This week (10/22/21) in our humanities class, 'Sustainable Development goals and You'. We learned about Gender Equality and more specifically what gender is. We explored the gay rights movement and the women's suffrage movement. We saw how discrimination for gender or sexual identity badly affects things like safety and access to quality medical treatment. To see this in a different light we took a field experience to Andersonville to meet H-Melt and Molly who are activists for the gay rights movement. Molly created a mural in Andersonville that displayed what an abolitionist feminist world would be like, and H-melt helped as a consultant for Molly's art. This experience gave me a great opportunity to ask questions on Abolitionist Feminism. To put this all together we created a comparative essay to see how different countries are working on gender equality.
The US vs New Zealand: Push for Rainbow Leadership All around the world many LGBTQ+ people such as Geraldine Roman, the first trans woman to be elected to the congress of the Philippines, Georgina Beyer New Zealand’s first openly trans member of parliament, and Sarah McBride who is America's first trans state senator, as well as highest-ranking trans-US official, are taking center stage and making history by holding office and providing representation for the LGBTQ+ community. While both the US and New Zealands’ efforts for LGBTQ+ representation in government are very similar in terms of the many recent successes both have encountered, they diverge in public bias and pushback for LGBTQ+ lawmakers and officials.
One country that is working for LGBTQ+ representation in government is the United States of America. The gay rights movement in America has been a well-publicized and greatly talked about topic for a while now beginning with the spark caused by the Stonewall Riots which was the gay communities response to a police raid on a gay bar in New York City in 1969. This marked the start of the gay rights movement in the US. Recently the US has hit some very notable landmarks and numbers regarding people of the LGBTQ+ community taking up seats in office. In 2017 the US elected its first openly transgender lawmaker Danica Roam. and In November 2020 Sarah McBride became the highest-ranking transgender elected official in the US. historically there have been only 26 known LGBTQ+ members of congress throughout its history, and currently, as of July 2021 as president-elect at the time, Joe Biden announced his nomination for transgender Doctor Racheal Levine for Assistant Health Secretary. Just as the US has, New Zealand has also made great strides in representing its LGBTQ+ community in Congress. The New Zealand gay rights movement began in 1972 when the academic Ngahuia Te Awekotuku was denied a visitor’s permit to the U.S. because she was gay, this event caused the rising of many gay liberation groups across New Zealand. Today, New Zealand is well versed in gender equality issues, they were the first country to grant women the right to vote and recently has set a record as the queerest parliament with 10% of the 120-seat house being openly members of the LGBTQ+ community. This huge victory can be largely attributed to New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Arden and her place in the Labor Party which as of 2020 has won 64 of the 120 parliament seats. Jacinda herself is known as a progressive leader and a big figure for women’s rights, equality, and inclusiveness.
Both of these countries are currently still in two different places when it comes to the representation of their LGBTQ+ citizens in government and there are various ways that they compare and contrast. Firstly, one big similarity is that both of these two governments have recently gotten record numbers of LGBTQ+ representatives. Additionally, the US gained 11 new, fully openly LGBTQ+, members taking seats on the 117th congress, and New Zealand gained 12 new MP’s. Lastly, for similarities, both the US and New Zealand's LGBTQ+ civil servants and representatives are reportedly working to pass conversion therapy bans in city councils for both their countries. The first difference is that while both countries LGBTQ+ running for their government are facing bias in elections the US according to a blog post by the London School of economics shows that gay candidates face penalties of 6.7 percentage points in the US and 3.3 in New Zealand. The last difference is that the percent of elected LGBTQ+ people in the US is 0.19% VS. New Zealand with 9.16% despite the US going through what they are calling a ‘Rainbow Wave’ This shows how behind the US still is compared to New Zealand. In sum, both the US and New Zealands’ efforts for LGBTQ+ representation in government are quite comparable due to both countries' more recent successes, but they contrast in ways such as differences in bias for LGBTQ+ individuals in government. Altogether these statistics shine a positive light on the future for LGBTQ+ rights and gender equality.
After completing this paper I learned a lot and it was a very good opportunity for me to be able to see a comparison for how well the US is doing compared to other 'progressive' countries that are also working for LGBTQ+ representation and gender equality. It was challenging getting statistics and fact of New Zealand and their fight for LGBTQ+ representation in government. I overcame this with suggestions on how to adjust what exactly I was searching for to get results more tailored to my topic. If I were to do this Action Project again I would likely have started with more research on the other country.
Works Cited:
"8 transgender politicians who are changing politics". Insider, 1 June 2021. https://www.insider.com/transgender-politicians-changing-politics-making-history-2021-5 accessed 24 October 2021
"History of LGBTQ+ Legislation in Congress: U.S. Capitol Historical Society". United States Capitol Historical Society, 12 July 2021. https://uschs.org/capitol-history-blog/a-summary-history-of-lgbtq-legislation-and-representation-within-congress/ Accessed 24 October 2021
"Biden selects transgender doctor Rachel Levine as assistant health secretary". MSN, https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/biden-selects-transgender-doctor-rachel-levine-as-assistant-health-secretary/ar-BB1cT1Vv Accessed 24 October 2021
"New Zealand's next parliament is set to be the most diverse ever". Reuters, 19 October 2020. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-newzealand-election-parliament/new-zealands-next-parliament-is-set-to-be-the-most-diverse-ever-idUSKBN27408I Accessed 24 October 2021
"Reforming the law". RSS, https://nzhistory.govt.nz/culture/homosexual-law-reform/reforming-the-law Accessed 24 October 2021
"Rainbow Wave 2.0: Nearly 100 LGBTQ candidates claim victory in Tuesday's elections". NBCNews.com, 6 November 2019. https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/rainbow-wave-2-0-nearly-100-lgbtq-candidates-claim-victory-n1077886
"The Netherlands: Victory for Transgender Rights". Human Rights Watch, 28 October 2020. https://www.hrw.org/news/2013/12/19/netherlands-victory-transgender-rights Accessed 24 October 2021
"Out for America 2021". LGBT Victory Institute, https://victoryinstitute.org/out-for-america-2021/ Accessed 24 October 2021
"Lesbian, gay and trans politicians still face 'electoral discrimination', eye-opening study finds". PinkNews, 10 Augst 2021. https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2021/08/10/lgbt-politicians-discrimination/ Accessed 24 October 2021
Comments
Post a Comment