The Sydney Feminists

  “Hidden Figures” made waves in the movie industry for portraying the brilliant, female, collective, computational minds behind one of the greatest scientific and engineering feats in history: putting humans on the moon. This movie showed us that there has been no lack of brilliant women contributing to STEM fields through history. We also know that women’s contributions to science, math, technology and engineering have been systematically written out of our history books.   All this complaining about not enough women idols in STEM fields for our future generations and we never stopped to wonder at what point in history we decided women were bad at math and science?  The history of patriarchy is hard to identify. For so many years, in the majority of societies around the world, patriarchy has been so widely accepted that it wasn’t even identified as a type of operating system until recently. The word “patriarchy” literally means “rule of the father” and did not em...

A few months ago, at the age of 27, I finally attained my provisional driver’s licence. I could never have anticipated the newfound freedom, independence and confidence I found behind the wheel of my little red ‘P’ plate car. This experience prompted me to consider the history of women drivers. As a teenager and young adult, I spent countless hours pouring over public transport schedules, just to spend even more time sitting on a crowded train or boiling bus, which would inevitably arrive 45 minutes earlier than my work shift time or appointment. When public transport was not viable, I depended on my parents, boyfriends or friends to drive me. And, even with all this effort, I still racked up a weekly uber bill that almost matched my rent! Occasionally, I found myself in situations where I felt awkward or even afraid. But I could not leave immediately, as I needed to arrange a lift in order to do so. I felt like I had to laugh along at jokes about my lack of driver’s licence or ...