Crikey • 11th October 2023

A golden day for female economists — finally even the Nobel jury pays homage

Claudia Goldin has won the 2023 Nobel prize in economics. She is only the third woman in the history of the prize to win it, and she’s the first to win it in her own right, not sharing it with a man. Goldin, a professor at Harvard University, was recognised for her work looking at the gender pay gap and advancing our understanding of women’s labour market outcomes.

Crikey • 18th September 2023

Universities 'protecting their brand, not their students': education minister needs to seize moment on sexual assault reforms

Last week the legal and constitutional affairs committee published the much-anticipated final report of its landmark inquiry into current and proposed sexual consent laws in Australia.

Crikey • 8th September 2023

OK, millennials, we need to talk about the care crisis

Things are bad, and they’re about to get worse. Last month, Treasury published the 2023 intergenerational report, a kind of crystal ball exercise that looks 40 years into the future and highlights some defining issues of our time. Of course, the report only ever suggests a possible future that assumes Australia remains on its current trajectory.

Crikey • 23rd August 2023

Australia now has a target to reduce the number of women killed by violence

Last week, two-thirds of the way through a horror year in terms of femicides — 44 women have allegedly been killed by violence in Australia so far this year — the Albanese government launched the first so-called action plan of the National Plan to End Violence Against Women 2022-2032.

the Guardian • 15th August 2023

The predictable backlash after the recent fallout from the Lehrmann trial can’t undo #MeToo’s momentum | Kristine Ziwica

Reports of the Australian #MeToo movement’s demise, or the suggestion that it has somehow been mortally wounded by recent events following the trial of Bruce Lehrmann, are misguided. The entirely predictable backlash we are currently experiencing – a backlash driven by actors intent on preserving a culture that has always punished complainants – can’t take away from the movement’s many gains.

Crikey • 1st August 2023

'I'm deeply, deeply disturbed': consent law inquiry sheds light on state of sexual violence responses

Last week, the Senate inquiry into current and proposed sexual consent laws in Australia convened three days of public hearings. “I’m just absolutely appalled by what I’ve heard, and I think people need to be held accountable,” said Liberal Senator Paul Scarr, the inquiry’s chair. “There needs to be fundamental change. I’m deeply, deeply disturbed.”

7am • 26th July 2023

Who axed a sexual consent campaign for students?

Who axed a sexual consent campaign for students? Who would axe a campaign to promote consent on university campuses? We know that sexual assault of students is an enormous problem, and a national campaign designed by experts is exactly the kind of thing you’d expect to be part of the solution. Well, not if you’re one of the university vice-chancellors who put a stop to it.

The Saturday Paper • 21st July 2023

Exclusive: Universities axe consent program

Efforts to tackle sexual violence on university campuses have been stymied by the sector’s peak body, the sector’s regulator and a number of universities that have not met commitments made following the Australian Human Rights Commission’s landmark 2017 report “Change the Course”.

Crikey • 21st June 2023

Media don't help. They enable violence against women and fuel the backlash

Nearly six years after the #MeToo movement arrived in Australia, and more than a decade after the launch of the first national plan to reduce violence against women, those who witnessed the scenes in Parliament last week — and read the media coverage that spurred it — could be forgiven for wondering what, if anything, will ever really change.

Crikey • 16th June 2023

Why Liberals still don't understand women’s anger

Amid the unedifying displays in Canberra last week, as the Liberal Party relentlessly pursued Minister for Women Katy Gallagher in the Senate, drawing on Brittany Higgins’ leaked text messages in order to claim Gallagher and her colleagues actively conspired with Higgins to “weaponise” her rape allegation — and then engaged in corrupt conduct to ensure Higgins received a handsome payment for her trouble — I had a clarifying moment.

Crikey • 2nd June 2023

Albanese champions a 'care and support economy'. Are we all 'care feminists' now?

Alert! Alert all the care feminists out there (and I dearly hope we are growing in number). You may have missed a very important announcement this week. But first, for the uninitiated, here’s what I mean when I talk about “care feminism”.

Crikey • 10th May 2023

This wasn't a budget 'for women' — and women will hold Labor to account

The Albanese government wants you to believe this is its budget “for women”. It isn’t. “Labor is backing Australian women with the most significant single-year investment in women’s equality in at least the last 40 years,” tweeted Minister for Finance and Minister for Women Katy Gallagher. “Because equality for women isn’t an add-on or a nice to have. It’s crucial for our prosperity.”

Crikey • 21st April 2023

The time is now, says bold letter to women’s minister ahead of budget

When I read the Women’s Economic Equality Taskforce’s (WEET) pre-budget recommendations and the accompanying letter addressed to Minister for Women Katy Gallagher, both published earlier this week, I was struck — and deeply impressed — by how bold they were.

Crikey • 4th April 2023

Australia's 'great burnout' is here — but we have the solutions

Recently the University of Melbourne’s relatively new Work Futures research initiative launched its first report, which looked at the ongoing impacts of COVID-19 in the workplace. Researchers asked a simple question: how are Australian workers faring into the COVID-19 recovery? The short answer is: not great, especially if you’re a woman, caregiver or from a culturally and racially marginalised group. Media reports have already highlighted what the report had to say about the entrenched discri

Crikey • 26th March 2023

Finally, gender pay gap transparency reaches Australia's shores

Australia has reached a landmark moment in the battle to close the gender pay gap, one I’ve been waiting years for.

Crikey • 5th March 2023

I’ve seen a lot of #IWD clangers but Saudi Arabia sponsorship takes the pink cupcake

Last Wednesday, amid the myriad corporate bluster filling my inbox attempting to align anything and everything with International Women’s Day (IWD), I received a press release that took my breath away. The Council of Australian Tour Operators (CATO) proudly announced that Visit Saudi was the official sponsor of its “sell-out” IWD event.

Crikey • 21st February 2023

We need to talk about political violence against women

In April last year, a 56-year-old-New Zealand man, Michael Cruickshank, was sentenced to one year in prison for threatening to kill then prime minister Jacinda Ardern. In one email, Cruickshank threatened to “personally wipe [her] off this fucking planet”. In another, he said he would “blow her head off”. Over four months he sent Ardern 88 lengthy emails.

Crikey • 8th February 2023

The silence is deafening after 10 women killed in just 20 days. It's time to shout about it

On the first day of December last year, I went for my usual walk around the local park to find a scene that has become devastatingly common in Australia. The night before, police had descended on a house overlooking the park where a 51-year-old woman was found dead in her garage after sustaining significant facial injuries. Later that day, homicide detectives arrested a 52-year-old man and the media reports included this painfully familiar line: “The pair were known to each other.” And so the s

Crikey • 7th December 2022

Quotas alone can't erase the Coalition's legacy of policies that keep women poorer

Two reports came out this week that have me thinking more deeply about the Liberal Party’s “woman problem”. I’m looking at the questions put to party stalwarts as they review their spectacular wipe-out at the last election — and those that weren’t asked.

The Sydney Morning Herald • 29th November 2022

Triumph of the Persisterhood: New laws will make women safer at work

Just over a year ago, writing for this masthead, I attempted to give voice to women’s collective rage – correction, their downright fury – directed at the Morrison government for failing to legislate all the recommendations from Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins’ Respect@Work inquiry into workplace sexual harassment. Now I’m back – but this time I have a much happier task.