Equal future

The ANZ bank has teamed with award-winning film director Jane Campion (The Piano) to make a series of ads promoting women's equality.

The one that caught my eye is one in which a group of kids are given chores to do, then paid their

pocket money.  The boys get paid twice what the girls get, eliciting to-be-expected protests.  "That's the way the world is" is the facetious response from the grown-ups.  But the kids are having none of it.  One young Asian lad declares it should be 50/50 -- or 60/60 if you are into 120!!  When he grows up he declares he will make a change ("if I can!").

You can see the ad on YouTube here.

I'm not sure if ANZ pays its male and female employees equally for the same work done ... but the ad promoting an "equal future" is certainly timely -- and the use of kids to get the message over is very effective (after all, "out of the mouths of babes and sucklings"...).  One of the things that most troubles many about the cultural baggage some new arrivals bring here is the grossly inequitable treatment of women.  Not that Australian society is anywhere near perfect yet, but at least ads like the ANZ kids chores one shows we are growing in consciousness of the need for all, regardless of sex, to be treated equally.

Just not in the Catholic Church!