Poster for tomorrow announces brief for 2012: Gender Equality Now!

Poster for Tomorrow recently announced the brief for their annual poster competition. This year the theme is 'Gender Equality Now!' with the call for entries set to open on 8 March 2012. The deadline to submit is 10 July 2012, followed by online jury voting 20 July - 10 September 2012, a live jury session on 5 October 2012 and the Worldwide exhibitions will open 10 December 2012.

Brief
Gender Equality Now!

"As long as girls and women are valued less, fed less, fed last, overworked, underpaid, not schooled and subjected to violence in and out of their homes - the potential of the human family to create a peaceful, prosperous world will not be realised." Hilary Clinton, at the UN 4 World Conference on Women, Beijing, China, 1995.

As James Brown once sang, it's a man's world. A world where women face exploitation and discrimination across the globe. It has been for thousands of years and despite many steps in the right direction, it's a situation that shows little sign of changing fundamentally.

"Against small forward steps elsewhere, large swaths of the Arab world, Asia and Africa show alarmingly low levels of female health, literacy and economic and political influence." 'The Global Gender Gap Report' - The World Economic Forum, 2011.

But as Mr. Brown went on to say, this male-dominated world would be nothing without a woman. Women are the bedrock of every family, of society itself. We all know that women have the same skill sets, talents, drive, motivation and everything else that's needed to match, if not surpass, male achievements, yet somehow the same old, male-dominated status quo endures.

"Men continue to outnumber women in paid employment, and even when women are employed, they are typically paid less and have less financial and social security than men." The UN Millenium Goals Report, 2010.

But by repressing women, society represses itself and denies itself the opportunity to flourish. What world can succeed when half the people in it are abused or subjugated?

"A country's competitiveness depends on its human talent—the skills, education and productivity of its workforce. Because women account for one-half of a country's potential talent base, a nation's competitiveness in the long term depends significantly on whether and how it educates and utilises its women." Saadia Zahidi, author of The Global Gender Gap Report 2011 from the World Economic Forum.

Asking for gender equality isn't asking for much - simply that women are given the same opportunities as men and enjoy the right to live without fear of exploitation and discrimination.