We would like to thank our community for supporting International Women’s Day and attending our special celebration on Friday 6 March 2026.
The United Nations IWD theme this year is ‘Balance the Scales”, highlighting the urgent need to ensure fair, inclusive, and accessible justice for every woman and girl. The UN has emphasized “Rights. Justice. Action. For ALL Women and Girls“.
Balance the Scales is a promise for every woman and girl to be safe, heard, and free to shape her own future. In 2026, unjust laws, policies, and ingrained barriers still stand in the way of fair and inclusive communities. This International Women’s Day, we are calling on Australians to join a movement for real action – to transform our justice systems, amplify marginalised voices, and ensure equality is not the exception, but the rule.
Our community was very pleased to welcome our guest speakers Vanessa Brettell (ex-student Class 0f 2009) and Hannah Costello, Co-founders of Cafe Stepping Stone and named 2025 Australian of the Year Local Heroes.
Vanessa and Hannah are harnessing the power of hospitality to lift and empower those most vulnerable in their community. Their business, Cafe Stepping Stone, operates as a social enterprise, employing women mostly from migrant and refugee backgrounds and others who experience significant barriers to employment. The sustainable vegetarian café has two locations which offer culturally and linguistically diverse women employment pathways, on-the-job training and qualifications through partnerships with registered training organisations.
We extend our sincere thanks and appreciation to our guest speakers, Vanessa Brettall (Merici Alumni Class of 2009) and Hannah Costello from Cafe Stepping Stone, for sharing their life experiences with our community and offering thoughtful advice and encouragement to our students. Your stories of perseverance, leadership, and purpose reminded us that every journey has the power to inspire others. By speaking openly about your experiences, you have encouraged our students to believe in their potential, pursue their aspirations with confidence, and use their voices to help create a more balanced and inclusive future.
Thank you for your generosity in giving your time and wisdom to our community. Your words will continue to inspire our students to lead with courage, compassion, and determination.
Special thanks and appreciation are extended to our Hospitality students and Canteen staff who prepared and served delicious canapes.
Reflection – Renee Taylor, Assistant Principal Teaching & Learning
At Merici College we invest in young women every day, because we know that they are of value and importance to our world. We know that when young women are given equal opportunities to learn, earn and lead, that whole communities thrive.
When we look around in many societies, clubs, governments, board rooms, when women aren’t present, we must ask: “if not, why not?”
When women are discriminated against for their gender or biological sex, we must call out poor practice.
When the treatment of women is not equitable, we must take action. And we must do this each and every time.
At Merici College we try to empower our young girls to have confidence in their abilities and that they can take their place in the world with courage and with the knowledge that they are more than enough.
We must continue to challenge and change institutions, structures and attitudes that make it harder for women to be taken seriously or for us to be included at all.
Change is needed at a community level – with families, educators and community leaders modelling positive attitudes and challenging rigid ideas about gender in homes, educational institutions and neighbourhoods. Shifting how children understand stereotypes from an early age can have long-term impacts by changing how boys and girls view themselves and opening up more choices later in life.
Merici College is committed to continuing our work in helping shift and change attitudes and actions into the future.
I grew up in regional NSW, in a small country town. I am a farmer’s daughter and I am one of six children. In my family, there are five girls and I am number five in the order of our family. My brother is the oldest and by the time I was born, he had already left home to work, so I only grew up with sisters. It was all I knew. It was only girls who took the roles on the farm and in the family household. It was us girls riding the motorbikes, working with dad to move the sheep and cattle, milking the cows, training the horses, helping during the shearing and harvest season. It was all I knew. I also grew up in a time where the internet was only in its infancy, so you only knew what was happening in the world via the nightly news or the newspapers.
It wasn’t until I was in my late teens that I realised that in the world beyond mine, women didn’t have equal opportunity or equal chances in the workplace or in that in some communities and cultures, women were seen as less than or that they had no voice or no say in what their life path could be.
Even though I felt empowered within my role in the family, unfortunately my sisters did not see it the same way and they fell into what some people would call traditional female roles. I became the first in my family to complete Year 12 and go onto university. I often wonder how I managed to break the cycle in my family of women leaving school to become wives and mothers and undertake no training or study.
Part of me knows that it is in my nature to strive for achievement and to do things differently, but a large part of me knows that I was surrounded by strong female role models my entire schooling career. Female teachers who were inspiring, were intelligent and were courageous and who saw something in me that could be bigger than my small country town.
It is no coincidence that I ended up a teacher, a mother to only daughters and a leader in an all-girls school. It is a privilege to do what I do and to work with young women every day and to see them become the best version of themselves in an environment that promotes empowerment, education and confidence as the key to their futures beyond our gates.
As women, we need to pay it forward; break the cycles of discrimination and inequities and help pave the path for the next generation to come so that they may have it just that little bit easier. Help to show them what is possible and what could be possible. It is right that we should be working together to ensure that we are paid equally to our male counterparts, that we should have the right to have control over our own bodies and what happens to them and that socially we should have the same respect as men and that we should have greater representation across all levels of government and in all board rooms across the world. I want more for the young women of the world, our nation, our local community, our families and our school.
Renee Taylor, Assistant Principal Teaching & Learning
