Seminar speakers

Steve Biddulph has been a psychologist for thirty years, and his books on parenthood are in four million homes worldwide. He was voted Australian Father of the Year in 2000 for his work with fathers.  He consults worldwide on parenthood and boys education. He is also the founder of the SIEVX Refugee Memorial in Canberra.  Steve is a patron of Australian Council on Children and the Media

Dr Glenn Cupit
Dr Glenn Cupit is Senior Lecturer in Child Development in the deLissa Institute of Early Childhood and Family Studies at the University of South Australia.  He coordinates undergraduate research training and the Honours strand of the Bachelor of Early Childhood Education. Glenn has written three relevant books, Kids and the scary world of video (Australian Council on Children and Media), The child audience (Australian Broadcasting Tribunal), and Socialising the superheroes (Early Childhood Australia). 

Julie Gale
Julie Gale is the founder of Kids Free 2B Kids. She is also a comedy writer and performer and has performed her one woman shows at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Julie has been raising public, corporate and political awareness about the sexualisation of children since February 2007. She has generated great media interest about the issue and has appeared on television, radio and in newspaper articles throughout Australia and internationally.

Julie’s work instigated changes to the children's advertising codes and she also helped to instigate last year's senate inquiry into the sexualisation of children in the contemporary media environment.Julie received a 2009 National Leadership Achievement Award from the Centre for Leadership for Women.

Abstract

The sexualisation of young people has been an increasing global issue over the past decade. Children and young teens are constantly bombarded with sexualised imagery in popular culture, advertising and marketing. Research links sexualisation with increased depression, anxiety, eating disorders and body image problems.

This presentation will include visual examples of what young people are exposed to and discuss what we as a community can do about it.