The Guardian • 20th March 2024

The murder of women is an Australian scandal. So how do we defeat the monster tormenting our nation’s soul? | Kristine Ziwica

This year alone, 19 women have been killed in Australia, according to the Australian Femicide Watch. The majority of those women, just like the 74 women murdered in 2023, were allegedly killed by someone known to them. Fifty years ago a group of Sydney feminists broke into two adjoining vacant houses on the Glebe Estate in Sydney, “Elsie” and “Minnie”, to establish Australia’s very first domestic violence refuge.

Crikey • 19th March 2024

Rats learn faster than men in the Liberal Party

I begin this column with a long and heavy sigh. Now, I don’t often find myself in common cause with female Liberal politicians, but on this occasion, I would like to invite them to join me. Now that we’ve gotten that little act of bipartisan sisterhood out of the way, what am I on about? When it comes to the Liberal Party’s ongoing “woman problem” — more specifically regarding the party’s men — recent events are an object lesson in what behavioural scientists have long known: rats do, indeed,

The Saturday Paper • 18th March 2024

The women who fought to expose the gender pay gap

The gender pay gap in Australia is well documented, with data on the difference between men’s and women’s wages more detailed and comprehensive than ever. But we haven’t always been on a course for greater transparency. Almost a decade ago, the Coalition government attempted to dismantle open reporting on the gender pay gap.

The Saturday Paper • 8th March 2024

The fight for gender pay gap transparency

Nine years ago, just before International Women’s Day, someone left a large stuffed envelope in the Canberra postbox of long-time women’s rights campaigner Marie Coleman. Written on the front was one word: “Marie”.

Crikey • 20th February 2024

Dutton, read a book — the right to disconnect will help women

The Albanese government’s third round of industrial relations reforms passed last week, including a “right to disconnect”, prompted some big feelings from employer organisations and the opposition. The new right simply means employers will now be prevented from punishing employees who refuse to answer “unreasonable” calls and emails outside of work hours.

Crikey • 17th December 2023

Women left feeling 'betrayed' and 'devastated' by NDIS review

Leaders in the disability sector say the process surrounding the National Disability Insurance Service (NDIS) review, released last week, “bled dry” experts in the women’s sector, who have long advocated for the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) to develop a gender equality strategy. They’ve now been left feeling “betrayed” and “devastated” by a review they say fails women with disabilities. Care services in industrialised nations like Australia have long been moving towards an “indiv

Crikey • 28th November 2023

I started the year writing about women being murdered. Nothing has changed

Despair and frustration characterised this year’s International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on Saturday, and are casting a shadow over the following 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence. Having worked in the women’s safety sector and reported on this issue as a journalist for more than 20 years, 10 of those here in Australia, I don’t think I’ve ever seen it this bad.

Crikey • 24th October 2023

Bye to ‘confidence’ and ‘choices’. Hello to real change for working women

As soon as I got my mitts on the hotly anticipated final report from the Women’s Economic Equality Taskforce (WEET) released earlier this week, I immediately did a search for the word “confidence”. Blessedly, the word appears just once in an entirely non-gendered context.

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.”