The Sydney Feminists

If you haven’t heard about the women’s quota debate yet, here’s a quick definition for you: women’s quota is a system that demands a certain number or percentage of women constitute a leading assembly, committee, or government. Its aim is to balance gender representation. The goal of this new hiring process is to try and even out the numbers of men and women in the workplace, to help kick-start a new era. I do believe, though, that the problem is not only in numbers, but mostly in the culture that surrounds corporate environments, board rooms and the parliament assembly. A frame from the series “Mad Men”, 2010. Men’s meeting, one woman handing documents over. Employers would still rather hire men over women with the same qualifications, and we shouldn't even get started on the wage gaps in too many industries (WGEA, 2019). Despite several companies’ efforts to include more women and create a more diverse work environment, board positions are still mainl...

13 years ago, as I prepared for college, my father (a mechanical engineer himself) warned me that mechanical engineering won’t be easy, that I would be working out in the field and getting tan, not the most desirable look for a good Asian woman, and I pish-poshed – silently, as would a good Asian woman – because that is precisely where I wanted to see myself in a few years’ time. What he meant is that I would be overlooked, second-guessed, objectified, undermined, spoken over, spoken about like I’m not right there, maybe even underpaid, and explicitly told at some point in my career that I was surely a “diversity hire.”  Being in a field of work that is infamously rampant with toxic masculinity isn’t the only reason he was right. Women struggle on a daily basis to be considered as qualified as men in every field. The gender pay gap is a commonly quoted example of this. Based on the Workplace Gender Equality Agency under the Australian government, statistics from gender pay g...

Discliamer: The views in this piece reflect the opinion of the author. Feminism is diverse and there are many differing opinions on this subject. 1,060 cases of female genital cutting (‘FGC’) were recorded by the National Health Service in the UK, between July and September last year. [i] The first prosecution using anti-FGC laws in Ireland began last month. [ii] It is time for Australian law makers to reflect on the adequacy of our legislation. Australia does not collect any official data on rates of female genital cutting. However, No FGM Australia – a not-for-profit aimed at protecting survivors and preventing future FGC – estimated in 2014 that Australia has over 83,000 women and girls who are survivors of FGC, or are at risk. [iii] Despite these numbers, there has been one successful prosecution of FGC in Australia, since the laws were introduced over 20 years ago. Our laws are inadequate, and this is because the law making process has excluded the voices of the women ...