I live in Melbourne, so it’s been back to lockdown (and home-schooling my two primary-school-aged children). And as I’ve had a bit of time on my hands – in keeping with my tendency to forensically examine the Government’s track-record on all things gender equality — I decided to take a close look at what the Hon. Marise Payne, Australia’s Minister for Women, has had to say about the well-documented, disproportionate social and economic impact of COVID-19 on women.

Women of Australia, I know you’re all super busy with, among other things, remote learning, sorting out the additional unpaid care and domestic work associated with COVID-19, and making home-made face masks. But I need to interrupt your COVID day with an urgent request: we also need to “school” our nation’s Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg. It has recently come to my attention that he doesn’t know where babies come from. It’s time to have “the talk”.

The Coalition Government’s response to the economic fallout of COVID-19 – namely its focus on a “blokecovery” to what is, by all accounts, a “she-cession” — has led some to speculate that the prioritisation of men and male-dominated industries in stimulus measures will not only prove bad economic and social policy, as numerous economists have already warned, but bad politics. Women voters might punish the Coalition at the next Federal election.

Since the revelations about former High Court justice Dyson Heydon’s alleged serial sexual predation broke in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age on Monday, there’s been much talk about what next for the reckoning we need on sexual harassment in Australian workplaces. What happened to Australia’s original #MeToo movement, which arrived on these shores shortly after the Harvey Weinstein allegations broke in the New York Times and the hashtag went viral, including here in Australia?

As the pandemic continues to wreak havoc on our collective health and the health of the economy, plunging Australia into its first recession in 29 years (something economists have more aptly called a “she-cession” due to the over-representation of women amongst job losses), experts are now warning of a “pandemic motherhood penalty” that could have long lasting consequences for mothers.

As we all well know, US President Donald Trump took a not so leisurely Monday morning stroll from the White House across Lafayette Square to St. John’s Church, which was damaged by fire the night before. Trump held up a Bible for a photo op that has since been described as a “defining moment” of his presidency.

It’s official. We have a “she-cession” on our hands, but the Coalition Government is planning a “blokey”, construction led recovery whilst throwing the female-dominated early childhood education sector, and the working mums who depend on them, under the bus. Yes, Prime Minister, we do need a shovel all right, but not for the purposes I suspect you had in mind.

Are men shit? In the words of Australia’s first female prime minister, Julia Gillard, “Shit men don’t explain everything or nothing.” Okay, maybe she didn’t say that, but I like to think she would have — if asked.

As an observer, campaigner and writer on all things “domestic democracy” (or lack thereof), I have long predicted that the so-called “chore wars”, the endless battle within heterosexual couples with children about who does the unpaid domestic and care work, were about to go nuclear, culminating in a “new reckoning” on the home-front.

Men, we need to talk. It’s time to start putting your home schooling, vacuuming and, generally speaking, unpaid domestic childcare and labour where your mouth is. Or, more specifically, where social scientists have long suggested your “attitudes” are.

If someone now fancies making an “Undervalued AF” T-shirt, go for it, writes Kristine Ziwica. Because it's about time female-dominated work is fairly recognized.

Have women finally won the so-called battle of the sexes? Some are certainly calling it. Kristine Ziwica's reluctant to embrace biologically deterministic theories about the sexes, particularly when it comes to leadership.

First there was the $17.6 billion federal stimulus package. Then the $66 billion coronavirus “rescue package”. And, finally, the $130 billion support package, including a $1,500 fortnightly JobKeeper payment to help keep employees in work. A succession of eye watering sums of money have featured in the public discourse in recent weeks.

In a remarkable turn of events, yesterday Education Minister Dan Tehan urged the parents of Australia to send their little comrades to kindy. Well, not quite. But he did announce that all childcare – yes, essentially all — would be free from Sunday night onwards for the next three months, with the strong possibility that the new arrangements would remain in place for as long as six months. “These are extraordinary times,” the Minister told the ABC’s Patricia Karvelas in an interview shortly a

Maybe we don’t have a cure for coronavirus, but perhaps the pandemic’s seen us stumble on a cure for intensive parenting. It’s not hard to spot the symptoms of this particular parental pandemic.

I have been a bit quiet lately. As someone whose profession is commentary and analysis — I “write from a position of expertise” on issues of gender equality and feminism (so my professional bio says) – I have felt that, on this occasion, I don’t have any particular expertise to offer. And more importantly, in recent times I haven’t had any of the certainty that usually comes along with my belief in my own expertise. If I say something, I usually have confidence in my facts and my ability to bac

I have just read the final report of the Australian Human Rights Commission’s Sexual Harassment Inquiry. Nearly two years in the making and launched in the heady days after #MeToo first went viral, the “world first inquiry” was informed by an epic 60 consultations and drew on 460 submissions from legal services, unions, women’s services, academic experts and, most importantly, victims.

Since Hannah Clarke and her three children were brutally murdered by Clarke’s former partner Rowan Baxter two weeks ago – Baxter doused them in accelerant and set the car they were in alight before killing himself – I have not been able to bring myself to write anything about it.

Annabella Sciorra, Mimi Haleyi, Jessica Mann, Dawn Dunning and the nearly 90 women who have come forward with allegations of sexual assault and rape against the now infamous film producer Harvey Weinstein. These are the women I’m thinking about today. And the millions of women who bore their soul as part of #MeToo, hoping Weinstein’s trial would deliver accountability – not just to an abhorrent individual, but to an abhorrent system that enabled men like Weinstein to go unchecked for so long.

Who can forget last International Women’s Day when Prime Minister Scott Morrison covered himself in glory by saying, “we want to see women rise…we don’t want to see women rise only on the basis of others doing worse.” Cue an avalanche of criticism.