The Sydney Feminists

KORADFEM is a South Korean twitter account. I first became aware of the when they tweeted about the abuse of a woman in South Korea, assaulted for “looking like a feminist” ( click here for link ). I reached out to KORADFEM to ask some questions about feminism in South Korea: how it works, how their culture reacts and how they think they’re doing in their battle for liberation. KORADFEM is part of the radical feminist movement in South Korea. Radical Feminism can sound alarming if you don’t know what it is. Radical Feminism is basically a root-cause analysis of the structures of power which oppress females. Analysis of patriarchy and male violence, for instance, often come from a radical feminist lens. If you’ve thought that perhaps female oppression might be even partially due to our bodies or our reproductive abilities, you’ve applied radical feminist thinking. I will put a disclaimer here that many liberal or mainstream feminists do not agree with radical ...

Russia sent the first woman, Valentina Tereshkova, into space onboard Vostok 6 in 1963. It would take America another twenty years before it would send its first female astronaut, Sally Ride, skywards. Besides being the first new group since 1969, the astronaut class of 1978 was special because of its diversity, notably for including Black and Asian Americans. Selected from thousands of highly qualified candidates, the group (nicked named ‘Thirty-Five New Guys’) also included NASA’s first female astronauts. After the class announcement, each individual underwent a year of intense training before graduating and becoming an active astronaut. Sally Ride Sally Ride was the first American woman to fly in space. Ride was born on May 26th, 1951, in Encino, California. She briefly tried to become a professional tennis player but quit in order to get a Bachelor of Science in Physics and a Bachelor of Arts in English. Leading up to her first flight in 1983, Ride was a member o...

In its growing prominence as a threat to the world as we know it, climate change has inevitably proven to be one of the most complex challenges of our time. Left unchecked, this accelerated rate of ecological degradation will leave devastating impacts on our environment, society and economy. Yet, these adverse effects are already being felt by many across the globe, particularly by the marginalized and disadvantaged communities in developing regions. However, many environmental issues that have occurred have been due to the unsustainable lifestyles of the most affluent populations within developed countries (Kaijser & Kronsell, 2014). Moreover, it is the voices of the marginalized and the disenfranchised that continue to lack representation on all levels of discussion and decision making about climate issues. From this position, the climate crisis entails more than just an understanding of the inherent relationship between consumption patterns and carbon emissions, but necessitate...

A few months into joining my current company, I got pranked by my work friends with a USB stick that controlled my cursor, making me accidentally archive/delete emails, type words within words, and discard drafts. This prank had been making the rounds since before my time, and everyone had had a different reaction to it; some called IT immediately, while others smelt a rat and found the culprit. My choice of reaction was to spend two whole days updating mouse firmware, rebooting, reinstalling Outlook – basically to try to find what I believed was a genuine problem in my computer on my own – until I finally gave in and called IT. The colleague who pranked me (a friend of mine) christened it the Female Engineer Syndrome. Image 1 by Sara Alfageeh @TheFoofinator / http://sara-alfa.com/ The Female Engineer Syndrome is, at times, a by-product of the Imposter Syndrome (self-doubt of abilities in one’s own field of expertise), and at other times it is a reaction to others showing...

Gender reveal parties are the latest celebration for expecting parents,  increasingly visible on all forms of social media.  If you type ‘gender reveal party’ into Youtube, you will be inundated with videos of expecting parents announcing the sex of their unborn child to the world. Parents-to-be announce the gender of their child, based on the sex of the child provided by a medical assessment by doctors between the 16th and 20th week of gestation. Similar to their well known analogue the baby shower, these events routinely employ stereotypical representations of gender to indicate the child’s sex. Typical symbols include pink, princess themes for girls and blue, cowboy decorations for boys. Gender reveal parties often employ dramatic techniques to reveal the unborn child’s sex, such as fireworks or the release of confetti or balloons. The once private moment for expecting parents has transformed into a public display, with these parties inextricably linked to social media. ...

Now more than ever, the need to discuss traits traditionally considered feminine, is paramount. Luckily for us, Amy Stanton and Catherine Connors have opened up the dialogue in a strong and welcoming way. ‘ The Feminine Revolution ’, serves as a great introductory text for anybody looking to learn more about gender theory and how these archetypal feminine traits came to be. Framed around 21 core traits that any female should embrace, ‘ The Feminine Revolution ’ celebrates female modes of being which include, but are not limited to: crying openly, being a dreamer and unleashing your wild woman. This piece of literature can be commended for a multitude of reasons but ‘ The Feminine Revolution ’ should primarily be celebrated for its unapologetic stance for acknowledging a wide range of ways to express feminine power. Stanton’s and Connor’s book is a great example of a passion project gone right. By making the point to ensure that the concepts discussed within this book are coupled ...

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...