Session 3, 2013 was an absolute blast! The campers enjoyed swimming, doing zumba, picking fresh, organic vegetables at Shared Harvest Community Farm, and putting on their Real Girls Runway fundraiser!

The Real Girls Runway rose awareness about our topic of the week: gender equality. To tackle this topic, the campers broke into four crews, focusing on gender equality in media, sports, the workplace, or leadership. Some quick stats the girls shared:

WHY BEING A GIRL MATTERS IN THE MEDIA:

– The average North American girl will see 80,000 ads on TV before she has started kindergarten. While boys in ads are almost always shown building, inventing, leading, or playing sports, girls in ads are almost always on the sidelines, laughing or talking.
– Nearly half of Canadian girls between the ages of 10 and 17 have avoided social activities because they feel badly about the way they look. Only 2% of women think they’re beautiful.

WHY BEING A GIRL MATTERS IN SPORTS:

– Although approximately 40% of sport and physical activity participants today are women, only 6 to 8% of total media sports coverage is devoted to their athletics.

– In a study of school books, boys were represented in physical activities 65% of the time, while girls were represented 35% of the time. Boys dominated throwing and catching activities, while girls were mainly seen in traditionally “feminine” sports like dance.

– This year alone, 50,405 Canadian girls will quit swimming because they feel bad in a bathing suit

WHY BEING A GIRL MATTERS IN THE WORKPLACE:

– Women working full-time jobs only earn an average of 71 cents for every $1 that men make. On top of this, women on average spend much more time doing work they don’t get paid for. This can include hours of childcare, cooking, driving, cleaning, laundry, etc. each day.

– Poverty in Canada doesn’t effect all women equally. Some groups of women are much more likely to be poor than others – Aboriginal women 36%, non-white women 35%, women with disabilities 26%, single parent mothers 14%, single senior women 14%.

WHY BEING A GIRL MATTERS IN LEADERSHIP:

– In Canada, 52% of the population is female but only 22% of Members of Parliament are women. On a broader scale, of all the people in parliament in the world, 13% are women.

– Although it is becoming more common to hear of women taking on roles of leadership in businesses, only 13% of directors at Canada’s top 500 private and public companies are women.

Despite the fact that these issues are complicated, the campers learned why these issues are apart of our society and what they can do to try to change them! They also learned that support and leadership of men in the fight for gender equality is important :)And as a side note… the girls raised over $300 in support of their charity of choice, Because I am a Girl Canada

Lastly, this week, we also had a group of LITs – Leaders in Training! In addition to taking on different leadership roles at camp, the LITs also spent an afternoon volunteering with senior citizens at Grandview Lodge and enjoyed yoga, a campfire, and special self-esteem and leadership training on the LIT Overnight.