OPINION
IS the Bar Beach mural disrespectful to women?
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At Empire Park, Bar Beach, the massive mural on the outer side of the bat ball court faces on to the recently built and very popular skate park.
The mural depicts six figures engaging in recreational activities typical of the park and the beach across the road - two surfers, two skaters and two bat ballers. The problem being, all six participants are male.
What makes this wholly male-dominated mural of more interest is that it is an art work meant to depict “our town”.
It was commissioned, approved and paid for by the local council, and created by a local team of street artists.
How many sets of hands did this job go through at council level, and nobody caught on to the heavy gender bias in the graphics?
The absence of girls sends a message - that girls don’t surf, skate or even play bat ball. But this doesn’t reflect reality.
In 2009 Surfest celebrated its first local winner, female surfer Phillipa Anderson.
Since the skate park was built in 2011, young local skaters like Poppy Olsen and Sabre Norris continually work the bowl at Empire Park and the world skating circuit.
You could argue the mural is a visual symbol of our society’s pervasive gender bias. It’s a mural reflecting a male’s unconscious perspective – it’s our break; it’s our bowl; it’s our park.
It wasn’t until I saw the world through my young daughter's eyes that I realised the degree to which our society is biased towards maintaining a man’s world.
Me: “That’s a beautiful unicorn sweetheart, what are you going to call him?”
My daughter: “Dad! It’s a girl unicorn.”
Me: “Wear a hat today my girl, that sun has a lot of sting in him today.”
My daughter: “How do you know the sun is a man Dad?”
And my favourite (coming from a five year old), “Why is the Pope always a man, Dad?”
After carrying out at least two indiscretions per day and being promptly corrected by my daughter, it finally twigged. This is where it all begins – the conditioning, the undermining and ultimately the submission.
From that point on, I’d like to think I became a better father.
I did not want to raise a daughter who thought she was inferior to another person due to her gender, or for any other reason.
It’s my role to keep her protected and safe while she’s in my care and it’s also my role to give her self-worth and the knowledge she’s as valuable as the next person as she moves into adulthood.
It was my daughter who alerted me to the Bar Beach mural and the fact that “There are no girls in the picture”.
A bit later in the day, she told me I needed to write a letter to the Prime Minister - Julia Gillard, at the time - and we needed to get the mural changed.
Unconscious gender bias is a fairly recent term. It explains why many men earnestly believe they see women as their equal while remaining blind to inequalities in Australian society.
Unconscious gender bias explains inequities like why men take home a higher weekly income, on average, than women in every industry sector in Australia, including those that are traditionally female-dominated, such as health care and education.
Here in Newcastle we pride ourselves on our sense of social justice and fair go for all.
But the Bar Beach mural and its absence of women shouts unconscious gender bias on such a large scale that it has become a glaring symbol of the sexism that firmly resides in Newcastle.