 3 that the topic of sexuality was approached – through intensive

In the documentary, Noah, an 18 year old male to female transgender, many people in school ask question about her gender over and over again. Because of the harassment, many tend to drop out from school. “Harassment and bullying lead almost one-third of LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning) students to drop out of high school” (T Salazar). For most of them dropping out from school means working at a lower wage. Or even worse they became homeless. Some people argue that we should create a separate school of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) students. However critics say that it means of “segregation or shielding the youth from the real world.” Giving a class about LGBT people in schools might be the solution, since students then will be aware of it. Education about LGBT people teaches not only students, but also the whole generation. Therefore, schools should be the primary targets to teach the society about LGBT

The most important core value for this case to me is cultural competence. The National Association of Social Worker’s (NASW) describes the importance as cultural competence for a Social Worker to develop “a knowledge base of their clients’ cultures and be able to demonstrate competence in the provision of services that are sensitive to clients’ cultures and to differences among people and cultural groups” (2008). This really seems to be key to this case because the school seems to have Heterosexist values, Heterosexism is having prejudices against those that do not fill the heterosexual norm(Burn, Kadlec, & Rexer, 2005). These values tend to have effect on not only the individuals that may be homosexual, but their greater family system. Often heterosexism can increase psychosocial stress for both the family and the individual. This is extremely common and can even be done through anti-homosexual language such as the things Miranda has over heard.

After reading week 13’s article by Coiser (2009) I agreed with the teachers who were served that said they would intervene if a queer student felt a problem was arising at school. The sad thing is that Coiser (2009) states that students from queer families do not feel confident that their teachers would intervene if a problem arises. This made me think back to my previous comment about how I am unaware of the queer families at

One of many examples, an under representation of woman in institution of power, a misogyny, is that of Australia’s first woman Prime Minister Julia Gillard. In the course of her employment, the prime minister was harassed just because she was a woman, in ways that that did not apply to her male colleagues. She was a victim of gruesome and mean comments, and much of this abuse came via email and social media. She was vilified and denigrated by the Federal Opposition, the Media and by many ordinary citizens. She was not even accorded the respect of being addressed by her last name, especially in the media. No other previous ministers were subjected to this disrespect. These virulent attacks on her questioned her integrity and had a huge impact

"It's the politics of fear and division and, Ms Hanson, you are incredibly good at it."

In “We must celebrate gender and sexual diversity in our schools” published in The Conversation, February 16 2016, Lucy Nicholas argues that the current commentary on the LGBTI (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex) community against schools and the SSC (Safe Schools Coalition) is extremely out of touch. Many of youths already understand their sexuality, whether it be heterosexual, homosexual or bisexual.

Sexual orientation and gender identity are two things that members of the LGBTQ community often fear opening up about. They fear that they will be rejected or harmed because of who they are, and it is important that we make all aspects of our society a safe place for every human being, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity. As School-based risk and protective factors for gender diverse and sexual minority children and youth: Improving school climate explained, “64% of students feel unsafe at school because of sexual orientation prejudice, and 44% feel unsafe at school because of gender expression” (American Psychological Association). Therefore, schools in America should be making a conscious effort to make their buildings a safe, comfortable place for members of the LGBTQ community. Schools can do several things to promote the

For one of the three cultures that I examined the first I chosen was in Australia. Before reading the article I thought they would have the same gender understanding as the people in the United States. The term ideology where there is a set of ideas widely shared by members of a society, which I believed, would be the same between the two countries in the understanding of gender. Australia’s understanding of gender is that they identify their ingenious transgendered people as “sistergirls” and “brotherboys”. They are very similar to the trans-community in the United States where they are also discriminated against and bullied in their communities. They have experienced the same isolation as transgendered people in the United States.

Diversity can be defined as the differences among the people working in the same workplace. Those differences can be related to gender, race, religion, marital status, sexual orientation, culture or personalities.

Over the years there has been many studies conducted on the well being of children with same sex parents. These studies often debate on whether same sex parents carry disadvantages to the child. Researchers who object to same sex parent often believes that children raised in these types of families suffer more emotional problems (McAllister 2016). These studies often tend to blame parents sexual orientation as the main cause of children’s emotional problems rather than looking at outside aspects that contributes to emotional imbalances. The basis of this selected literature is to give an overview of studies that demonstrated that children’s of same sex couples have good relationship with their parents at home. However, both parents and children have concerns about peer reaction in regards to potential being chosen to be bullied.

Current social attitudes toward the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and intersex (GLBTI) community can be seen as a significant contributor to the equity, or lack thereof, of the sexual education syllabus in schools. The range of topics covered in regard to homosexuality varies greatly between and within Australia and the United States of America (Bell, 2008, 2). This variance in service provisions can be attributed to differing social attitudes, specifically those held by parents, teachers, students and policy-makers. These social attitudes directly impact the equity of a schools sexual education program. Further, while social attitudes shape education provision they are also shaped by education. With statistics showing that the