Do you see yourself getting into politics?
Chances are if you're a young woman in Australia you're feeling pretty uninspired by politicians, and like you're not welcome in the halls of power.
New research from Plan International shows Australian girls and young women are significantly more disillusioned with the politics than their overseas counterparts, but it doesn't mean they're not engaged.
Disappointed, disillusioned and dismissed
The Equal Power, Now project surveyed 29,000 young women and girls around the world, including 1,000 in Australia, asking about their political participation.
Of Australian respondents, 60 per cent didn't think politicians were acting in their best interests, significantly higher than the 43 per cent global average.
And they're more stressed out by the decisions politicians are making, with 53 per cent saying they were worried compared with 43 per cent globally.
Of Australian respondents, 36 per cent said the situation was enough to make them tune out completely.
Despite the most diverse federal parliament we've ever had sitting in Canberra, it doesn't yet reflect the community.
That's something 23-year-old Plan youth activist Iremide Ayonrinde sees as a key part of the problem.
"Young women, especially in Australia, feel extremely disenfranchised with our political systems," she said.
"There doesn't appear to be much of a space for me in politics.
"There's a space for me in youth movements, grassroots activism and collective action, but I found that in politics, those formal processes … there's almost a deliberate stalling of diversity.
"There's this disconnect that a lot of communities feel with politics."
Sexism over and over again
Plan International's Australia CEO Susanne Legena said treatment of women who have made it to politics was enough to turn many young women and girls off.
"It is those kinds of events that add up over and over and over again that are sending a pretty clear message that if you want to be involved in political life, you have to be able to withstand quite high levels of abuse, of scrutiny, of criticism, of your physical appearance," she said.
She said while some things have changed in politics, many young women were watching when that wasn't the case, including when the country had its first female prime minister, Julia Gillard.
"Young women watching that were very much warned off," she said.
"She said it would be easier for the next person to come as a female prime minister, but I think there was a clear warning in the way [Ms Gillard] was treated."
Ms Legena said this kind of treatment and how the wider community views women in politics are some of the factors discouraging young women from political participation.
"Only half, 50 per cent, believe that people in the community view it as acceptable for girls and young women to engage in political activities," she said.
"In Australia, there was a real feeling of being jaded, silenced and disappointed in the country's political, politicians, politics and political systems.
"Seventy-two per cent of the young Australian women said they don't feel like that, that politics is an equal or inclusive space for them."
We're not silent
But this doesn't mean young women are disinterested, with less than a quarter saying they were not interested in engaging with politics in future.
"We undertook a survey just after we did a separate survey following the May 2022 federal election, which was one of the most diverse and represented parliaments in our country's history," Ms Legena said.
"And 42 per cent of young Australian women and gender diverse people aged 18 to 21, said that the diversity itself made them more likely to consider a career in politics."
Ms Ayonrinde agreed that young women and girls were more than ready to be engaged in politics — its the system that's lagging behind them.
"If you look at the statistics, we see that 97 per cent of people that the 29,000 surveyed agree that politics is important," she said.
"Young women — we're political, we're not silent.
"We haven't been silent. We've been carving a space for ourselves again on the peripheries of politics, because politics just hasn't created and allowed space for us."
