National Council of Women Speech Competition

The annual National Council of Women’s speech competition was hosted on Thursday the 17th of May. The topic was ‘100 years on – where to from here?’. Congratulations to our entrant, Cesarina Mazza-Carson, who was awarded third place.  Cesarina was the only Year 11 student to enter and competed against strong senior students from across Auckland. Her spoken word style and poetic flow grabbed the judges’ attention, who found her speech enlivening and fresh and a new perspective from a young woman reflecting on 125 years of suffrage, while looking towards the future.

Cesarina’s bright vision of the future is one where sexism ceases to exist, and society recognises our young women for the leaders that they are. The considered structure of her speech was a direct address to the idea of sexism that still permeates our society and in Cesarina’s words, with young leaders seeking change, 100 years on:

“Dear sexism,
today is the day that we win and you lose.”