Category Archives: Uncategorized

The GUA journey: where we have come from and where we are going

Where we have come from When we started this journey of arguing that all girls in all schools should have shorts and pants as part of their every day uniform, we were often met with dismissal or outrage.  Early 2017 feels far away now, but there were educators, principals and parents ready to tear us apart when we dared to argue that a girl who felt more comfortable wearing shorts or pants to school, rather

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Girls Need More Than Skirts and Dresses

This article was originally published by the Independent Education Union – Queensland and Northern Territory Branch in Issue 1 (Volume 48) 2018 edition of Independent Education. Sara El Sayed explores the implications of not offering girls alternative school uniform options.

Private Schools Must Offer Choice to Girls: Radio Interview

Radio Interview Transcript (11 February 2019): Richard Glover on Drive talking to Co-Founder of Girls’ Uniform Agenda, Dr Amanda Mergler and Principal Phillip Heath, Barker College, New South Wales. Private Schools Must Offer Choice to Girls.       Richard Glover: After a change to uniform policy last year, NSW public schools are now required to offer shorts and trouser options to girls.    There’s no longer a need for the girls to wear a dress

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The gender price gap on school uniforms

It’s no secret that the so-called ‘pink tax’ pushes up the price of many everyday household goods. But what might surprise you is that isn’t exclusive to the items the you would find in the stationery or toiletry aisles. It’s being seen in school uniform shops around the country and parents of girls are copping it. According to Dr Amanda Mergler, co-founder of Girls’ Uniform Agenda, the group’s preliminary research shows there is a clear discrepancy between

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Dressing for Work: are school dresses preparation for future careers?

“Looking ‘business-like’, ‘dressing the part’, power-dressing’ in the corporate world and being ‘taken seriously’ in the halls of parliament.” Preparing schoolgirls for the world of work is still given as a reason for dress and skirt-only uniform policies. Let’s look at workplaces that require women to wear a dress… The world of work has transformed dramatically over the decades for women. No Australian workplace can insist on women wearing skirts or dresses, because it’s against

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Women at Work Campaign

Thank you for joining us!  This is Girls’ Uniform Agenda’s Women at Work campaign. It may be hard to believe, but many girls at school are told that they must wear dresses and skirts as school uniform because that’s what girls and women wear, and this will prepare them for the workforce. We know however that many, many women wear shorts and pants everywhere, including to work. This campaign is our celebration of short-wearing and pant-wearing

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Get Your Pants On For Girls! 

“Girls can wear shorts or pants, they just choose not to.”  Really?  It doesn’t sound likely does it?  In schools, particularly all-girls schools, is it really likely that none of the students wants to wear shorts or pants!?  Let’s put it out there that maybe something else is really going on here.  If girls are choosing not to wear shorts and pants when they could, it probably has more to do with the stigma around

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