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...

Another vibrant, talented young woman died recently at the hands of young men.  Laa Chol was at a party with friends, like many young people over the weekend.  Her life ended as she attempted to diffuse a situation where uninvited, or unwanted, guests had overstayed their welcome.  But this is a situation that happens all the time – all of us can remember our teenage years and being at parties where ‘gate-crashers’ had to be asked to leave.  Some of us may have witnessed fights and police involvement but very few of us will have been at a female-only party where the gate-crashers were young men and it resulted in the stabbing death of a woman. From what I can glean from media reports, the group of people who were supposed to be at the party were women and the gate-crashers were men.  So I was confused as to why the media’s reporting of this focused more of the race of persons involved over another, at least to me, salient fact: why a group of teenage boys and...

As I’ve written previously ( click here ), the laws surrounding sexual consent in NSW have a patchy grey area. In NSW, when someone is on trial for sexual assault, the crown has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the complainant did not consent. NSW laws are structured in a way that puts the onus of proof on the victim: the victim must prove they did not give consent. The best practice example of consent laws in Australia is said to be either Tasmania or Victoria, wherein (according to Anthony Whealy QC, a former Justice of the Supreme Court of NSW): “the crown must prove that the complainant gave free agreement to sexual intercourse taking place ... and the judge is asked to direct the jury that if the complaint said or did nothing at the time of the sexual intercourse, that means she did not give her free agreement.” As I’ve stated previously, this change switches the focus from the complainant to the accused. In this case, instead of focusing on the ways the complainant ...

The "I" in LGBTQI+ can be a bit underrepresented, so here are a few quick facts: Intersex people are born with physical or biological sex characteristics (such as sexual anatomy, reproductive organs, hormonal patterns and or chromosomal patterns) that are more diverse than stereotypical male female bodies. Approximately 1.7% of the population is intersex. Being intersex is as common as having red hair. November 8 th  is  Intersex  Solidarity Day (link to the allies page:  https://oii.org.au/allies/ ) March 2017 marked the release of the Darlington Statement by Australian and Aotearoa/New Zealand intersex organisations and independent advocates . This statement sets out the calls and priorities for intersex people in our countries. It calls for an end to legal sex/gender classification systems for one thing, and it asks for legislative protection from discrimination, among other things.  Another call to action from the Darlington Statement is a...

  Accessing an abortion in Australia is  a  complicated thing, a nd it shouldn't be.  Abortion is a medical procedure. Children by Choice state  an estimated 1 in 4 pregnancies ends in abortion.  1 in 4. Abortion is the most common medical procedure for Australian women. For something so commonplace, access to it is incredibly difficult, and varies wildly depending on where you live. In South Australia. for example, abortion is legal. As long as two doctors have agreed that the pregnancy would be harmful to the women's health or if the child is at risk, and you have the procedure performed in an approved medical facility. In South Australia, in an approved medical facility, surgical abortion is free. In New South Wales, like Queensland, abortion sits snug in our criminal code, accessible through a legal loophole for women. We have to prove the abortion is to protect our mental or physical health, or that we can't afford to have a baby. It the...