Geography Insights: Voices from the Classroom (Year 11)

Welcome to our new monthly feature, “Geography Insights: Voices from the Classroom.” This column will be written by Year 11 IB student Serena Farley, who will share her personal insights and reflections on key learnings and contemporary issues covered in our IB Geography classes. Through Serena’s commentaries, we hope to offer a unique perspective on the topics that shape our understanding of the world, highlighting her voice and thoughts on global issues studied in class.

Unveiling inequality – Gender roles: Food and Health

This week in our IB Geography class, we explored the syllabus focus F3.3: Food and Health, particularly emphasizing how gender roles influence access to food and healthcare. One of the most confronting statistics we learned was that of the 333 million people facing severe hunger worldwide, nearly 60% are women and girls. This opened up a captivating discussion about how food insecurity is not just a matter of resources but also of inequality.

We examined how these issues affect both low-income countries such as Zimbabwe and South Sudan and high-income countries like Australia. One of the things we learnt that I was very surprised by is how little low-income countries such as Haiti and Nepal are covered in world news, when numerous countries have citizens enduring such horrific extremities of food insecurity, and yet this is not commonly known, nor is much being done to impact this gender disparity.

Our teacher, Ms Rodrigues, guided us in unpacking how modern gender roles still shape everyday experiences—through ideas like weaponized incompetence and the mental load of women and the responsibilities of unpaid domestic work completed in households. It was a passionate and reflective lesson. I was deeply struck by this and feel passionate about it, as I find the disparity that all women endure in some form to be both horrendous and completely unjust. The mood of the classroom also changed as there were points of deep reflection to passionate debate and a sense of sorrow for the stories from 10 women we read.

We not only considered how gendered expectations affect health and nutrition but also discussed how we, as young people, can challenge these roles in our own lives. While acknowledging the gender disparities that still exist, we also reflected on our privilege—particularly our access to education compared to global disparities in access to education.

As we continue to explore these critical issues in our IB Geography class, it is my hope that we not only deepen our understanding but also become catalysts for change, challenging the inequalities that persist and striving for a more just and equitable world.

– Serena Farley
Year 11 IB Geography Student

– Supported by Danielle Rodrigues
Head of Department – HSIE