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Category: Misogyny

  • Sunak and Starmer use ITV debate to show us how they treat women. Spoiler alert: it’s awfully.

    Last night, ITV hosted the first of the live general election debates. Some might have expected an intelligent debate between two polite men who’d earned their places as leaders of their respective parties. Instead, what we to see was a wanky little ego battle between two rich boys.

    The ITV general election debate

    The most striking issue though, was both leaders blatant disrespect for the host, Julie Etchingham – which was clear for everyone to see. It doesn’t take much digging to see both of their records on how they treat women, but last night’s debate really outed them for the misogynistic wankers they are.

    Between the two of them, they talked over her, raised their voices, and were quite frankly rude –  ignoring her when she asked them both to stop:

    Their records on protecting women

    Only yesterday, the Canary reported that on the Tories treatment of women over the last 14 years:

    Anyone with even a fraction of a brain cell knows this is absolute bollocks.

    Since 2018 we have seen a catastrophic decline in rape convictions – by 80%. Whilst not seeing a decline in actual offences. Rape survivors can wait 4-6 years to have their case heard in court. That is of course if miraculously, they even get that far. There is no surprising that the Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme (ICGS) named 56 MP’s in a report on sexual misconduct. God knows how many weren’t named:

    Screwing women over

    For 14 years, the Tories have continuously shafted women left, right, and centre. Or maybe just right. From cuts to domestic abuse services, disabled women being trapped in abusive situations, the two-child benefit cap to health inequalities. Women are screwed over at every possible point so it’s patronising for lil Rishi to now pretend he gives a shit:

    Sunak has a history of talking over, and belittling women. Back in 2022 during the conservative party’s leadership debate, Sunak did exactly the same. He consistently talked over wet lettuce, Liz Truss. If he can’t even treat his own party members with respect. What hope is there for the rest of us?

    And Labour are no better.

    In March 2023, Keir Starmer promised to halve violence against women and girls if Labour wins at the next general election. However, only last month he welcomed Natalie Elphicke into the party – who defected from the conservatives. Well, it came to light last month that Elphicke went after the women who were raped by her ex-husband. Labour knew that, and still make the fucked-up decision to admit her to the party:

    Additionally, Starmer’s deselection of Faiza Shaheen and the misery he inflicted on both Diane Abbott and Apsana Begum, shows his complete disregard for women in his own party. You don’t have to look far to see that Starmer will happily throw women under his shiny new battle bus.

    Missing the point?

    Starmer’s inability to answer simple questions, mixed with Sunak’s outright lies that went unchallenged meant that really, it was a pretty pointless debate:

    Etchingham told both Starmer and Sunak their time was up multiple times. They both repeatedly ignored that warning, continuing to talk over Etchingham and raising their voices. When debates are such a pivotal part of any democracy, what does it say about the future of the country when whoever wins cannot follow simple instructions?

     

    Fragile male egos on display during ITV general election debate

    In the absence of good arguments, both ‘leaders’ resorted to raised voices and talking over Etchingham. People unfairly ridiculed her on social media during the debate for how she handled the situation. Realistically, how can anyone expect women to do their jobs – let alone well, when they are battling fragile male egos? What does it tell you about the calibre of the two candidates when they have to resort to raised voices and pathetic tittle-tattle?

    You’d have thought Rishi, who went to £50k/year private school would know etiquette basics. Like not talking over someone. It’s a shame his parents seemingly wasted so much money on his school fees. Most ten year olds know better. At least Starmer’s parents didn’t waste their money:

    Both of their closing statements were more like an ad for mis-sold PPI than anything from a political debate. Although, we’re not sure we’d even trust them enough to get that back.

    Ultimately, we have two under qualified men with big mouths and big ego’s battling it out to run the country.

    Are these two really the very best we can do as a country?

    Feature image via ITV News/YouTube

    By HG

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Sport and violence against women: being quiet isn’t enough

    Sport has a role to play in creating a culture of respect, yet women in sport are often seen as “less than” on almost every measure: salaries, sponsorship, broadcasting, leadership, access, media, coaching, officiating, uniforms and support.

    Research shows three out of four Australian men are gender equality supporters, but very few (17%) prioritise taking any action.

    As Australia grapples with a “national crisis” of violence against women, what can men in sport do to help?

    What does the research tell us?

    Rigid gender norms can play a part in fuelling male violence against women and children. And sport is an arena, excuse the pun, where rigid gender norms flourish.

    When it comes to sport and gendered violence, a special level of toxic attack and misogyny is reserved for women who “dare” to play, watch and work in sport, and this is particularly heightened for women of colour and/or presumed to be from the LGBTQI+ community, whether identifying or not.

    Sport also regularly promotes alcohol and gambling, with evident impacts on women and children – whenever there are big sporting events, violence against women by spectators increases.

    Players, coaches, commentators and officials repeatedly avoid sanctions, or get a slap on the wrist, and go on to secure leadership roles in sport, sometimes despite allegations of serious gender-based offences.

    The message this sends to younger players and fans is that misogyny is acceptable and that “heroes” are beyond reproach. This green-lights sexism, and completely undermines any messages around equality.

    Tracey Gaudry has held a trifecta of roles relevant to this discussion. Not only was she previously a former champion cyclist, and former CEO of Hawthorn Football Club, she has also been Respect Victoria’s CEO.

    Back in 2020 she nailed the confluence of issues:

    “Gender inequality is a driver of violence against women and it can start out small. Because sport comes from a male-dominant origin, those things build up over time and become a natural part of the sporting system and an assumed part.”

    What are sports codes and teams doing?

    Professional sport organisations and clubs have been trying to address abusive behaviour towards women for decades. Both the AFL and NRL began developing respect and responsibility programs and policies 20 years ago, yet the abuse, and the headlines, continue – against both women in the game, and at home.

    The NRL partnered with Our Watch to try to reduce violence against women and children in Australia.

    There are also opportunities for clubs to take action even if their governing bodies don’t. Semi-professional rugby league club the Redfern All Blacks, for example, are showing leadership: players who are alleged to be perpetrators are banned from playing until they’re prepared to talk about it openly, and prove they are committed to changing their behaviour.

    Education is also vital.

    At the elite level, most codes are trying to educate those within their sports – the NRL’s Voice Against Violence program, led by Our Watch, is the same organisation the AFL has recently partnered with.

    The NRL also implements the “Change the Story” framework in partnership with ANROWS and VicHealth, which includes a zero tolerance education program for juniors transitioning into seniors.

    What more should be done?

    The AFL’s recent minute silence gesture to support women affected by violence does not go far enough.

    Men, especially those in leadership positions, can take action by actively dishonouring the men who have abused women.

    Some of the men we celebrate around the country for their service as players, presidents, life members and coaches have been abusive towards women and children.

    Recently, the AFL demanded Wayne Carey – who has a long history of domestic violence allegations and assault convictions – be denied his NSW Hall of Fame Legend status. The next step is to see Carey struck off his club and AFL honour rolls.

    The same treatment should apply to other convicted abusers such as Jarrod Hayne and Ben Cousins – the list goes on.

    To take a stand on violence against women, award winners who have been convicted for, or admitted to, abuse against women should be explicitly called out with an asterisk next to their names – “dishonoured for abuse against women”.

    And current and future awards must be ineligible to abusers. Serious crimes should mean a life ban for all roles in sport.

    If there is a criminal conviction, or an admission of disrespectful behaviour (abuse, sexism, racism, ableism or homophobia), then action must immediately be taken to strip them of their privileges.

    What about the grey area of allegations?

    One tricky challenge for sport organisations is how to deal with allegations that don’t result in criminal convictions.

    The legal system has systematically failed to protect women from sexual predators, so we can’t rely solely on a conviction to act.

    In 2019, the NRL introduced a discretionary “no fault, stand down” rule for players charged with serious criminal offences, and/or offences involving women and children. Under this rule, players must stand down from matches until the matter is resolved.

    All sports should, as a baseline starting point, be following suit.

    Where to from here?

    It’s time sport organisations and fans acknowledged two things can be true: good, even great, athletes, coaches or administrators can be bad humans.

    Sporting codes need a zero-tolerance approach for abuse of women which should apply to fans, players, coaches, umpires, referees and administrators.

    All codes should strongly consider implementing the “no fault, stand down” rule similar to the NRL. Perpetrators should not be allowed back into high-profile roles. Supporters must also be held to account – if fans can be banned for racism, they can be banned for sexism.

    At all levels and across all sports, we must send the message from the ground up: misogyny is unacceptable and the consequence for your bad behaviour is that you are no longer welcome.The Conversation

     

    Please note: picture at top is a stock image. Panoramic view of Melbourne Cricket Ground on ANZAC Day 2015 By OliverFoerstner/Adobe Stock 

    The post Sport and violence against women: being quiet isn’t enough appeared first on BroadAgenda.

    This post was originally published on BroadAgenda.

  • Women tried to deliver an open letter to the Garrick Club. True to form – it LOCKED THE DOORS on them

    The controversial men-only Garrick Club in the heart of London did itself no favours on Thursday 28 March – after it locked the doors on women, including Labour MP Apsana Begum, attempting to deliver an open letter asking it to change policy and allow them to become members.

    Garrick Club: ‘knock, knock’… ‘who’s there?’… ‘women’… ‘SLAM’

    On 28 March, Dr Charlotte Proudman, Julia Needham, and Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu organised a peaceful but evocative protest outside the Garrick Club. It was over its men-only policy which has been in place for nearly 200 years.

    Many of the women were high-ranking barristers and legal professionals. Yet despite the Garrick Club allowing 14 judges to be members, these women can’t because, well – they’re women. So, they took their concerns to the Garrick Club’s front door:

    Garrick Club protest

    The women wanted to deliver an open letter. Part of it read:

    Criminal, family, civil and immigration courts often deal with extremely serious allegations of domestic abuse and violence against women, including rape, sexual assault, coercive and controlling behaviour, stalking and financial abuse.

    Many cases reflect the diversity of the society in which we live; we are proud to call clients women from all walks of life, many of whom are impecunious or in low-paid work. We represent women from all over the country, including the most deprived areas. Many do not have English as their first language or secure immigration status.

    The Garrick Club, along with its associated ethos, embodies a social and gendered ideology that starkly contrasts with the reality of the modern courtroom. It stands as a symbol of an entrenched anti-woman tradition comprising predominantly white male membership. We are concerned that membership perpetuates systemic discrimination against women within the highest echelons of societal influence.

    In our collective assessment, maintaining membership at the Garrick Club is fundamentally incompatible with the core principles of justice, equality, and fairness, particularly for senior members of the judiciary who significantly shape jurisprudence on gender-based discrimination and inequality and gendered crimes of violence and abuse.

    Like the Garrick Club, the highest levels of the judiciary do not reflect our society. Female judges remain a minority, particularly women of colour, despite efforts to increase greater diversity and inclusivity.

    Irony not taught at Eton

    However, seemingly oblivious to just how its actions would come across, the Garrick Club locked the doors on the women and refused to let them deliver the letter:

    Clearly, these well-connected and high-ranking men fail to grasp the concept or irony. So, Labour MP Apsana Begum who was at the protest gave them a helping hand. She said:

    I think it’s a no-brainer that it’s unjust and prejudicial that men can be afforded the opportunities expressly denied [to] women in terms of membership of this club…

    The club, whose members include King Charles III, former prime minister Boris Johnson, actors Brian Cox, Matthew Macfadyen Benedict Cumberbatch, and Hugh Laurie, has around 1,500 mostly old members. A large number of its members occupy influential roles – from government leaders to partners at top law firms and heads of consultancies.

    We’re sure that the women protesting weren’t implying they wish to hob-nob with Boris Johnson – unless we’re sorely mistaken.

    Smash the patriarchy – starting with the Garrick Club

    However, the principle of the situation – and what it represents in broader society – is what is at stake.

    The Garrick Club had at least 14 senior male judges as members (before four resigned). This underscores the institutionalised misogyny that exists within the justice system – and may well help foment it. But this male-only environment is also a microcosm of the larger toxic patriarchy that society, both in the UK and globally, still operates under.

    So, all power to the women who braved Storm Nelson on 28 March. Until the patriarchy is smashed, then doors like the Garrick Club’s will continue to be physically and metaphorically shut in women’s faces.

    Featured image and additional images via Garrick Club Judges

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • The controversial Garrick Club will see a woman-led peaceful protest – but just OUTSIDE, obviously

    The controversial Garrick Club has hit the headlines recently – because the fact that it’s a men-only space has once again been thrust into the spotlight. So now, women are set to hold a peaceful protest outside the club on Thursday 28 March – although there’s a deeper issue at play, here.

    The Garrick Club: you’d probably never heard of it until last week

    The men-only Garrick Club was thrust into the media after the head of Britain’s spy service resigned his membership on Wednesday 20 March after discussions with his female colleagues.

    Richard Moore’s decision comes after a list containing the Garrick club’s all male and largely white membership was made public for the first time in a report by the Guardian.

    The club was founded in 1831 as a meeting place for gentlemen and named in honour of the 18th-century actor David Garrick. It includes as members King Charles III, former prime minister Boris Johnson, various judges, parliamentarians, actors, and rock stars.

    Moore sent a message to MI6 employees on Tuesday 19 March, acknowledging the reputational hit that news of his membership posed to the service. In particular, he noted the risk of it undermining its work to attract more women to join MI6. He sent a second note to staff on 20 March, saying that he had decided to quit the club. This came following conversations with senior female colleagues.

    The club, whose members include actors Brian Cox and Matthew Macfadyen who starred in the award winning television show Succession, Benedict Cumberbatch and Hugh Laurie, has around 1,500 mostly old members. A large number of its members occupy influential roles – from government leaders to partners at top law firms and heads of consultancies.

    Moore’s resignation was followed by that of the prime minister’s most senior policy adviser, the civil service leader Simon Case, who also quit the club on 20 March.

    Right to Equality set to protest

    So now, campaign group Right to Equality are organising a peaceful gathering outside the Garrick Club which will be attended by a number of signatories and legal professionals. Shola Mos-Shogbamimu, solicitor, and Apsana Begum MP shall be attending and will say a few words.

    The purpose of the event is to put pressure on the Garrick to allow women to join as members in their own right and/or encourage all male judges to resign their membership from a club that discriminates against women.

    People will be meeting at 12.30pm on Thursday 28 March, outside of Caffe Concerto 143 Long Acre, London WC2E 9AD. They will then walk over to the Garrick Club ready for their lunchtime members.

    The group said in a statement:

    Right to Equality asks that you bring a placard if you can with something scribed along the lines of ‘Seats for Women’ or ‘judges of quality support equality’.

    Right to Equality highlighted on X that the issue is deeper than just women’s equality. It shared professor Jo Delahunty’s post:

    That is, the Garrick Club had at least 14 senior male judges as members (before four resigned). This underscores the institutionalised misogyny that exists within the justice system – and may well help foment it.

    Smashing the patriarchy at the Garrick Club – then hopefully the socioeconomic hierarchy in society, too

    As a group of female judges and legal professionals wrote in an open letter:

    Criminal, family, civil and immigration courts often deal with extremely serious allegations of domestic abuse and violence against women, including rape, sexual assault, coercive and controlling behaviour, stalking and financial abuse.

    Many cases reflect the diversity of the society in which we live; we are proud to call clients women from all walks of life, many of whom are impecunious or in low-paid work. We represent women from all over the country, including the most deprived areas. Many do not have English as their first language or secure immigration status.

    The Garrick Club, along with its associated ethos, embodies a social and gendered ideology that starkly contrasts with the reality of the modern courtroom. It stands as a symbol of an entrenched anti-woman tradition comprising predominantly white male membership. We are concerned that membership perpetuates systemic discrimination against women within the highest echelons of societal influence.

    In our collective assessment, maintaining membership at the Garrick Club is fundamentally incompatible with the core principles of justice, equality, and fairness, particularly for senior members of the judiciary who significantly shape jurisprudence on gender-based discrimination and inequality and gendered crimes of violence and abuse.

    Like the Garrick Club, the highest levels of the judiciary do not reflect our society. Female judges remain a minority, particularly women of colour, despite efforts to increase greater diversity and inclusivity.

    Of course, the larger issue here is that England still has ‘clubs’ that are exclusively for those in the highest socioeconomic statuses in the first place:

    This underscores the bedrock of British society: classism – which keeps many of us subjugated in one way, shape, or form.

    So, until that particularly hierarchy is smashed, then true equality will not happen for anyone. However, for now it’s the patriarchy that needs dealing with – and Right to Equality are determined to do that.

    Additional reporting via Agence France-Presse

    Feature image via Dulwich Picture Gallery

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Tied to a bed. Told to ‘stop being hysterical’. The horror of childbirth in Serbia.

    This article contains content some readers may find distressing.

    Biljana Cicic-Stanic still bristles when she remembers the misogyny, pain, violence, and humiliation she endured during childbirth in Serbia. It’s an experience many women say is normal in the Balkan country’s hospitals – with medics tying women to beds, telling them they’re hysterical, and the end result sometimes being in children’s deaths.

    Serbia childbirth: tied to the bed violently

    Cicic-Stanic said medical staff tied her to the bed with restraints and nurses used their elbows to press against her stomach.

    “Everything was so violent,” Cicic-Stanic told Agence France-Presse (AFP), saying doctors and nurses screamed insults at her:

    They put you in a bed and require you to lie motionless, while someone violently opens your cervix, pierces your membrane and tells you to be quiet.

    The story is a familiar one for many in Serbia, where violence against women in labour and those getting gynaecological treatment remains common, according to experts.

    As elsewhere in the Balkans, a combination of patriarchal values and a weak legal system has allowed for medical violence against women to often go unchecked. Jelena Riznic, an activist with the Serbia-based Female Solidarity collective, said:

    Here the idea persists that if you complain about any aspect of motherhood, you are not a good enough mother nor are you a good enough woman.

    Violence and racism

    The issue again hit the headlines after Marica Mihajlovic – an ethnic Roma woman – accused her gynaecologist of “jumping on her stomach”, breaking a rib, and racially abusing her while she was in labour earlier this year. As the European Roma Rights Centre reported, she said:

    He put his hand over my mouth, twisted my hands, threatened to knock out my teeth. He also insulted me based on my nationality, and he also told me that he would hit me and that I would have two skulls.

    Her newborn later died, with Mihajlovic telling local media that an autopsy report said the death was caused by “violent childbirth”.

    The story sparked a torrent of outrage online and protests on the streets, as women shared similar stories of their treatment.

    Serbia’s Minister of Health Danica Grujicic largely dismissed the accounts, saying of Serbia childbirth “everyone has different tolerance for pain”.

    Stitching without anaesthetic

    Women in Serbia are regularly subjected to various forms of violence at maternity clinics and hospitals, a 2022 report by leading lawyers found, including having their stomach pushed during labour and being given invasive procedures without consent.

    Women testified that they were subjected to insults, shouting, and shaming from the medical staff, including at the capital’s main Gynaecology and Obstetrics Clinic in downtown Belgrade. The report said:

    In many cases health workers conduct procedures against patients’ will… Patients are restrained with belts in case they complain about pain, and after the labour they are exposed to stitching without anaesthesia.

    The investigation also highlighted the treatment of patients with miscarriages, saying they were “left alone, without medical supervision, and forced to undergo the procedure” in front of women in labour or those who had just given birth.

    ‘Stop being hysterical’

    For Biljana Brankovic, the testimonies ring especially true.

    In 2021, Brankovic went to a Belgrade clinic to terminate a pregnancy after a test result confirmed the foetus had serious birth defects.

    Brankovic said medical staff largely ignored her ahead of the procedure, as they watched a popular reality TV show, and told her to “stop being hysterical” when she called for help as the foetus emerged. She said:

    After ten minutes I recognised the feeling and I gave birth. Alone, with nobody around, no nurse, no doctor. I screamed for 10 minutes that it’s over. It was irrelevant because my baby was dead.

    Medical staff later removed her placenta and performed a post-abortion scraping procedure without anaesthesia, which Brankovic said left her infertile, according to three separate doctors.

    ‘Afraid to go to hospital’

    A gynaecologist who spoke to AFP on the condition of anonymity acknowledged the issues outlined in the report, but argued that most doctors in Serbia “do their job properly”:

    Hospitals need to document those cases [of abuse]. The responsibility for that kind of work lies with those who run those institutions and don’t sanction errors made during childbirth.

    But with no reforms in the works and denial by some in the government, women in Serbia are left to face the already stressful prospect of delivering a child with another layer of added fear.

    Having been abused during an earlier birth, Sladjana Spasojevic is now only weeks from her due date:

    I’m afraid of going to the hospital and ending up with the same [doctor] again.

    Additional reporting via Miodrag Sovilj for Agence France-Presse

    Featured image via TRT World – YouTube

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • As IWD 2024 arrives, mothers are uniting against the cruel family courts and toxic social services

    Mothers seeking asylum, who were forced to leave their children behind when they fled from their home countries, are joining forces with mothers fighting to stop their children being taken by the family courts or to get them back. They are coming together after International Women’s Day (IWD) to share their experiences of the state taking their children – in the hope of ultimately affecting change.

    IWD: mothers fighting back

    A public meeting on Tuesday 12 March, 12pm at the Crossroads Women’s Centre, London NW5 2DX, has been organised by the All African Women’s Group (as part of the coalition Global Women Against Deportations), Support Not Separation (SNS), and Disabled Mothers’ Rights Campaign.

    It will hear from mothers about how they succeeded in reuniting their family, often against horrendous obstacles.

    Faith, who escaped life-threatening violence in Nigeria and fought for 18 years to be reunited with her children, said:

    I thought of my children every day that we were separated. It was not my choice to leave them. Women are fleeing because of war, rape and other violence. We run so that we can stay alive and then fight to bring our children to us.

    Mothers fear that without their protection, their children are vulnerable to every abuse of power by state institutions and violent predators.

    Immigration officials, social services, the Home Office, and the family courts routinely disregard the precious bond between mother and child and the harm caused to children by separating them from their mother.

    Forced adoption: not a thing of the past

    For example, the Canary has documented how fostering and ultimately adoption has become an industry in recent years.

    However, not all mothers and caregivers are subject to social services taking their children from them. This is because the state is disproportionately targeting women the system marginalises – be it due to ethnicity, class, disability, or chronic illness.

    It shows that systemic racism, ableism and classism pervades a service that is supposed to support children, not snatch them from their mothers. And the driver for all this is private profit.

    In the articles, we looked at how:

    IWD: still more work to be done

    So, at the meeting mothers will speak of how they are disparaged and the discrimination they face especially if they are poor, single, of colour, disabled, and/or report domestic/sexual violence from the father.

    Hawa overturned an extremely restrictive contact order after losing her children to an abusive father. She said:

    Women facing domestic violence, including physical, psychological emotional, sexual and financial abuse, are very often victim blamed, and even punished by the family courts. With the help of SNS I got more time and overnight staying contact with my children.

    The event is online and in person. For more information, email aawg02[at]gmail.com or sns[at]legalactionforwomen.net You can also find out more here and here.

    Featured image via Disabled Mothers’ Rights Campaign

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Red Bull revs up its institutionalised misogyny – not spotting the hypocrisy on the eve of IWD 2024

    It’s International Women’s Day (IWD) tomorrow (Friday 8 March), so in the true spirit of championing women’s equality, Formula 1 racing team Red Bull has suspended a women for being – wait for it – “dishonest” (yes, really) because she made allegations against its big boss.

    Why let some allegations of inappropriate and controlling behaviour (that have not been tested in a court of law yet) get in the way of having a good, patriarchal time on IWD? At least not when you’re the cis, white, male (and allegedly sex-pest) executive of a major motorsports team.

    Red Bull suspends woman over being “dishonest”. Yes, that old chestnut.

    In February, a woman working for Red Bull Racing lodged a complaint of “inappropriate and controlling behaviour” against boss Christian Horner. Following an internal investigation, the company cleared Horner of the allegations.

    The motorsports business hasn’t made information about the allegations or its internal investigation public. On Thursday 7 March, the mainstream media have now broken the news that Red Bull are suspending the woman who made these allegations.

    As BBC Sports reported:

    The woman who accused team principal Christian Horner of inappropriate and controlling behaviour has been suspended by Red Bull.

    Horner denies the allegations, and Red Bull’s board dismissed the complaint after an internal investigation.

    “The company cannot comment on this internal matter,” a Red Bull spokesperson said on Thursday.

    BBC Sport has learned the reason given by Red Bull to the employee was that she had been dishonest.

    The allegations first came into the public domain early last month.

    Red Bull’s board made its decision to dismiss the matter last week after reading a report compiled by what the company have called an independent KC over several weeks.

    The company have given no explanation for the decision nor have they revealed what the report contained or the lawyer’s name.

    Institutionalised misogyny – just in time for International Women’s Day

    Given that Red Bull failed to elaborate its reasons for the suspension, people took to X to call out what looks a lot like institutionalised misogyny. One poster called out other Formula 1 drivers for not speaking up:

     

    Naturally, calling a woman a liar over allegations against a powerful man rightly went down like a lead balloon on the eve of International Women’s Day (IWD):

     

    But don’t worry, as journalist Edward Hardy pointed out, Red Bull is a beacon of women’s equality. Just look – it named some cars after a few of its female employees:

    “You make a difference” but don’t speak up about sexism

    Red Bull even went so far as to inscribe an empowering pep-talk – in small-print – to all its cherished female staff. It reads: “The incredible women on our team: you make a difference”. We’re sure that’s of great comfort to all women working for Red Bull right now.

    Ladies, this company has your back. That is, until you leak messages revealing inappropriate sexual and coercive harassment.

    Others highlighted that the suspension is exactly the kind of gaslighting and victim-blaming response from powerful organisations that stop women from being able to speak up against sexism in the workplace:

    So happy International Women’s Day 2024. It’s another year that a heavily male-dominated sport has failed at the first lap of its #MeToo moment. If it texts like a misogynist, races like a misogynist, it’s probably a misogynist – or Christian Horner and his sexist motorsports team.

    Feature image via Rokt/Youtube screengrab

    By Hannah Sharland

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Sticky floors: only 26% of working-class female professionals have been offered a promotion

    New research has shown that just 26% of professional women from working class backgrounds have received a promotion at their current company – less than half the number of women from upper-middle class backgrounds (59%). Moreover, around 50% of working-class women’s pay is not equal to their peers.

    International Women’s Day?

    In light of International Women’s Day this Friday 8 March, specialist recruitment company Robert Walters releases new figures on the pay and progression of women from working class backgrounds in the UK & Ireland.

    Social Mobility’s 2023 report found that on average, professionals from working class backgrounds are paid 12% less a year – which means they are working one out of every eight days for free.

    However, new research from Robert Walters’ annual Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion report highlights how inequalities are disproportionately impacting working class women’s rates of progression and pay – as they are forced to carry the double burden of both class and gender pay gaps.

    Coral Bamgboye, head of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion at Robert Walters UK said:

    We are conscious of the glass ceiling stalling the progression of female professionals however, our research attests to ‘sticky floors’ placing further constraints on female professionals from working class backgrounds.

    Progression obstructed

    Just a quarter (26%) of women from working class backgrounds have received a promotion at their current company – 20% less than their male counterparts and 34% less than women from upper-middle class backgrounds.

    Not only that, but 32% of them report not being at all aware of what they need to do to get a promotion – the highest across gender & socio-economic class.

    Bamgboye commented that:

    The poor promotion rate of working-class women is closely tied in with their limited awareness of the steps necessary to secure one.

    Disparities start to form right from higher education when it comes to career advancement – with working class women struggling to easily access or afford career advice, work experience or unpaid internships at school, right through to mentorship opportunities goal-setting resources and clear pathways upwards at work.

    This has a knock-on impact on progression – leading them to become stuck in junior positions on significantly lower rates of pay.

    Working-class women’s rates of pay lag

    Women from working class backgrounds bear a double burden when it comes to pay – grappling with both the class pay gap of 12% and the gender pay gap which sits at 7.7% for full-time employees in the UK.

    The Robert Walters report found that 52% felt underpaid at work – 17% more than women from upper-middle class backgrounds.

    Whilst 50% of women from working class backgrounds experience a salary ceiling of £21k – twice the rate of men from similar backgrounds (25%) and 32% more than female professionals from upper-middle class backgrounds (18%).

    The gaps are even more pronounced further up pay brackets – just 1% of working-class women are earning between £55-100k (group least likely to be earning in this bracket) – compared to 19% of women and 29% of men from upper-middle class backgrounds.

    The cost of living bites and pay negotiations fall flat

    A recent study by money.co.uk found that on average, women save 35% less than men – so, they have less of a safety net from cost-of-living hikes.

    Robert Walters’ report found that women from working class backgrounds are most likely to either be living paycheque-to-paycheque (31%) or relying on additional streams of income (20%) – 14% more than men from similar backgrounds and over double the number of men from upper-middle class backgrounds.

    Despite being on the lowest rates of pay, over two-thirds (64%) of women from working class backgrounds haven’t negotiated for a raise in their entire career (the highest across all genders and socio-economic groups).

    Factors preventing them from negotiating:

    • 26% did not think their employer would offer them a pay-rise – 10% more than upper-middle class women
    • 22% lacked the confidence to negotiate – 10% more than men from similar backgrounds
    • 12% did not negotiate due to their company’s low profit / cost cuts – twice the amount of men from similar backgrounds

    Of those who did negotiate, 26% received less than half of their desired raise and nearly a third (32%) did not receive any of raise at all. Meanwhile, 64% of men from upper-middle class backgrounds received between 50-100% of what they negotiated for.

    Working-class women still discriminated against

    Bamgboye summed up:

    It’s clear to see why rates of pay for women from working class backgrounds are lagging and the ‘sticky floor’ problem persists – with employees suffering increasing pay instability as the cost of living continues to rise.

    What is more, when this group feel empowered to negotiate for more, they are then faced with diminished chances of success. Therefore, as businesses we have a role to do more than simply advertise that ‘these advancement opportunities exist.

    Featured image via oneinchpunchphotos – Envato Elements

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Vince McMahon history of misogyny examined | Edge of Sports


    This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by The Real News Network.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Gender pay gap means women work first two months of the year unpaid – so today is Women’s Pay Day

    New Trades Union Congress (TUC) analysis reveals Women’s Pay Day – the day when the average woman stops working for free compared to the average man – is today, Wednesday 21 February. In some industries and in some parts of the country where the gender pay gap is wider, women effectively work for free for even longer

    Women’s Pay Day: 52 days of working for free

    New TUC analysis published on 21 February reveals that the average woman effectively works for free for nearly two months of the year compared to the average man. This is because the gender pay gap for all employees currently stands at 14.3%.

    This pay gap means that working women must wait 52 days – nearly two months – before they stop working for free on Women’s Pay Day today.

    And the analysis also shows that at current rates of progress, it will take 20 years – until 2044 – to close the gender pay gap.

    Industrial gender pay gaps

    Gender pay gap reporting was introduced back in 2017. However, the TUC analysis shows that – some seven years later – there are still big gender pay gaps in many industries. And this gap persists even in jobs dominated by female workers like in education and care.

    The union body says this is partly because women are more likely to work part-time, where working fewer hours means they earn less overall. And also, because women tend to be employed in lower-paid roles than men:

    • In education the gender pay gap is 21.3%, so the average woman effectively works for free for nearly a fifth of the year (78 days) until St Patrick’s Day, 17 March 2024.
    • In health care and social work, where the gender pay gap is 12.6%, the average woman works for free for 46 days until Valentine’s Day, 14 February 2024.
    • The longest wait comes in finance and insurance. The gender pay gap (27.9%) is the equivalent of a whopping 102 days, meaning women work for free until Wednesday 10 April 2024.

    Gender pay gap by age

    The TUC analysis shows that the gender pay gap affects women throughout their careers, from their first step on the ladder until they take retirement.

    The gender pay gap is widest for middle aged and older women:

    • Those aged 40 to 49 have a gender pay gap of 17%, so work 62 days for free until Tuesday 2 March 2024.
    • Women aged between 50 and 59 have the highest pay gap (19.7%) and work the equivalent of 72 days for free, until Monday 11 March 2024.
    • Those aged 60 and over have a gender pay gap of 18.1%. They work 66 days of the year for free before they stop working for free on Wednesday 6 March 2024.

    The TUC says the gender pay gap widens as women get older, due to women being more likely to take on caring responsibilities. And that older women take a bigger financial hit for balancing work alongside caring for children, older relatives and/or grandchildren.

    Regional gender pay gaps

    The analysis shows that in some parts of the country gender pay gaps are even bigger, so their Women’s Pay Day is later in the year:

    • The gender pay gap is largest in the South East of England (18.9%). Women in this region work 69 days for free and they work for free until Friday 8 March 2024.
    • Women in the East of England (17.7% pay gap) and the East Midlands (17.4%) also work for free until next month (Monday 4 March and Sunday 3 March 2024).

    The TUC explains that regional variations in the pay gap are likely to be caused by differences in the types of jobs and industries that are most common in that part of the country, and gender differences in who does these jobs.

    Women’s Pay Day: consigning another generation to inequality

    TUC general secretary Paul Nowak said:

    Everyone should be paid fairly for the job that they do.

    It’s shameful that working women don’t have pay parity in 2024. And at current rates of progress, it will take another two decades to close the gender pay gap.

    That’s not right. We can’t consign yet another generation of women to pay inequality.

    It’s clear that just publishing gender pay gaps isn’t working. Companies must be required to publish and implement action plans to close their pay gaps. And bosses who don’t comply with the law should be fined.

    Featured image via YuriArcursPeopleimages – Envato Elements

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Golriz Ghahraman’s exit from politics shows the toll of online bullying on female MPs

    ANALYSIS: By Cassandra Mudgway, University of Canterbury

    The high-stress nature of working in politics is increasingly taking a toll on staff and politicians. But an additional threat to the personal wellbeing and safety of politicians resides outside Parliament, and the threat is ubiquitous: online violence against women MPs.

    Since her election in 2017, Green Party MP Golriz Ghahraman has been subject to persistent online violence.

    Ghahraman’s resignation following allegations of shoplifting exposes the toll sustained online violence can have on a person’s mental health.

    In an interview with Vice in 2018, Ghahraman expressed how the online abuse was overwhelming and questioned how long she would continue in Parliament.

    Resigning in 2024, Ghahraman said in a statement:

    it is clear to me that my mental health is being badly affected by the stresses relating to my work

    and

    the best thing for my mental health is to resign as a Member of Parliament.

    Ghahraman is not alone in receiving torrents of online abuse. Many other New Zealand women MPs have also been targeted, including former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson, National MP Nicola Willis and Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer.

    Words can not only hurt, but they can seriously endanger a person’s wellbeing.

    Online violence against women MPs, particularly against women of colour, is a concerning global trend. In an Australian study, women MPs were found to be disproportionately targeted by public threats, particularly facing higher rates of online threats involving sexual violence and racist remarks.

    Similar online threats face women MPs in the United Kingdom. Studies show that women of colour receive more intense abuse.

    Male politicians are also subject to online violence. But when directed at women the violence frequently exhibits a misogynistic character, encompassing derogatory gender-specific language and menacing sexualised threats, constituting gender-based violence.


    Our legal framework is not enough
    New Zealand’s current legal framework is not well equipped to respond to the kind of online violence experienced by women MPs like Ghahraman.

    The Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015 is designed to address online harassment by a single known perpetrator. But the most distressing kind of abuse comes from the sheer number of violent commentators, most of whom are unknown to the victim or intentionally anonymous.

    This includes “mob style” attacks, where large numbers of perpetrators coordinate efforts to harass, threaten, or intimidate their target.

    Without legal recourse, women MPs have two options — tolerate the torrent of abuse, or resign. Both of these options endanger representative democracy.

    Putting up with abuse may mean serious impacts on mental health and personal safety. It may also have a chilling effect on what topics women MPs choose to speak about publicly. Resigning means losing important representation of diverse perspectives, especially from minorities.

    Having to tolerate the abuse is a breach of the right to be free from gender-based violence. Being forced to resign because of it also breaches women’s rights to participate in politics. Therefore, the government has duties under international human rights law to prevent, respond and redress online violence against women.

    Steps the government can take
    United Nations human rights bodies provide some guidance for measures the government could implement to fulfil their obligations and safeguard women’s human rights online.

    As one of the drivers of online violence against women MPs is prevailing patriarchal attitudes, the government’s first step should be to correctly label the behaviour: gender-based violence.

    Calling online harassment “trolling” or “cyberbullying” downplays the harm and risks normalising the behaviour. “Gender-based violence” reflects the systemic nature of the abuse.

    Secondly, the government should urgently review the Harmful Digital Communication Act. The legislation is now nine years old and should be updated to reflect the harmful online behaviour of the 2020s, such as targeted mob-style attacks.

    New Zealand is also now out of step with other countries. Australia, the UK and the European Union have all recently strengthened their laws to tackle harmful online content.

    These new laws focus on holding big tech companies accountable and encourage cooperation between the government, online platforms and civil society. Greater collaboration, alongside enforcement mechanisms, is essential to address systemic issues like gender-based violence.

    Thirdly, given the increasing scale of online violence, the government should ensure adequate resourcing for police to investigate serious incidents. Resources should also be made available for social media moderation among all MPs and training in online safety.

    More than ever, words have the power to break people and democracies. It is now the urgent task of the government to fulfil its legal obligations toward women MPs.The Conversation

    Dr Cassandra Mudgway is senior lecturer in law, University of Canterbury. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • The number of British women dying during pregnancy has hit a 20-year high

    The number of women in Britain dying during pregnancy or soon afterwards has reached its highest level in almost two decades, a new study from MBRRACE-UK reported on Thursday 11 January.

    MBRRACE-UK: a staggering increase in maternal deaths

    The figures from MBRRACE-UK, which monitors maternal deaths, stillbirths and infant deaths, and their causes, showed Black women and those from deprived areas remained the most severely impacted. Overall, it found the rate of deaths had increased a staggering 53% since the last three-year reporting period:

    MPs reported last year that although the UK has one of the lowest maternal mortality ratios in the world, it has “glaring and persistent disparities in outcomes for women depending on their ethnicity”.

    It also comes after a series of scandals at maternity units within the NHS. A damning 2022 report into one found failures at the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital Trust had contributed to the deaths of 201 babies and nine mothers over a 20-year period.

    The latest statistics prompted renewed calls for more investment and training in maternity services, despite health bosses in England claiming more money than ever is going into the sector.

    Marian Knight, director of the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit and MBRRACE-UK maternal reporting lead, said Britain’s maternity systems were “under pressure” and the “increase in maternal mortality raises further concern”:

    Ensuring pre-pregnancy health… as well as critical actions to work towards more inclusive and personalised care, need to be prioritised as a matter of urgency now more than ever.

    Highest levels of deaths in 20 years

    MBRRACE-UK found there were 13.41 deaths per 100,000 pregnancies reported from 2020 to 2022.

    Excluding deaths from Covid-19 – the second most common cause – the maternal death rate for the period was 11.54 per 100,000.

    This is up from 8.79 per 100,000 in 2017-2019 and the highest since 2003-2005.

    The main cause of death was thrombosis and thromboembolism, or blood clots in the veins. Heart disease and deaths related to poor mental health were also common.

    The maternal death rate among Black women decreased slightly compared to 2019 to 2021, but this cohort remained three times more likely to die compared to white women.

    Women from Asian backgrounds were twice as likely to die than white women, while women living in the most deprived areas were also twice as likely to die compared to those in the least deprived areas.

    A horrifying crisis

    On X, people reacted with both sadness and anger. Head of midwifery Sophie Russell said:

    This is hugely significant, with Covid deaths excluded the death rate is still 31% higher than previous 3 years. Whilst this is multifaceted I still review multiple maternal deaths where women are not listened to. With women from lowest socioeconomic group accounting 20% of all deaths.

    Other people were saying the government must call a public inquiry. However, as one user summed up:

    If these statistics do not make you understand the crisis currently happening in maternity services, I do not know what will. Everyone reading it should be horrified.

    Featured image via Prostock-studio – Envato Elements

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Waltzing Matildas: How is Australia Faring on Gender Equality?

    The following is a shortened, lightly edited excerpt of a speech given by Australian politician, diplomat, gender equality advocate and author Natasha Stott Despoja AO, at the National Foundation for Australian Women annual dinner, 2023. Natasha is currently a Professor in the Practice of Politics at the ANU. She’s also an elected member of the UN’s Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women.

    What an honor to address this dinner with some reflections on the state of gender equality in Australia and globally.

    I use the reference to the Matildas during this difficult time globally, as one of the great highlights of this year has been the successful Women’s World Cup which brought our nation together and highlighted women’s leadership and prowess.

    Tonight, I pay particular tribute to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women tonight, especially those who championed The Voice.

    It was a profound experience to be on the Prime Minister’s Referendum Council and see the painstaking work and collaboration that went into the Uluru Statement from the Heart and – like many of you – I express my despair at the result.

    From an international perspective, it was concerning to see how my UN colleagues reacted. The specificity of the referendum was lost, but the general message of the rejection of the rights and recognition of Indigenous Australians is a narrative that understandably has currency in some multilateral spaces.

    My not-for-profit work these days involves protecting and advancing the rights of women and girls in UN Member States as a member of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). I have just returned from State Party dialogues with countries ranging from Uruguay to France, Albania to Malawi.

    Regardless of the differences, no country has achieved gender equality, including Australia.

    Yet, no country or community, regardless of its circumstances, can reach its full potential while drawing on the skills of only half its population.

    This session was particularly daunting: I spoke with families of the hostages in Israel as well as Palestinian and Israeli feminist NGOs terrified about the welfare of their friends and people as well as the disproportionate impact of war and terror on women and girls.

    We continue to see examples of the deterioration of women’s human rights globally: and the impact and prevalence of Conflict Related Sexual Violence in conflicts such as the Middle East, Afghanistan, DRC, Sudan, Ukraine.

    Despite the crises occurring globally, and the backlash against women and girls, our seat at the table is still missing, especially in peace negotiations.

    This is in spite of the UN Security Council Resolution 1325 and subsequent resolutions on ‘Women, Peace and Security’ which acknowledge “the important role of women in the prevention and resolution of conflicts and in peace-building” and insisted on the increased participation of women in all stages of a peace process, including peace negotiations. 

    We know there is a strong correlation between peace agreements signed by female delegates and durable peace and yet, seven out of every ten peace processes do not involve women mediators or signatories.

    In the multilateral sphere, we are not only dealing with countries which have been slow to advance gender equality, we are now confronted by countries actively backtracking.

    The High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, has warned about the “pushback and backsliding”, the “systematic countering of women’s rights and gender equality”.

    On IWD, the UNSG Antonio Gutteres said, “the patriarchy is fighting back”, warning it would take 300 years to achieve gender equality at the current pace.

    The covid pandemic also exacerbated existing inequalities and made the lives of those already marginalised — including the poor, people with disabilities, and women and girls, much worse.

    Before COVID, approximately 244 million children were out of school, mostly girls.  Now, the education of almost 1.5 billion young people is at risk.

    As a result of the pandemic, over the next decade, up to 10 million more girls will be at risk of becoming child brides.

    These examples remind us that everything is relative and of course Australia is doing comparatively well. But, the enduring comment I get from my UN colleagues about Australia is that they are surprised that we are not doing better!

    The reality remains that when it comes to gender parity in Australia: women are still paid less for the same work, are more likely to engage in part-time and casual work, carry the primary responsibility for care-giving, for both children and parents, and retire with less superannuation.

    These situations are compounded for women from poorer, diverse and Indigenous backgrounds and for women with disabilities.

    Women represent less than 36% of board positions, there are only 10 female CEOs of ASX 200 companies; women comprise 20% of the ADF workforce and until recently, Australia had fewer women in its highest ranks of government than nearly every OECD country.

    Yet, we know that an increased number of women in leadership roles leads to improved distribution of resources, better maintenance of public infrastructure, better natural resource management, and actually has a positive effect – right down to measures as simple as profit and loss.

    Companies with more women in senior management teams have about 30% higher profit margins than those with lower gender diversity.

    The business case is compelling. As Sam Mostyn and the Women’s Economic Equality Taskforce has made clear, a tax system that eliminates “negative gender biases” could unlock $128 billion lost annually to inequality.

    Apart from this being the fair thing to do, increasing women’s leadership and voice are the right thing to do.

    Research also shows women in leadership positions changes perceptions regarding the roles and aspirations of girls (including reducing the time girls spend on household chores in developing countries), results in more girls attending school and becoming equipped, themselves, to play leadership roles, including in conflict prevention.

    We can’t be what we can’t see.

    When I became a Senator, so many messages came from young women, saying that “if I could do it so could they”.

    That was more than 27 years ago, and the federal parliament was around 14% female, and I was sure that we’d have gender parity long before now.

    I take heart in recent changes: there are more women than ever before, 4% of MPs are of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander backgrounds, and we have more diverse cultures and backgrounds reflected and represented. The Senate is now 53% female.

    I was serious about changing public perceptions around who was a politician (male, white, privileged, older) and worked with others to change the policy landscape for women generally, and the culture of the parliament specifically. I dealt with ridiculous stereotypes, unsolicited comments and touching, double standards and discrimination.

    Being a younger woman underscored these experiences, but no woman is exempt, and these experiences are compounded for women of color, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, lesbian and trans-women and for women with disabilities.

    All of whom have been profoundly under-represented in our decision-making institutions and whose injustices deserve bolder attention. Along with those of older women, the fastest growing group moving into poverty.

    But, as my CEDAW colleague, Nicole Ameline reminds us, it is not just about numbers – and of course reflecting the difference and diversity in our population – but we need serious ‘disruption’ when it comes to decision-making institutions and ‘systems’.

    Left to right, Jane Madden, President of NFAW, Zali Steggall MP, Natasha Stott Despoja, Aunty Violet Sheridan, Ngunnawal elder, Stephanie Copus Campbell, Ambassador for Gender Equality, Zoe Daniel MP, Sally Moyle, Vice President of NFAW and Mary Atkinson, Ngunnawal elder. Picture: Supplied

    Left to right, Jane Madden, President of NFAW, Zali Steggall MP, Natasha Stott Despoja, Aunty Violet Sheridan, Ngunnawal elder, Stephanie Copus Campbell, Ambassador for Gender Equality, Zoe Daniel MP, Sally Moyle, Vice President of NFAW and Mary Atkinson, Ngunnawal elder. Picture: Supplied

    This is the rationale behind Madam Ameline’s GR 40 which calls for a “paradigm shift towards parity as a key norm in support of the realisation of women’s rights to equal inclusive and meaningful representation in decision making systems at all levels of the CEDAW Convention”.

    These changes are those that the National Foundation for Australian Women has been calling for since its inception.

    Your admirable goal of advancing and protecting the interests of Australian women in all spheres, including intellectual, cultural, political, social, economic, legal, industrial and domestic has been pioneering.

    And, importantly, you goal is to ensure that the aims and ideals of the women’s movement, and its collective wisdom, are handed on to new generations of women.

    It is an honor to be the dinner speaker for this pioneering feminist organisation which I have watched and been honored to connect with since it began. I have admired its founders, including the late Pamela Denoon, and its members. NFAW is one of the most important bodies in contemporary feminist herstory.

    Your work on a gender-lens on budgeting and social policy, the women’s archives and other projects have made Australian women’s lives better and have guided and held accountable governments of all persuasions. I thank you.

    We still have a long way to go before we have a more gender equal future. 300 years is shameful statistic.

    But it is not easy when 59% Australians believe that gender equality has mostly or already been achieved.

    Only 26% disagreed that women are more naturally suited to be the main carer of children and elderly parents – 37% agree with this statement, and 37% are ‘on the fence’.

    Just 53% agree that it is important for Australians to stand up for gender equality in other countries. I am particularly proud of the work that Australia does, especially in partnership in the Pacific.

    We have to tackle the historically-entrenched beliefs and behaviours that drive gender inequality, and the social political and economic structures, practices and systems that support this inequality.

    That means we have to make changes in all the areas in which we live, love, learn work and play!

    Speaking of play… it brings me to sport, and my initial comments. A feature of our State Party dialogues has been the increasing acknowledgement of the role of women in sport. In many areas it has undergone some of the most exciting gender revolutions in recent times.

    I cried on the inaugural night of the AFLW back in 2017.  And has the same feelings as I watched the opening night of the WWC2023. The WWC 2023 was the biggest women’s single-sporting event in the world with ticket sales smashing the previous Women’s World Cup ticket record.

    As a consequence, we have seen greater investment in women’s football and an emphasis on gender equality. And we may be sceptical about some countries. In 2018 women couldn’t enter a stadium in Saudi Arabia and now there’s investment in a national women’s team.

    I loved watching young girls and boys, mostly in their Sam Kerr shirts, at the game and clamouring for photos and autographs.

    I loved this Matilda effect.

    I do note that there is an actual Matilda effect: it is a bias against acknowledging the achievements of women scientists whose work is attributed to their male colleagues.

    Australia celebrates a goal during the International Friendly Match between Australia and Canada at Allianz Stadium on September 6, 2022 in Sydney, Australia

    Australia celebrates a goal during the International Friendly Match between Australia and Canada at Allianz Stadium on September 6, 2022 in Sydney, Australia. Picture: Shutterstock

    And who would have thought the actions of a man would overshadow the greatness of this event?  Football boss Luis Rubiales’ forcible kiss of Women’s World Cup player Jennifer Hermosa — was an abuse of authority and reminded us how women – even in the highest echelons of their sectors or professions – can be subject to inappropriate and abusive actions.

    But these actions were called out and condemned globally. Increasingly, I take great heart from the brave young and diverse women calling out bad behaviour and holding perpetrators to account.

    I think NFAW’s mission to ensure that the aims and ideals of the women’s movement and its collective wisdom are handed on to new generations of women is in good hands.

    But the price of feminism is eternal vigilance, something NFAW has been aware of for decades.

    There are many hard won rights that we must protect and advance, in spite of the global backlash.

    Friends, this is not a women’s problem: this is everybody’s business.

    And I thank you all for being a part of this mission!

    • Picture at top: Natasha Stott Despoja during a welcome reception at ANU, in Canberra, ACT, Australia, 05 September, 2022. Photo: Tracey Nearmy/ANU

     

    The post Waltzing Matildas: How is Australia Faring on Gender Equality? appeared first on BroadAgenda.

    This post was originally published on BroadAgenda.

  • We’re making progress in preventing gender-based violence

    On Friday, as around 5,000 people took to the streets of Melbourne for the Walk Against Family Violence, which every year kicks off the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, I found myself stuck at home marking student assessments. As I browsed through my social media feeds, I felt disappointed that I couldn’t attend. But, as I began reading the assessments, I felt less disappointed and surprisingly optimistic. This is not something that usually happens when I am marking.

    The 16 Days of Activism is an annual international campaign, beginning on 25 November, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, and running until 10 December, Human Rights Day. The International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women began in Latin America to commemorate the murders of the Mirabal sisters, Patria, Minerva and Maria Teresa, political activists who were clubbed to death in 1960 by the Trujillo dictatorship’s secret police in the Dominican Republic.

    The 16 Days of Activism became a global campaign in 1991. Since then, every year, feminists, survivors and those working in the area of gender-based violence take to the streets, write opinion pieces like this and call for more action and investment to end the scourge that is gender-based violence. I say this not to diminish this activism. The work of feminist organising and women’s movements has been critical to holding governments accountable and driving change.

    However, this year has felt different because I feel more hopeful than before. I feel that there is, at last, some progress underway in preventing violence against women, and my own research and work have also given me hope. Not a passive kind of ‘wishing on a star’ hope but an active, Rebecca Solnit kind of hope “is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency”.

    What is there to be hopeful about?

    Community understanding of gender-based violence is improving. Worldwide, population-level data confirms that domestic violence is predominantly gendered. Women are overwhelmingly the victims of violence in intimate relationships and sexual violence, and men are overwhelmingly the perpetrators of this violence. In Australia, as in other parts of the world, attitudes and understanding regarding violence against women are beginning to reflect the evidence, with more and more Australians rejecting violence against women and gender inequality.

    Australia has a comprehensive plan to end violence against women in one generation, the National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children 2022-2023.

    The Plan’s vision may be ambitious, but when it comes to the lives of countless women and children, can we afford to be anything but ambitious?

    We also have the First Action Plan that provides a roadmap for the first 5-year effort towards achieving that vision and the Outcomes Framework, which includes clear targets (something the last National Plan sadly lacked).

    There is also a dedicated Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Action Plan. The Government has committed $2.3 billion over two years (2022-2024) towards implementing the National Plan and supporting the delivery of the action plans. While leading academics in gender-based violence have reasonably criticised this investment as not being commensurate with the scale of the problem, it is an unprecedented investment in fiscally constrained times.

    People and organisations from across disciplines, sectors and causes are coming together to address the issue. Researchers, governments, and community and private sector organisations, including social media platforms, banks and Indigenous organisations, are coming together to address gender-based violence through innovative partnerships such as the Centre of Excellence for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

    There are also indications that rates of gender-based violence are decreasing, with rates of lifetime physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence dropping by 31 per cent globally between 2000 and 2018. In Australia, we have seen a 31 per cent reduction in rates of intimate partner homicide (from 36 females killed to 25) over one year, from 2019-2020 to 2020-2021. While it is likely that COVID-19 and its associated effects (e.g. preventing women from leaving) will have had some impact on both of these rates of violence, they are still positive signs. Ultimately, although any preventable deaths are too many and the lasting trauma inflicted on women and children has devastating consequences and costs, we must consider signs of progress and learn from them.

    As my PhD research on Rosie Batty and the ‘Batty effect’ confirmed, much of this progress is thanks to the tireless advocacy work of survivors of gender-based violence and their loved ones, who have shone a light on what had previously been seen as a private issue and demanded change. Policymakers have, over time, recognised the value of engaging victim-survivors in developing policy and service reforms. While findings from my study examining the first three years of the Victorian Government’s Victim Survivor’s Advisory Council, recently published in the Journal of Gender-Based Violence, uncovered numerous challenges to meaningful engagement with survivors in the co-production of public policy, ultimately, I found that survivors were determined to persist.

    Policymakers were determined to share what they had learned, including their mistakes, to ensure practices are improved. Central to what policymakers had learned was, put simply, that we need to be the change we want to see. Preventing gender-based violence requires the transformation of institutions, systems and structures to rewrite formal and informal rules, which support power imbalances and gender inequality, and embed gender equality.

    What more needs to be done?

    While we must recognise that there are signs of progress in preventing gender-based violence, it is critical to acknowledge that more needs to be done, and it needs to be done urgently. The United Nations (UN) recently conceded that “without dedicated investment in scaling up prevention programmes, implementing effective policies and providing support services to address violence”, the world will not achieve the Sustainable Development Goal target of eliminating violence against women and girls by 2030.

    Although this is incredibly disappointing, the UN also released a report on the science for accelerating transformations, which explains that following the emergence phase, when innovation, piloting and the application of new knowledge take place, the next step to achieving successful transformations is accelerating and institutionalising change. This requires decisive action by governments, investing in infrastructure and capabilities, and overcoming resistance and barriers to reform. In other words, we have the foundations for transformation and know what works; now, we need to fast-track action and investment and embed the change we want to see in our institutions and ourselves.

    While others marched, I felt hopeful as I marked those student assessments because they had written about the growing international evidence on what works to prevent violence against women and developed their own intervention programs. They had fantastic proposals for programs in early childhood centres, local sporting clubs and newsrooms, and they were all realistic, affordable and intersectional (taking into consideration the multiple forms of violence experienced by many and compounding factors such as disability, poverty and race). Ultimately, that filled me with enormous hope for the future.

    Before you go…

    Please note: picture at top is a stock image. Adobe Stock/CWA 

    The post We’re making progress in preventing gender-based violence appeared first on BroadAgenda.

    This post was originally published on BroadAgenda.

  • Taliban’s gender apartheid tightens, suppressing women’s rights,

    Today is the International Day to End Violence Against Women. The Taliban’s regime of gender apartheidcontinues to stifle women’s rights and voices. The Australian Government has removed human rights defenders from their list of criteria for priority processing from the country our military and aid workers spent decades working to improve alongside their Afghan allies and friends.

    Recent reports confirm the arrest of at least two young women advocates championing the rights of their fellow women in Afghanistan. Additional cases likely exist involving activists who have disappeared without any public attention.

    Parisa Azada, an active member of the Afghanistan Women’s Movement for Justice and Freedom, left home at 7am to join another protest with women from Bamiyan Province.

    For two days before her arrest, Parisa had been receiving concerning calls from unknown numbers. She sensed what was coming and asked her friends and circle of activists to raise a voice for her in case she went missing.

    Photo: Zolfa Behnia from 8 am Daily. Posted with permission. 

    Parisa Azada at a protest. The text says: “Detaining protestor women is suffocating free speech”. Photo: Zolfa Behnia from 8 am Daily. Posted with permission.

    Around 9am, after printing the banners for the day’s protest in a shop in Kabul, she called her friends and told them that she thought she was being followed by a black car. She was in Sarkariz, in Kabul’s Police District 3. Fear spread through the group of protestors as Prisa did not show up at the protest, and that night she did not come home. Her brother received a short call from the Taliban, who told him they had his sister but didn’t even specify where she was being held.

    Parisa has been missing since the 15th of November. Her family has been unresponsive to her friends and is under the Taliban’s surveillance. She’s a 24-year-old woman from Bamiyan in central Afghanistan whose friends describe her as funny, smart, and kind.  Parisa had been involved with the Afghanistan Women’s Movement for Justice and Freedom for several years. She attended many public protests, including against the Taliban’s strict dress code for Afghan women and the detention of journalists and human rights activists.

    The Afghanistan Women’s Movement for Justice and Freedom works on a range of women’s rights issues, including violence against women and free speech. The organisation has over 150 members from different provinces of Afghanistan. They’ve managed more than 70 protests and lawsuits for women’s rights since January 2022.

    Arghawan Farahmand* reported on the arrest of Parisa and other women’s rights issues. Like other female journalists in Afghanistan, she works in hiding. She’s been working with the 8am Newspaper (Hashte Sobh Daily) for over two years now. Arghawan explained, “I have shared so much with Parisa and I am afraid that my work will be held against me”

    Arghawan and Rahila went to university with Parisa. They know her well. Rahila was once a cheerful, motivated leader who started an organisation called GirlUp, an NGO in Kabul that actively worked against gender-based and sexual violence by raising awareness and advocating for women’s right to education and equal access to opportunities. She is now spending her days in hiding and in constant fear of being arrested, just like her friends.

    The circles of women activists and protestors are closely connected; concerns are increasingly haunting all women who have advocated for gender equality in any way. “I am worried that they will torture her, and she will lead them to us,” Rahila said.

    There are other brave women like Parisa, Arghawan and Rahila with significant ties to Australia who have applied for humanitarian visas.

    Azadi-e Zan works with a range of women’s rights defenders who have been fleeing the Taliban. The Australian Government refuses to grant visas to people who are inside Afghanistan. Many families flee to neighbouring countries like Pakistan and Iran, where the authorities also abuse their human rights. They exhaust any savings they may have had waiting for visas to come for places like Australia.

    It is likely, if they arrived on medical visas, they won’t be able to have their visas renewed after changes to Pakistan Government policies. Other visa categories are also difficult to get and incredibly expensive. They can wait indefinitely for registration with UNHCR and still receive no material or practical assistance.

    Now, the interim military Government of Pakistan is undertaking widespread deportation operations, sending incredibly high-risk women’s rights defenders back to Afghanistan without a second thought.

    Two such families who have been waiting for Australian humanitarian visas for years include Benafsha Bahar* and Zainab Hussaini*.

    Benafsha was a law professor at Al-Bironi University and ran a pro bono family law clinic helping women escape domestic violence. She experienced specific direct threats from the Taliban when she helped a woman escape an abusive marriage to a Talib. Now she, her husband and children are waiting for the Pakistan police to return to their door and send them back to the Taliban.

     

    Zainab, 18, is a young activist involved in the Australian Sisterhood Program, connecting young Australian and Afghan women for cross cultural exchange and to discuss the advancement of women’s rights. Zainab worked in her school as an environmental activist since 2016 and attended street rallies protesting the Taliban and the Hazara genocide. She has participated in a range of workshops, including with the Afghan Women’s Network, on gender equality and girl’s education.

    • Picture at top: Parisa Azadeh holds a sign that says: “Stop violence against women”. Photo: Zolfa Behnia from 8 am Daily. Posted with permission. 

    The post Taliban’s gender apartheid tightens, suppressing women’s rights, appeared first on BroadAgenda.

    This post was originally published on BroadAgenda.

  • NZ elections 2023: Green Party, Te Pāti Māori call out ‘harmful emboldening of extremism’

    RNZ News

    Green Party co-leader James Shaw has compared the language of New Zealand First leader Winston Peters to former US president Donald Trump, saying it may be emboldening violence against candidates in Aotearoa NZ’s election campaign.

    It comes after several candidates from different parties have spoken out about being targeted, including a home invasion on Te Pāti Māori’s youngest candidate, an assault on a Labour candidate, and another Labour candidate saying she has faced the “worst comments and vitriol” this campaign.

    Te Pāti Māori candidate Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke, whose home was ram raided and invaded, put the blame on what she called race-baiting from right-wing parties.

    Peters told Newshub Nation that notion was wrong, and accused Te Pāti Māori of being a racist party.

    New Zealand First leader Winston Peters speaks at a public meeting at Napier Sailing Club in Napier on 29 September 2023.
    New Zealand First leader Winston Peters . . . believes candidates faced worse times during the Rogernomics privatisation period of the 1980s. Image: RNZ/Samuel Rillstone

    But Shaw — who himself was assaulted in 2019 — suggested Peters could be empowering and emboldening extremists.

    “It makes me really angry. Because political leaders, through the things we say create an air of permissiveness for that kind of extreme language and now physical violence to take place and it’s not too dissimilar to what we saw in the United States under Donald Trump,” he said.

    “Half of the argument about Trump was whether he personally intervened to make those things happen and at one level it doesn’t matter, he created an atmosphere where these extremists felt empowered and emboldened to kind of enact their kind of crazy, racist, misogynist fantasies.

    Lead to physical violence
    “And that did lead to physical violence there and it’s leading to physical violence here too.”

    However, Shaw told RNZ he was not surprised given the “misogynist and racist rhetoric”, which he said had been at least in part been given permission by political parties in this election campaign.

    Green Party co-leader James Shaw and Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer.
    Green Party co-leader James Shaw and Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer . . . calling out “misogynist and racist rhetoric” in the election campaign. Image: RNZ News/Cole Eastham-Farrelly/Samuel Rillstone

    “[It] has created a situation where that kind of online hate and violent language is only one or two steps from actual acts of physical violence and now you’re starting to see those manifest. It is really worrying.

    “I think all of us have a responsibility to try and create an atmosphere for democracy to take place, which is respectful, where people can have different opinions and for that to be okay.

    “And I think that at the moment we’re seeing a rise in this kind of culture or language which is imported from overseas, that is not just unhelpful but downright dangerous.”

    Te Pāti Māori said the break-in at Maipi-Clarke’s house was yet another example of political extremism in New Zealand.

    Co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer said some right-wing politicians were emboldening racist behaviour and needed to take responsibility.

    ‘Harmful inciting’
    “We have seen a harmful inciting, a very harmful emboldening of extremism, this is an example of that.

    “We’ve had it with our billboards – they’ve been so destroyed that we haven’t been able to afford to replace a lot of them now. It’s just been disgusting, the extent of racism.”

    This year’s election had brought some of the worst abuse Te Pāti Māori had ever experienced, she said.

    New Zealand First leader Winston Peters claimed of Maipi-Clarke’s incident that “it couldn’t have been a home invasion” and he would answer more questions about the case when he knew all the facts.

    “As for the first one [alleged assault on Labour’s Angela Roberts], violence of that sort is just not acceptable, full stop.”

    He believed the time for candidates was worse was during the Rogernomics period of the 1980s.

    “With respect, I can recall during the period of Rogernomics, there was a full scale fight going on inside the Labour Party convention.”

    Chris Hipkins campaigning Saturday 30 September.
    Labour leader Chris Hipkins in Mount Eden today . . . assaulting candidates or threatening their safety “shows total contempt for the very principle of democracy”. Image: RNZ/Giles Dexter

    Minorities persecuted
    Labour Party leader Chris Hipkins — who has vowed to call out racism — said a number of parties were deliberately trying to persecute minorities and it was reprehensible.

    Assaulting candidates or threatening their safety “shows total contempt for the very principle of democracy”, he said.

    He had made it clear to all Labour’s candidates that if they thought their physical safety might be at risk, they should not do that activity, Hipkins said.

    “I think there has been more racism and misogyny in this election than we’ve seen in previous elections.”

    Hipkins said he had respect for women and Māori who put themselves forward in elected office, but they should never have to put up with the level of abuse that they have had to in this campaign.

    National Party leader Christopher Luxon told reporters his party had referred several incidents to the police too.

    Luxon said he condemned threats and violence on political candidates, or their family and property, as well as all forms of racism.

    Number of serious incidents
    “It’s entirely wrong. We’ve had a number of serious incidents that we’ve referred to the police as well, over the course of this campaign.

    “I think it’s important for all New Zealanders to understand that politicians are putting themselves forward, you may disagree with their politics, you may disagree with their policies, but we can disagree without being disagreeable in this country.”

    He would not detail the complaints his party had made to police.

    He said political leaders had a responsibility not to fearmonger during the campaign.

    “Running fearmongering campaigns and negative campaigns just amps it up, and I think actually what we need to do is actually everyone needs to respect each other. We have differences of opinion about how to take the country forward, we are unique in New Zealand in that we can maintain our political civility, we don’t need to go down the pathway we’ve seen in other countries.

    “It’s just about leadership, right, it’s about a leader modelling out the behaviour and treating people that they expect to treated.”

    Asked if National had a hand in being responsible for fearmongering, he said it did not, and their campaign was positive and focused on what mattered most to New Zealanders.

    Worry over online abuse
    Shaw was worried for his candidates, having seen the online abuse they were subjected to.

    “It’s vile, it is really extreme and it is stronger now than it has been in previous election campaigns and like I said I don’t think it takes much for a particularly unhinged individual from whacking their keyboard to whacking a person.”

    But it was worse for female candidates and Māori, he said.

    “Not just a little bit, not just an increment, but orders in magnitude, from what I’ve seen my colleagues be exposed to. It is just unhinged.”

    There has been increased police participation in this campaign, Shaw said.

    “Parliamentary security have got new protocols that we are observing. We have changed, for example, the way we campaign, the way we do public meetings, or when we’re out and about, we’re observing new security protocols that we haven’t had in previous years.”

    Hipkins said where there might be additional risk, they have worked with Parliamentary Service on a cross-party basis to ensure there was additional support available for some MPs.

    All parties have an interest in ensuring the election campaign was conducted safely, he said.

    What has happened?
    This week, Te Pāti Māori candidate Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke’s home was ram raided and invaded, with a threatening note left.

    Police said they were investigating the burglary of a Huntly home, which was reported to them on Monday.

    Te Pāti Māori candidate Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke
    Te Pāti Māori candidate Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke . . . her home was ram raided and invaded and she blames what she called race-baiting from right-wing parties. Image: 1News screenshot/APR

    Te Pāti Māori issued a statement saying it was the third incident to take place at Maipi-Clarke’s home this week.

    Also this week, Labour candidate for Taranaki-King Country Angela Roberts said she had laid a complaint with the police about being assaulted at an election debate in Inglewood.

    Hipkins said he had great respect for Roberts, and he told her she could take any time off if she needed to, but she has chosen not to.

    “She’s an incredibly staunch and energetic campaigner and I know it knocked the wind out of her sails a little bit, but I know that she’s bouncing back.”

    On Thursday, Labour candidate for Northland Willow-Jean Prime told reporters she has faced the “worst comments and vitriol” in the seven campaigns she has been through – two in local government and five in central government.

    “I was being shouted down every time I went to answer a question by supporters of other candidates primarily, there were not many of the general public in there,” she said of a Taxpayers Union debate in Kerikeri.

    “Whenever I said a te reo Māori word, like puku, for full tummies, lunches in schools, I was shouted at.

    “When I said Aotearoa, the crowd responded ‘It’s New Zealand!’. When I said rangatahi, ‘stop speaking that lanugage!’ that is racism coming from the audience, that’s not disagreeing with the gains I’m explaining that we’ve made in government.”

    She said she noticed that type of “dog-whistling” in other candidate debates, but not whilst out and about with the general public.

    “What is really worrying is that they feel so emboldened to be able to come out and say this stuff publicly, they don’t care that other people that might be in the audience, that might be listening or the impact that has on us as candidates.”

    The New Zealand general election is on October 14, but early voting begins on October 2.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Braverman sinks to a new low – attacking the 1951 Refugee Convention

    On 26 September, home secretary Suella Braverman gave a hate-fuelled tirade on the subject of asylum seekers as part of a keynote speech in Washington. In it, she stated that the United Nations Refugee Convention was not “fit for our modern age”.

    The address, which took place at the right-wing American Enterprise Institute, was billed as intending to lay out an international plan to deal with the refugee crisis. However, Braverman’s answer appears to boil down to simply redefining what a refugee is.

    Braverman: ‘A completely different time’

    The 1951 Refugee Convention legally defines the term “refugee” and outlines their rights. Braverman called it “an incredible achievement of its age”. However, she went on to cite a deeply questionable study stating that the convention now gives at least 780 million people the potential right to move to another country.

    She said that it is:

    incumbent upon politicians and thought leaders to ask whether the Refugee Convention, and the way it has come to be interpreted through our courts, is fit for our modern age or in need of reform.

    Regarding this perceived lack of reform, she stated that:

    The first [reason] is simply that it is very hard to renegotiate these instruments. The second is much more cynical. The fear of being branded a racist or illiberal. Any attempt to reform the refugee convention will see you smeared as anti-refugee

    ‘Very real danger’

    She also added that Western countries will not be able to sustain an asylum system:

    if in effect simply being gay, or a woman, or fearful of discrimination in your country of origin, is sufficient to qualify for protection.

    We are living in a new world bound by outdated legal models. It’s time we acknowledge that.

    The problem being, of course, that fearing discrimination should be sufficient grounds to qualify for protection. In a world with any measure of human decency, nobody should have been able to question that simple maxim without choking on their words. Unfortunately, I’m given to doubt that Braverman and her cronies have a shred of human decency to share between them.

    In a statement as part of his role at the AIDS Foundation, musician Elton John said he was “very concerned” about Braverman’s comments. He highlighted the fact that “simply being gay”, as the home secretary put it, was clearly cause to be fearful:

    Nearly a third of all nations class LGBTQ+ people as criminals and homosexuality is still punishable by death in 11 countries.

    Dismissing the very real danger LGBTQ+ communities face risks further legitimizing hate and violence against them.

    Colonialism and the refugee crisis

    Of course, this isn’t even to mention the UK’s role in the criminalisation of homosexuality in these countries. As the Migrant Rights Network put it:

    Sadly, out of the 69 countries where homosexuality is criminalised today, 36 of them are former British colonies. Many commonwealth African nations, for instance, still hold onto the colonial-era legislation and attitudes towards the LGBTQ+ community.

    Likewise, another key and growing driver of refugee movement is the ever-worsening climate crisis. The non-profit Climate Refugees stated that:

    Recent trends indicate more internal displacement due to climate-related disasters than conflict, where in fact, of the 30.6 million people displaced across 135 countries in 2017, 60 percent were as a direct result of disasters.

    And, in turn, those climate disasters are driven by the Global North and its energy colonialism. As the Canary’s Hannah Sharland documented:

    industrialised colonial nations have belched out the bulk of emissions that have fueled climate warming. However, the impacts of super-charged extreme weather have disproportionately hit the less industrialised nations least responsible.

    But far from acknowledging the dire issue of the refugee crisis – let alone taking ownership of the role that the UK and the rest of the Global North played in it – Braverman has an entirely different solution. She’s looking away.

    The solution? Ignore the problem

    Braverman has previously criticised the European Convention on Human Rights for blocking the Tory government’s Rwanda scheme. Hitting back, the non-profit Refugee Council said that – rather than taking aim at the UN convention – the UK should be:

    addressing the real issues in the asylum system, such as the record backlog, and providing safe routes for those in need of protection.

    Similarly, Yvette Cooper, Labour’s shadow home secretary, accused Braverman of having “given up on fixing the Tories’ asylum chaos” and “looking for anyone else to blame”.

    This attitude typifies Tory responses to social issues across the board. Rather than working to find a solution, they change definitions in order to sweep a problem under the rug. From plans to redefine child poverty, to changing targets for cancer care in order to reduce damning figures, to funneling foreign aid into investment portfolios, the Conservatives are no stranger to moving goalposts.

    So, simply defining a refugee more narrowly as someone immediately at risk of violence or death is barely even a stretch.

    Everyday cruelty

    The Guardian went as far as reporting that:

    Asked after the speech whether the UK would consider leaving the convention if changes were not delivered, Braverman said the government would do “whatever is required” to tackle the issue of migrants arriving via unauthorised routes.

    To state this simply, the home secretary appears to prefer that the UK removes itself entirely from the Refugee Convention, rather than facing up to the fact that refugees are human beings in need of help.

    Truly, I wish I could say that I was shocked – or even surprised. Unfortunately at this point, Braverman is beyond the point where her naked cruelty is anything more than an everyday occurrence.

    Featured image via the Guardian/screengrab

    Additional reporting via Agence France-Presse

    By Alex/Rose Cocker

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Endometriosis isn’t funny. Libby doesn’t agree.

    Let’s start at the start. What is endometriosis? Who does it impact?

    Endometriosis is a painful, chronic, incurable illness that affects one in nine people who menstruate. Gynaecologist and author Dr Susan Evans defines it as “a condition where bits of tissue like the lining of the uterus are found in places outside the uterus where they shouldn’t be”. Endometriosis symptoms can include, but are not limited to: debilitating pain during periods, abdominal bloating, nausea, fatigue, low mood and depression, anxiety, pain with sex, adhesions, painful bowel movements and/or urination, chronic pelvic pain, and infertility.

    Patients can have some, none or all of those symptoms. There are four stages of endometriosis with one being the least endometriosis lesions and four being the most, but there is no correlation between stages of endo and levels of pain.

    You could have stage one endo and severe pain or stage four endo and no pain. We still have tons to do in terms of research and awareness to work out why and how that is so.

    Tell us a bit about your own endo story and how it’s impacted your life? 

    I was born and raised in Canberra and moved to Adelaide at 14 years old. Just when we were about to move, I had a sudden attack of abdominal pain and I fainted on our icy cold Canberra bathroom tiles. My mum suggested it was probably period pain because she suffered similar and was a fainter as well. Later that day, I got my first period. Figuring it was normal and just the way period pain worked, I got on with my life, and we moved to Adelaide where I endured these painful, dizzy and nauseating episodes every month.

    When I was 19, I had a working holiday in Cairns where a friend told me she’d been diagnosed with ‘endometriosis’ and described her symptoms to me. They matched my own, so I took myself off a doctor and he sent me away with a diagnosis of ‘partying too hard’ after chastising me for diagnosing myself (where did you get your medical degree? he asked). 

    At 22, I was back on the east side, living in Jindabyne and working at Blue Cow Mountain. I woke early one morning in severe pain, staggered to my local GP and promptly collapsed on the waiting room floor. I was whisked off in an ambulance to Cooma and my appendix was whipped out.

    My surgeon visited me after the procedure and said he’d removed a healthy appendix. I asked, what’s wrong with me, then? And he said, You’ve probably just got your knickers in a twist over something.

    Back in Adelaide for many years, I visited doctors complaining of pain, only to be told it was all in my head, until I was 35 and pregnant with a much-wanted baby that turned out to be a cornual ectopic pregnancy (a rare and dangerous condition where implantation occurs on the outside corner or in the cavity of the ‘horn’ of the uterus). This was the first of 11 pregnancy losses and no surviving pregnancies. 

    After having the ectopic removed via caesarean surgery, I was in more pain than ever, so I kept going back to my specialist asking for help and he kept saying I was fine, just grieving and/or stressed (eg, all in my head). After 12 months of dismissal, he reluctantly agreed to do a diagnostic laparoscopy but assured me there was nothing wrong with me. That surgery revealed stage four endometriosis. Finally, I had answers. Finally, it wasn’t all in my head. Finally, I could start healing. Because, when you spend 22 years trying to fix a head that isn’t sick, your head gets a little sick. So, I had a lot of work to do to forgive myself.  

    The cover "Endo Days."

    The cover “Endo Days.”

    In a nutshell, what’s your book about? 

    Endo Days is a journalistic memoir that’s part narrative, part instruction manual and part comedy routine. It threads my story through interviews with a diverse range of ‘endo friendos’ across Australia, including the experiences of trans, queer, neurodivergent, younger, older, First Nations, metropolitan and rural Australians. The book offers tips and tricks for living well with chronic illness and takes the reader through my journey from misdiagnosis to treatment, through medical gaslighting, pregnancy losses, raising step-kids and a foster son, and working towards educating others.

    Why did you write it?

    When I was first diagnosed, I was angry and confused. I was sent home with this word, ‘endometriosis’ but no further information. I googled and was even more confused. I am a teacher by trade, so I immediately wanted to get some resources out there for people like me who were diagnosed late and feeling lost in the void.

    But I also wanted to educate 14-year-old me (and her mum) that pain like that isn’t normal and there are better ways we can advocate for ourselves.

    So when Wakefield Press approached me to write the book I knew I wanted to write the resource that would have helped me when I was first trying to navigate this illness. 

    You actually have a comedy how about endo and your book is quite funny in parts too. Why take this approach? 

    Someone once said to me, ‘there’s nothing funny about chronic illness’ and that felt like a challenge! 

    In my family, we have always used humour to diffuse tragic, difficult or awkward situations and my journey through endometriosis has been all of those things. But I also learn best through laughing. My husband Matt and I wrote our comedy cabaret (also called Endo Days) about our experiences with endo together.

    In the show, we sing and joke about things like pain, the partner experience, medical gaslighting, fertility issues, being excluded from the ‘Mum Club’ because I didn’t birth my three children, unsolicited advice (have you tried yoga?) and there’s even a rap about suppositories. The show is great fun and a well-earned laugh for people with pain and their supporters. 

    It’s therapeutic for me as well, but the best bit is giving people who feel like there’s no hope and nothing out there for them an hour of comedy and song that is entirely relatable and allows them to feel validated and important, which they deserve.

    Libby Trainor Parker is also a comedian. Picture Supplied/Craig Egan

    Libby Trainor Parker is also a comedian. Picture Supplied/Craig Egan

    A huge concern all through your book is gaslighting by the medical profession. Unpick this for us.

    It took two decades for me to be diagnosed with endometriosis. I went to so many doctors complaining of pain, moods, fertility issues, bloating, nausea, bladder and bowel pain. And every time, I was told it was stress and anxiety, tiredness or a mystery virus. I was never referred to a gynaecologist until an ectopic pregnancy accidentally took me to a specialist who also said it was in my head, but who finally diagnosed me.

    Endometriosis, in addition to many illnesses that affect women and people assigned female at birth, is still underfunded, under-researched and lacking awareness. Many of us are sent away with a prescription of ‘paracetamol and a lie down’ or ‘get some exercise and take up a hobby’ or ‘deal with it, it’s a women’s lot’. One woman told me a story that she was instructed by a GP to, ‘have an affair because then you’ll lose weight and feel better about yourself and your pain will go away’. 

    But it’s hard for doctors as well, especially GPs, because they are expected to be experts on everything from coldsores to cancer, so they need us to know our bodies better so we can go to see them armed with more information and the confidence to describe our symptoms better.

    And I think things are changing. We are talking more. There is more information out there and, what was once a taboo topic is becoming more acceptable to discuss.

    I see a generation of younger people coming through who are gutsier and more informed than I ever was and it gives me hope that endometriosis will be easily diagnosed and treated in the near future.

    You also delve into all the endo myths. Give us an example. 

    Patients are often told pregnancy or hysterectomy will cure endometriosis, but there is not yet a cure for endo. People are also often told endo causes infertility, but that is also not always the case. There is so much that is unknown about endometriosis, but telling someone to get pregnant or have a hysterectomy before they’re ready to is extreme and dangerous!

    If people take one thing away from your book, what would you like it to be? 

    I want people with endometriosis to feel seen, heard, understood and validated, and I want them to know they are not alone. There are people fighting for them every day and working hard to get this illness better recognised so we can fix it. I want them to know there is change on the horizon and there is hope. I want partners, parents, supporters and health practitioners to feel acknowledged and that we are grateful to them.

    Living with chronic illness is so hard and we’re all doing our best. We can’t be warriors every day. Some days, I’m too tired to fight and I go back to bed and try again tomorrow. And that’s okay. I want people with endo to know that they’re enough, what they’re doing is enough and I’m proud of them for surviving. 

    Is there anything else you want to say? 

    I am hoping to bring my show and book to Canberra, so please come and see me so I can be the Homecoming Queen.  

    The post Endometriosis isn’t funny. Libby doesn’t agree. appeared first on BroadAgenda.

    This post was originally published on BroadAgenda.

  • Coercive control is not a new phenomenon

    The following article is a condensed version of a research paper delivered at the ANU Gender Institute symposium on ‘Understanding Coercive Control’ that explored coercive control from multiple inter-disciplinary perspectives.

    The issue of coercive control – what is it, how do we recognise it, should it be criminalised – has been subjected to significant media and public attention in the last few years. This, in conjunction with the fact that the term ‘coercive control’ was only coined in 2007 by sociologist Evan Stark, contributes to the assumption that coercive control is a new phenomenon.

    However, the patterns of behaviours designed to intimate, control, and isolate an individual that Stark classifies as coercive control have been a feature of intimate partnerships since at least the nineteenth century.

    Notably, it was as early as the 1880s that these behaviours were beginning to be criticised and recognised as unacceptable masculine marital behaviours, or as abuses of patriarchal authority.  Through law and literature, wives and women were claiming that a husband’s unquestioned control over all aspects of his wife’s life was an unacceptable abuse of patriarchal power – with some divorce court judges supporting this assertion.

    The 1886 novel of Rosa Praed, The Right Honourable, is an enlightening example of how colonial women used literature to critique domestic violence in all its forms, including the non-physical and especially patterns of behaviour that would now be termed coercive control. Despite Praed being Australia’s most popular and well-known female author during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, renowned for her damning portrayals and critiques of marriage, few of her books have been reprinted since their original publication.

    The Right Honourable is no exception to this – despite being reprinted multiple times throughout the 1880s and 1890s, it has been out of print for a century.

    Zoe Smith believes the 1886 novel of Rosa Praed, The Right Honourable, is an enlightening example of how colonial women used literature to critique domestic violence in all its forms. Picture: Supplied

    Zoe Smith believes the 1886 novel of Rosa Praed, The Right Honourable, is an enlightening example of how colonial women used literature to critique domestic violence in all its forms. Picture: Supplied

    In The Right Honourable, Crichton Kenway is introduced as a man ‘who seemed fairly fitted to be a hero of romance of the conventional order. He was tall, upright, good-looking, well dressed, and had an air of breeding’. A politician who moves in all the right social circles, he and his Australian wife Koorali seemingly have the perfect relationship. However, Crichton’s marital behaviour means that the marriage between himself and Koorali is clearly no ‘romance of the conventional order’.

    The marriage is characterised by psychological and verbal abuse directed towards Koorali, with Crichton’s behaviour comprehensible to the modern reader as behaviour we would now term ‘coercive control’ and ‘gaslighting’.

    Crichton tells Koorali how to dress, he regulates her behaviour at balls to ensure she is constantly working to his advantage in using her feminine wiles to charm his superiors, he reads her letters over her shoulder, he criticises and monitors her expenditure. All this occurs in conjuction with his verbal abuse designed to belittle and demean her, ‘crude, hard things in a way that hurt her like a blow’.

    As Praed describes, ‘Crichton, though never absolutely rude or rough, had a rasping, overbearing manner at home – a way of harking upon mean detail, of fault-finding, and of attributing the lowest motive to every action, which often caused Koorali to wince, destroying her spontaneity and self-confidence, and making her timid and reserved, and less and less a thing of flesh and blood’. Resultantly, Koorali ‘began to believe that she was really stupid and wanting in common sense, as Crichton so often told her, and that he had reasonable cause for complaint’.

    Notably, these behaviours are the most prominent form of domestic violence depicted by Praed in the novel, and are judged by Praed and other characters in the text, both male and female, to be behaviours beyond reasonable patriarchal authority. It is insinuated that this form of abuse is inherently linked to other forms of domestic violence – later in the text when Koorali states that she will leave Crichton as a result of his controlling behaviour, he threatens her with legally sanctioned marital rape which is coupled with the first explicit hinting of an act of physical violence – ‘he made a gesture as if he would have fell upon her and throttled her there and then’.

    The acts of verbal and psychological abuse, and what we would consider coercive control, are the key feature Praed sought to emphasise in her critique of masculine marital behaviour – her fiction, situated in the romance and domestic realist genres, generally sought to highlight the myriad forms of abuse faced by wives in colonial marriages.

    These patterns of behaviours were not a new form of unacceptable marital masculine behaviour for colonial female authors such as Praed to criticise. From 1880, Ada Cambridge, a popular writer of serial fiction in Australian newspapers, detailed the systematic regime of control and abuse wives could suffer at the hands of husbands in her fiction. In Cambridge’s ‘Dinah’, serialised in The Australasian from 1879-1880, Dinah’s husband subjects her to a regime of humiliation, economic control, and psychological abuse that would be recognised today as coercive control: ‘he watched over her expenditure with a suspicious watchfulness that pounced upon every sixpence wasted; and if she tore her dress, or knocked over a wineglass, he made her life a burden to her for hours afterwards’.

    As the narrator describes of Dinah’s experiences: ‘the humiliations to which she was subjected were petty, indeed, from an outside point of view – hints and slights and sneers that made no noise or scandal but they were nonetheless the cruellest that the ingenuity of an aggrieved husband, who was at once bully and coward, could devise’.

    In a similar state of marital relations to Koorali and Crichton, the psychological abuse and controlling behaviour perpetrated by Dinah’s husband is the only instance of domestic violence that Cambridge explicitly details, aside from hinting at an occasion of marital rape.

    By the mid 1880s then, there was certainly a growing awareness and criticism of the myriad of forms that domestic violence could take in marriages. The question of what to call this spectrum of behaviours was a difficult one – whilst ‘wife-beating’ was still the most popular term, connoting images of working class men perpetrating physical violence, courts and newspapers focused more broadly on what they termed ‘cruelty’, a legal term subjective to the discretion of individual judges. Acts that we would now consider to be economic violence, psychological abuse, and coercive control were either constructed as ‘mental cruelty’ or as constituting a broader ‘system of tyranny’ that a husband could subject his wife to.

    By 1890, the New South Wales case of Hume v Hume, presided over by Justice Windeyer, court cemented ‘mental cruelty’ and a husband’s ‘system of tyranny’ as a form of domestic violence cruel enough to warrant a wife a divorce without also declaring physical violence. Edward Hume had ‘cut his wife Ellen off from the intercourse of her friends; refused to speak to her for days and weeks, except in orders’ coupled with oaths and abuse, and refused to let her leave their property’.

    Yet, coercive control alone or accompanied by the ‘occasional’ blow was not enough to break the sacred bonds of marriage across the whole of Australia – Windeyer was the exception amongst his fellow judges in Victoria and Queensland. Dismissing a 1912 case in Queensland in which William Tredea had isolated his wife Laura on a rural pastoral station and controlled the amount of time she spent with her children, Justice Shand declared he had to be ‘careful not to go beyond the limits of legal cruelty’ and to not overly restrict a husband’s understood household authority.

    A husband’s ‘system of tyranny’ could therefore and still was tolerated and upheld, despite growing awareness and criticism, and it wouldn’t be until the 1970s that this broader pattern of abusive behaviours would again be brought to public attention by feminists criticising domestic violence more broadly. The establishment of women’s refuges such as Elsie in 1974, alongside the testimonies of wives to the Royal Commission on Human Relationships published in 1977, put a spotlight on domestic violence, with acts of coercive control given renewed public and feminist attention. See Michelle Arrow’s The Seventies for more on this.

    Yet, it has taken until 2007 for the pattern of behaviours to be given an official name and definition, and it is only in the last few years, in the wake of cases such as the murder of Hannah Clarke and the subsequent relevant of the nature of her husband’s abusive and controlling behaviour.

    Why? That I can’t answer, but it is high time that we acknowledge that coercive control in Australia has been the subject of feminist and legal attention for 150 years.

    As for what historians like myself can contribute to current discussions by historicising coercive control, openly acknowledging the cultural discourses and acceptability around contemporary forms of violence, and judging historical violence by current standards, allows for a revitalised and more complex understanding of domestic violence in the past – an understanding that is vital in thinking about domestic violence and coercive control in Australia and Australian society more broadly if we ever going to deal with our ‘national problem’.

    The post Coercive control is not a new phenomenon appeared first on BroadAgenda.

    This post was originally published on BroadAgenda.

  • “The child cannot fathom the horror awaiting her”

    Zimbabwean author Lucy Mushita has written a moving, original and emotional novel called, Chinongwa. The book recounts a coming-of-age story set in rural 1920s Zimbabwe. Chinongwa’s family have been displaced from their lands and are very poor. One desperate solution to hunger is to trade young daughters into marriage. Chinongwa, a small, thin girl, is eventually offered as a second wife to a man who is old enough to be her grandfather. 

    Given Lucy Mushita’s brave decision to tackle child marriage, BroadAgenda editor Ginger Gorman had a chat with the debut author.

    This book was based on a real story from your community. Why was it so hard to find out the background to this story from people in your village? 

    Though not my own grandmother (both my grandmothers died giving birth), Chinongwa’s story was a village shame that was whispered about. 

     What happened when you tried? 

    Between the age of three and five, I innocently joined a conversation of these two grandmothers. One of them threatened to wash my mouth with soap if I repeated what I had heard. I ran away but from then on, Grandmother Chinongwa’s story became my obsession. I’d pretend to play next to adults, eavesdropping. Years later, I’d return from France with my first child, to discover that I could now join adult conversations. On asking questions about Chinongwa, I got three reactions.

    ‘Who send you to ask me?’

    ‘I don’t remember; let sleeping dogs lie.’

    ‘That was sad, wasn’t it?’ 

    I had to pull any information out of their noses. 

    Is it usual to be so secretive about these things in Zimbabwe?

    Unpalatable pasts tended to be cloaked in tired nods, shrugs and sighs. They had given her away; they were responsible for all her suffering. The sight of Chinongwa could only provoke their guilt, making it difficult for them to maintain the group amnesia they preferred.

    Please give us the global context for child marriage and why it makes you so angry. 

    In Zimbabwe, the man pays roora (a dowry) in money, cows, goats, clothes – for his bride. This incentivises parents to dehumanise their daughters and treat them as objects of exchange. While an unknown adult man who has sex with a random girl commits paedophilia, when that random girl’s parents (who should protect her) permit the same random man to have sex with her, the girl becomes a bride.

    Shakespeare says, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

    Sex with a child, regardless of roora, is still paedophilia. A 2023 UNICEF report reveals that of all marriages, 19% are of children, 45% in South Asia, 20% in Sub-Saharan Africa. 

    What drives child marriage within Zimbabwe?

    Tradition (millennial customs that haven’t changed), poverty (receiving roora is more attractive than paying school fees), parental greed (an old man loaded with bling is easily welcome). 

    Your character is only a little girl (the same age as my own daughters!). How have you tried to portray Chinongwa so we see her humanity? 

    Though Chinongwa knows she will most likely be given away, she is a child, innocent to what marriage entails. She needs her mother, chases butterflies, dreams of going to school. 

    Your writing is highly beautiful and evocative. Tell us how you developed this style.

    My writing was most likely influenced by the poetic and imaged language the elders used when I was small. Most of these illiterate raconteurs mesmerised us children as they sang, slammed and danced to poetry. As my writing is very visual, and I was telling their story, I was a simple interpreter. 

    ‘She had never seen talking lions or giraffes, never seen singing pythons that gave their eggs to humans but then, neither had she ever seen overflowing granaries, rivers of milk and honey, nor the kneeless with a woman-king.’

    ‘A man who never marries. When he dies, a mouse is tied onto his back and he is told that it is his child. That way, he does not come back to haunt his family looking for his children. Because he cannot see what is on his back, he thinks it is a child.’

    The cover of 'Chinongwa.' Picture: Supplied

    The cover of ‘Chinongwa.’ Picture: Supplied

    Why is this a feminist call to arms?  What are you hoping people will take from your book? What change do you hope for? 

    The measure of a society is how it treats its most vulnerable. My hope is that once one has read Chinongwa, the above-mentioned statistics will acquire a face, a name, a place. I want readers to put themselves in Chinongwa’s shoes, feel her likes, hear her laughter, sense her fear, pain and helplessness at leaving her mother and home. I want them to put on their shining armour, come to her rescue.

    I want communities to stop dressing girls in bridal outfits to celebrate weddings in which the child cannot fathom the horror awaiting her.

    I want men and women to wake up to the plight of girls, to lobby the UN to criminalise paedophilia. Otherwise, what kind of society are we to condone child rape. Slavery was outlawed.

    What are we waiting for, to outlaw societal paedophilia? Given the choice, would any of us choose an eleven-year-old illiterate mother? I am sure we would all go for an older mother, who chose to have us, who knows what she is doing, who can protect us and satisfy our basic needs.  

     

    Picture at top: Author Lucy Mushita. Picture: Supplied 

    The post “The child cannot fathom the horror awaiting her” appeared first on BroadAgenda.

    This post was originally published on BroadAgenda.

  • Women, inequity and getting the right diagnosis

    “Gender bias in health care, whether conscious or not, is rampant and insidious. It is often harmful, sometime fatal, and always unacceptable,” says patient safety advocate and researcher Jen Morris. “In a cruel twist, women are still fighting to be believed about how often we are not believed.”

    It would seem that the Australian Government is ready to believe. Last month, the government invited Australian women to share their experiences of the healthcare system in its #EndGenderBias survey. These stories will inform the work of the National Women’s Health Advisory Council, established earlier this year to advise the government on improving health outcomes for women and girls in Australia.

    For Jen, who has experienced misdiagnosis and serious harm in healthcare, it’s a step in the right direction. “We need to listen to women, to believe women, to hear their stories with open minds and open hearts.” Jen says the biggest barrier to addressing diagnostic inequity for women is “the failure of our healthcare system, and society at large, to frankly acknowledge the extent of the problem.”

    Next month Jen will join doctors Dr Amy Coopes, Dr Arnagretta Hunter and Dr Marisa Magiros, consumer advocate Darlene Cox and health communication expert Dr Mary Dahm for a panel discussion ‘Lost in Diagnosis’ to delve into the diagnostic difficulties women face. From gender bias in medical research and disparities in diagnosis in heart attack and stroke, to pain and symptom dismissal and lengthy delays to getting an accurate diagnosis, women confront numerous challenges in pursuit of a diagnosis.

    Upcoming panel discussion Lost in Diagnosis at The Street Theatre on Thursday 7 September explores the inequities women* face in pursuit of a diagnosis

    *We use this term inclusively to refer to all people who identify as women, including cis, transgender, intersex, non-binary, genderqueer and gender nonconforming people

    There is huge systemic, political work to be done in this space, acknowledges emergency doctor and panel facilitator Dr Amy Coopes. The biggest issue they see with gender and diagnosis at the high-acuity frontlines of medicine is internalised gender norms, both for patients and clinicians.

    “Society tells women—a problematic term in itself that erases whole population groups with binary rhetoric—that they shouldn’t complain, that their needs are secondary to those of others in their lives, and that the ‘normal’ spectrum of female-bodied physiology encompasses debilitating somatic experiences.”

    Amy sees this manifest itself as “clinicians failing to inquire, appreciate or validate patient experiences, meaning often reversible pathologies go undiagnosed to the point that they inflict irrevocable damage, sometimes even terminally so.”

    Addressing this challenge is no easy task, but Amy views every conversation as “an opportunity to heal through action.” “It’s about asking rather than assuming—who someone is, how they experience their body, what helps them feel well, what hinders.

    “Too often in medicine, the shorthand of our biases fills in the gaps, and when we superimpose an idea of someone—however well intentioned—over what they are actually trying to say, we miss the point entirely. It’s about simply starting with a clean slate of shared humanity when we sit down to bear witness to a patient’s story.”

    Panellist Darlene Cox is a longstanding consumer advocate who knows firsthand from ACT consumers that good communication is key to safe health care. “When information is not communicated between our treating clinicians, the broader multidisciplinary team, our GPs and us, it can affect our diagnosis and impact our access to the treatment we need,” she explains.

    Communication is critical, agrees Dr Mary Dahm, a linguist at the ANU Institute for Communication in Health Care. Mary suggests that one way to solve some of the inequities women face when it comes diagnosis is through more open and patient-centred communication, particularly about expectations around diagnosis and diagnostic uncertainty.

    “Patients and doctors often have very different expectations about diagnosis. Patients often think it’s a straightforward run to the finish line, while doctors know it often more of a meandering odyssey,” she says.

    These misaligned expectations can be addressed when both parties openly share their expectations with each other. “When patients know that a less straightforward diagnostic pathway is often a normal occurrence, that can help alleviate their anxiety,” says Mary.

    “Doctors who attend to and acknowledge the emotions that patients often attach to their symptoms and expectations for a diagnosis can improve their patient’s diagnostic experience.”

    To hear more about women, diagnostic inequity and what we can do about it, register for Lost in Diagnosis: Navigating the communication challenge of misdiagnosis in women. This is a free event at The Street Theatre on Thursday 7 September at 5.30pm. The event is part of the Wellspring: Enquiry and Exchange series, a collaboration between The Street Theatre and the ANU School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics bringing campus to the community.

    • Please note picture at top is a stock image. 

    The post Women, inequity and getting the right diagnosis appeared first on BroadAgenda.

  • Diane Abbott offends the establishment again, this time by calling out a Tory MP’s racism

    MP Diane Abbott has once again come under fire in the mainstream media. Unsurprisingly, it has less to do with what she did than it does with the establishment media and politicians’ misogynoir, combined with their dislike for her politics.

    Nothing worse than criticising a Tory

    What’s worse than 41 people desperate for safe haven drowning in the sea before Western governments recognise the value of their lives? Criticising a Tory politician’s xenophobia, apparently. At least if the reactions of mainstream media, along with centrist and right-wing politicians, are anything to go by.

    On 9 August, in response to the news that 41 refugees had drowned in the Mediterranean en route to Italian shores, Abbott said in a now-deleted tweet:

    The migrants have indeed fucked off. To the bottom of the sea

    Abbott was referring to Conservative MP Lee Anderson’s comments, made earlier in the same week, that asylum seekers complaining about being housed on the Bibby Stockholm barge should “fuck off back to France”.

    But in a move that probably surprised no one who’s been paying attention, the establishment media jumped at the chance to depict Abbott in an unflattering light.

    Deliberately misplaced outrage

    Marcus Daniel, former editor-in-chief at Media Diversified, said:

    Many people saw right through the establishment narrative and highlighted the message behind Abbott’s tweet:

    And suggestions that Abbott shouldn’t have deleted the tweet received considerable support:

    Author Steve Howell noted:

    Diane Abbott and misogynoir

    Journalist Lorraine King called out the misogynoir – the combination of anti-Black racism and misogyny – faced by Black women in particular, which was evident throughout the entire debacle:

    Obviously, this isn’t the first time Abbott has faced public outrage that is entirely disproportionate to her actions:

    So recent events have been nothing if not predictable. It’s a crying shame that in a country where refugees are told to fuck off back to where they came from, Diane Abbott’s outrage is what made the headlines – and for all the wrong reasons.

    The Labour Party has already suspended Abbott over antisemitism, despite the party’s general and persistent tolerance for racism and misogynoir. What more do these people want? Just let a Black woman express her compassion and anger in peace, I beg you.

    Featured image via YouTube

    By Afroze Fatima Zaidi

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Female umpires encountering a culture of abuse, misogyny

    “I wouldn’t know any woman who’s been in umpiring who hasn’t experienced something negative,” says Carly*, a former AFL umpire.

    She’s commenting on a recent study, conducted by former umpire Victoria Rawlings and former umpiring manager Damian Anderson, which examined the experience of female AFL umpires. Focus groups and interviews were conducted with community and state level female umpires, finding misogyny to be rife within officiating environments.

    The data overwhelmingly reflected a “culture of exclusion, discrimination, and hostility,” as a result of both intentional and unintentional behaviours and systems. “The experiences of girls and women in this paper point towards the need to prioritise cultural change within umpiring groups,” the study concludes.

    This is familiar to Carly, who umpired as a teenager into her twenties. Over the course of those years, she had many experiences of misogyny from other officials, and was constantly reminded that she stood out:

    “I think there’s aspects about the environment that are just hostile, just because of the system that you’re in, without any ill intention.”

    Remembering when another umpire said they wished she would be more involved in the wider group, Carly described the frustration she felt, knowing the exclusivity she was up against. “You’re not a member of [the boys] club, but you’re still punished for not being a part of it. You have to try to be in it.”

    Carly consistently felt like she had to be “more competent than the majority” just to be seen as equally competent. “I think people’s models of what makes a good umpire is based on the ones they’ve seen. And so they expect you to look like the men.”

    Only 10.8% of AFL umpires were female in 2019, the last time the Australian Football League released umpiring statistics. Since then, covid-19, among other factors, appears to have lowered those numbers even further, although no official statistics have been confirmed.

    These issues are not unique to AFL. I asked 25 year-old Meredith* about their experience as a female football referee. “Experiencing misogyny as a referee takes many forms,” she told me. 

    “On some level you become ‘used’ to the comments.”

    Meredith has experienced misogynistic remarks being made about her many times, including being asked “if I’m on my period” after making a decision on the field. She has found it exhausting. “It builds up, and eventually you begin to question your place in sport.”

    Talking about how it affects her, Meredith says, “The comments at times that can come from the broader community of referees that is prevalent across all codes (AFL and beyond) is in my experience the most disheartening.” There are times when Meredith, seeing the success of other female referees, has witnessed “other people finding subtle comments to devalue their accomplishments.”

    Umpires such as Carly and Meredith are often facing misogyny from outside umpiring environments too. Internationally accredited hockey umpire and researcher Stirling Sharpe has witnessed spectator abuse towards umpires many times. “The unfortunate reality of being a match official is that you are likely to be abused. Most people accept that this is a (unacceptable) part of the job…where abuse becomes a more significant issue is when it stops being about decisions on field and starts becoming about the person – the way they look, their gender, etc.”

    In cases where the abuse is misogynistic, Stirling says, “Often, I think this is related to an unconscious (or even deliberate) thought that women don’t have the skills to…manage a game (particularly a men’s game).” Participants in Rawlings’ and Anderson’s study experienced this behaviour – one was even told, “You can’t umpire because you’re a girl.”

    Sexism and sexual harassment are also prevalent within umpiring environments. “A pattern that kept coming up, which I think might be a general phenomenon, is basically unwanted sexual attention…you hear how the boys and men talk about women and objectify them,” Carly told me. These experiences are not singular occurrences either, as Rawlings’ and Anderson’s study discussed.

    Participants outlined experiences where other umpires, coaches, and spectators displayed inappropriate behaviours, including sending nude photos, sexist comments, and the objectification of women’s bodies.

    In some cases, harassment was a reason to leave. “That’s what made me quit that level of umpiring,” one participant said. Another stopped showing up to training because one of the coaches was acting inappropriately. 

    Associate Professor Catherine Ordway. Picture: supplied

    Meredith understands this all too well. “The often subtly pervasive nature of the misogyny is exhausting and quickly compiles…When you start to experience it from all sides, and don’t necessarily receive support from the broader community, it’s very easy to consider walking away.” 

    Catherine Ordway, associate professor in sports and exercise science at the University of Canberra, is no stranger to misogyny and abuse within sporting environments. I asked her about how this abuse might reflect on Australia on a wider scale. “I think it reflects the situation that women find themselves in sport, where sport is designed by and for men…there [is a] small percentage of the male population and actually some of the female population that believe that women have no place in sport.” 

    The popularity and visibility of AFL and football makes these sports important platforms for change (AFL’s grand final last year had 2.97 million viewers, and the FIFA Women’s World Cup is already breaking attendance records). When potential strategies to combat misogyny are raised, they often come down to the same things.

    I asked Carly what she thought, and her response was, “…having better coaches, coaches who actually believe in diversity, that would be my biggest change.”Stirling voiced the same concern. “Unsupportive people in high positions can have the ability to block progression, create inharmonious environments, and generally ruin the officiating experience.” 

    Catherine elaborated on these ideas, saying, “We also need to see it normalised that women are part of sports, so that we see women in broadcasting, in journalism, commentating, women coaches, referees, officials – all the way through.” This goal is already being vocalised and addressed in some sports. AFL’s 2022 Women and Girls Game Development Action Plan targets participation and engagement issues, and hockey’s #EquallyAmazing campaign has seen results across at least 19 European nations.

    Whether umpiring will change remains to be seen. “Shifting to a model whereby officials are treated equally, based on their ability to umpire or referee, is something all sports should be moving toward, if they are not there already,” Stirling told me. 

    It seems there’s still a long way to go. According to Catherine, however, “Once we see that it just becomes normal…Nobody is concerned about gender in a negative way. They just celebrate the differences between men’s and women’s sport. And that’s exactly how it should be.”

    *Names have been changed at the request of the interviewees for both professional, safety and privacy reasons.

    Feature image at top is a stock photo.

    The post Female umpires encountering a culture of abuse, misogyny appeared first on BroadAgenda.

    This post was originally published on BroadAgenda.

  • Inspired activism drives brilliant new Aussie movie

    Were you lucky enough to see the play of The Appleton Ladies’ Potato Race as it has toured Australia over the last few years? Written by former Canberra resident Melanie Tait, it’s a heart-warming, funny, feminist saga about a culture war in a small town.  

    And tomorrow Wednesday (26 July) the movie of the play premieres at 7.30pm On 10 And 10 Play. Or, you can stream on Paramount+ from the following day.

    BroadAgenda editor, Ginger Gorman, chatted with Melanie.

    For those of us who have fuzzy brains, briefly remind us of the plotline of Potato and what inspired it?

    Dr Penny Anderson (played by Claire van der Boom) returns to her home town to discover the event of the year – The Appleton Potato Race – has $2000 prize money for the blokes, and $200 for the women. It’s inspired by something similar happening in my home town, Robertson.

    This is your first movie. What a big deal! Congratulations. How did it come about?

    Thanks Ginger! When I was a kid growing up in Robertson, if you’d have told me that one day I’d have anything to do with a movie, let alone write one, I’d have been stoked.

    The film is based on a play I wrote for Ensemble Theatre in 2019. It was an incredible production directed by Priscilla Jackman and starring Valerie Bader, Merridy Eastman, Sapidah Kian, Amber McMahon and Sharon Millerchip. The play was a dream – it was critically received well, sold out before it opened (ah, pre-covid theatre times…!) and went on to tour Australia.

    Independent producer Andrea Keir read it, then came to see it and wanted to make it into a film. Usually these things take years, I’m told. Within three weeks of having the rights to the play, Andrea had a deal with Paramount+ and the movie was on its way.

    Appleton Ladies Potato Race – Trailer.

    I understand you wrote the script. Was it hard to write for TV (as opposed to the stage)? What other differences were there in the creative process?

    Initially the network didn’t want me to write the screenplay, having some pretty ancient views on the ability of playwrights to write for the screen (not sure where this comes from – most of our great screenwriters have been in theatre at some stage in their careers), but producer Andrea fought hard for me to do the job, and Paramount+ ended up supporting me with a mentor, the brilliant screenwriter and novelist Kylie Needham (who went on to be our Script Editor on the film).

    I learned so much about the process. For example, because we were under such a tight deadline, I couldn’t understand why the network wanted me to write a ‘treatment’ (a lengthy document telling the story of the film) instead of just kicking on with the screenplay. I’ll forever be grateful to Rick Maier from Paramout+ and Channel 10 for insisting on it and teaching me what an important tool it is. Once the treatment was written, it was like a blueprint for the script and I found it smoother work.

    Still, a film is much tougher on the artistic ego and vision of the writer than theatre is. At least it was for me in this process. In theatre, the playwright is consulted on most things when a play is being developed and brought into production. We tend to have a say in the team around us – who the director is, the key cast etc.

    In film, I handed over the script and that was pretty much it – I wasn’t even at a table read-through and was only ever on sit as a visitor, not an active part of the artistic process.

    It was my first time working on a film, and I think we tend to think that, when doing something for the first time everyone around us knows better. I’m not entirely sure that’s true, and if I get to make another film I want to be much more involved. Ultimately, the world of The Appleton Ladies’ Potato Race comes from my imagination, so I think I have a lot to contribute.

    That said: both theatre and film are incredibly collaborative and everyone brings their unique set of skills and vision to make the whole.

    The Appleton Ladies' Potato Race: The women line up to race. Picture: Lisa Tomasetti

    The Appleton Ladies’ Potato Race: The women line up to race. Picture: Lisa Tomasetti

    Folks in Robertson – your hometown and the place that inspired Potato – were super excited that parts of the movie were filmed there. How do they feel about the movie coming out? What has the reaction been like? (Not everyone was stoked when the real events took place, and you were campaigning for equal prize money back in X year).

    I hope they’re excited! So many people from Robbo contributed to the movie – as extras, with locations etc. I really hope they enjoy it.

    Not that we want to name drop. But let’s name drop. You’ve got some extraordinary Aussie actors in the cast. Who are they and what was it like to work with them?

    There’s some incredible actors in this movie. I feel like in Robyn Nevin and Tiriel Mora we’ve got half the cast of the Aussie classic The Castle reuniting! I’m scared to single anyone out because they’re all so great.

    And what about the director? How did you work together with her and other members of the creative team?

    About 15 years ago, the director Lynn Hegarty and I were put together by our then agent to work on a film project together – I ended up getting a traineeship journo job at the ABC in Darwin and left Sydney so our film died – so it really seemed right that Lynn came in to direct the movie. We spent a couple of days together in Melbourne before the beginning of pre-production, which was great.

    Like I said, I wasn’t really involved after that, but I’m really grateful to Lynn for sticking almost to the letter to the script. She fought hard for a bunch of things that meant a lot to the story and my vision for the film.

    The other really essential part of the creative team was editor Katie Flaxman. Katie and I have been close friends since our early twenties, so I was really able to talk a lot of the process through with her.

    What do you want folks to take away from the film?

    That the gender pay gap is absolute bullshit, whether it’s at the local show or it’s in the management structure at your office. That the only way we change things is by speaking up, organising and actually doing something about injustice.

    That potato racing is a great sport, full of extraordinary skill, speed and strength!

    We’ve seen a big push in the last six months – especially from actors like Bryan Brown –  for Australian content quotas for streaming services. Why do you think it’s so important to tell Aussie stories (like this one).

    It’s essential! The two shows that influenced me most growing up as a person, and as an artist were A Country Practice and Brides of Christ.  A Country Practice, in particular, really taught me about the world around me, the challenges in our society and what being a decent member of a community was. As an adult, I’ve gone back and watched it (and made a podcast about it!) and realised it does all that stuff and reflects what was happening in Australia in the eighties – what we cared about, what we were angry about, why we laughed and cried. So, there’s that cultural reflection part. And, it’s funny too, thanks Esme!

    There’s also a practical part to making more Australian work. A show like ACP made around 90 hour long eps a year for thirteen years.  So annually, that’s 90 directing jobs, 90 screenwriting jobs, 90 lighting director jobs, countless acting jobs etc etc.

    And surely, it’s no coincidence that some of the best and most successful Australian films come from this time – when we had actors and creatives constantly practicing their screen skills? The roll call is extensive and there’s so much shared DNA between all of these projects: The Castle, The Man From Snowy River, Muriel’s Wedding, Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Crocodile Dundee, Strictly Ballroom, Romper Stomper, Babe etc.

    More Australian stories on screen has such far reaching implications to our culture, our economy and our sense of national worth. Bring back A Country Practice! 

    The Appleton Ladies' Potato Race - Darren Gilshenan, John Batchelor, Laurence Coy as Billy. Photo: Lisa Tomasetti

    The Appleton Ladies’ Potato Race – Darren Gilshenan, John Batchelor, Laurence Coy as Billy. Photo: Lisa Tomasetti

    What’s next for you? More films in the works?

    I’m working on a bunch of plays at the moment, and two screenplays (one I’m co-writing with the author Yvette Poshoglian – a one woman story machine! – which I’m super excited about). I also have a television series in development with Cecilia Ritchie, who was one of the excellent Executive Producers on The Appleton Ladies’ Potato Race. Hopefully the Potato Ladies does super well and everyone wants to make all my things (including that A Country Practice reboot!).

     

     

    • Picture at top: The Appleton Ladies’ Potato Race: Claire van der Boom as Penny and Katie Wall as Nikki. Photo: Lisa Tomasetti

    The post Inspired activism drives brilliant new Aussie movie appeared first on BroadAgenda.

    This post was originally published on BroadAgenda.

  • Roald Dahl Museum acknowledges author’s ‘undeniable’ racism’

    The Roald Dahl Museum has said that it is working “towards combatting hate and prejudice.” It acknowledged that the renowned children’s writer’s racism was “undeniable and indelible”.

    The admission by the museum, located in Buckinghamshire in southeast England, follows an apology in 2020 by the Dahl family and Roald Dahl Story Company for his well-documented anti-Semitic comments.

    The museum has placed a panel at the entrance of its exhibition acknowledging the racism in Dahl’s work. It has also put up a similar message on its website.

    Anti-semitism, colonialism and misogyny

    Dahl, the creator of books such as ‘Matilda’, ‘The BFG’ and ‘Charlie And The Chocolate Factory’  made offensive remarks about Jewish people in a 1983 interview with the New Statesman magazine.

    Readers have also accused Dahl of misogyny and racism. For example, he depicts the Oompa-Loompas as workers that Willy Wonka has kidnapped “for their own good”. He goes on to say that these characters in ‘Charlie And The Chocolate Factory’ came from the:

    deepest and darkest part of the African jungle where no white man had ever been before.

    Puffin, Dahl’s publisher, hired ‘sensitivity readers’ this year to edit and sometimes rewrite offensive sections of Dahl’s work.

    Museum ‘condemns all racism’

    The Dahl museum, which is a charity, said it fully supported the 2020 apology. The museum said on its website that it:

    condemns all racism, including antisemitism, directed at any group or individual.

    Despite Dahl’s racism, the museum says it still sees his creative work as a potential force for good. They continued:

    Roald Dahl’s racism is undeniable and indelible but what we hope can also endure is the potential of Dahl’s creative legacy to do some good.

    The museum said it was:

    committed to being more welcoming, inclusive, diverse, and equitable in all aspects of our work.

    The museum said it had taken steps towards that, including:

    reflecting the visible diversity of our audiences in our marketing, by running accessible and inclusive recruitment campaigns for staff or trustee positions.

    It said it was working closely with several organisations within the Jewish community, including the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Jewish Leadership Council.

    The museum noted that it chooses not to repeat Dahl’s anti-Semitic statements publicly, but keeps a record of what he wrote in its collection, “so it is not forgotten”.

    Dahl’s comments have long cast a shadow over his personal legacy, which has remained prominent as a number of his children’s classics have made it onto the screen and stage since his death aged 74.

    Cultural problem

    Reflecting on his life, the Dahl Museum said he was “a contradictory person” who could be kind. But:

    there are also recorded incidents of him being very unkind and worse, including writing and saying antisemitic things about Jewish people

    The fact that the museum has taken until now to acknowledge Roald Dahl’s racism is an example of how slow institutions often are to respond to obvious bigotry by celebrated cultural figures. The Royal Mint even considered Dahl as a prospective subject for a commemorative coin five years ago. Although, happily. he was eventually rejected.

    Dahl is by no means the only commemorated UK cultural personality to be an out-and-out racist. Just take fellow children’s authors Enid Blyton and Rudyard Kipling for instance. The excruciating inertia in recognising the oppressiveness in these writer’s work is a testament to the deep-seated racism and colonialism embedded in UK society and culture.

    Featured image via Solarisgirl/Wikimedia Commons, via CC 2.0, resized to 1910×1000 

    Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse 

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Women’s interest in news hits a record low

    This October will mark 11 years since Julia Gillard’s address to parliament calling out sexism and misogyny from then Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott. In reflecting on that period, Guardian Australia’s Katharine Murphy discussed the ‘toxicity’ of public discourse directed at Gillard, particularly from ‘some Neanderthal media figures’. In the years since, the press has struggled to get it right when covering women and women’s issues.

    Despite the passage of time, and considerable efforts on the part of women journalists, the news industry in Australia continues to flounder. A recent study found that only 47% of women say they think news covers women fairly and provides enough coverage of issues relevant to women.

    Released today, new findings from a survey of 2,025 Australians suggest that the industry may be facing something of a reckoning. The Digital News Report: Australia 2023 presents findings from a longitudinal study of Australian news consumers and is published annually by the News & Media Research Centre at the University of Canberra.

    The data show that women’s interest in news has hit a record low.

    Only 43% of women say they are extremely or very interested in news compared to 62% of men. While women have over time expressed lower interest in news than men, the decline in women’s interest has been much more pronounced than for men. The proportion of women reporting high interest in news has fallen by 16 percentage points since 2017, compared to only 6 percentage points for men.

    Women are avoiding news more frequently, with 72% saying they often, sometimes, or occasionally avoid news compared to 67% of men. They are more likely than men to say they are avoiding topics such as sports and national politics. Findings from previous surveys suggest the top reasons women avoid news are because there is too much coverage of politics or coronavirus (51%), and that the news has a negative effect on their mood (47%).

    Perhaps women want more good news. When asked about what types of news they were interested in 55% of women say they prefer positive news stories, and 46% say they want news that suggests solutions rather than pointing out problems.

    Women’s trust in news is also in decline. This year only 39% say they trust the news in Australia generally, compared to 48% of men. While trust in news among men increased this year, women’s trust in news fell by 3 percentage points, creating a 9 percentage point gap. This gap is the widest globally, with the average trust among 33 countries surveyed being 41% for men and 40% for women.

    Troublingly, the reasons why women are switching off from news seem to have changed little over the years.

    News—particularly political news—can often seem relentlessly negative or fixated on outrage and scandal. In this context, women do not see themselves and their viewpoints as being fairly and adequately represented. As our previous research shows, only 40% of women say their interests are balanced with the interests of men in news, and only 39% say the news is impartial and unbiased when reporting on women.

    Some of this is possibly due to a failure within the industry to adequately support women journalists. In our survey of journalists, 58% of women journalists said there were barriers to career progression in their news organisation because of their gender. And 47% said they have faced discrimination in their newsroom because of their gender.

    Eleven years may have passed since Gillard’s misogyny speech, but newsrooms continue to be a toxic place for many—particularly young women journalists.

    In such an environment women talk about the difficulty of being heard and the pressure to stick to reporting from an impartial perspective that precludes their own insights as professional women. Senior leadership continues to be dominated by men, and the attitude that women journalists need to ‘put up or shut up’ appears to be pervasive.

    BroadAgenda editor Ginger Gorman asked her female Twitter followers why they were turning off the news. Here are a couple of responses below. 

    As the data from the Digital News report: Australia 2023 show, female audiences are abandoning news in droves. The industry desperately needs to change if it is to have any chance to win back those women who say they feel increasingly alienated from and uninterested in news.

    In an era where audiences are turning away from news, change is now a matter of survival. Whether they are ready for it or not, the news industry will need to find new ways to appeal to women audiences and win back some of that squandered trust. Unless, that is, they’d prefer to go the way of the real Neanderthals, into the pages of history.

    If you would like to read our article on last year’s Digital News report findings, click here.

    • Please note: picture at top is a stock image

    The post Women’s interest in news hits a record low appeared first on BroadAgenda.

    This post was originally published on BroadAgenda.

  • The jailing of a woman for her abortion exposes the misogyny at the heart of modern state surveillance

    On 12 June, a judge sentenced a 44-year old woman to 28 months in prison for aborting a ‘late-term’ pregnancy. The woman, a mother-of-three, allegedly received abortion pills through the “pills by post” scheme introduced during the first coronavirus (Covid-19) lockdown in 2020. 

    Abortion: criminalised under an archaic act

    The legal case for the prosecution was possible because the woman pleaded guilty to an offence under the Offences against the Person Act (OAPA). This is an archaic piece of legislation from 1861 which is supposed to ‘protect children in-utero’ by making abortion a criminal offence if a woman:

    with intent to procure her own miscarriage, shall unlawfully administer to herself any poison or other noxious thing”. 

    In the UK, abortion is only legal up to the 24th week of pregnancy. However, coronavirus changed this.

    People who were pregnant could receive a remote consultation with the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS). The woman followed this process to obtain the pills. Prosecutors say that she ‘misled’ the BPAS by suggesting she was earlier than 10-weeks pregnant. They alleged she ‘believed’ she was closer to 28-weeks. However, much of this claim seems to come from internet searches made on Google.

    Google searches as evidence

    In the sentencing remarks, the judge – Justice Pepperall – said:

    Messages found on your phone indicate that you had known of your pregnancy for about three months on 1 February 2020. By mid-February, you were conducting internet searches on ways to induce a miscarriage. By the end of February, you were searching for abortion services. Your search on 25 February indicated that you then believed that you were 23 weeks pregnant. Your internet searches continued sporadically through March and April 2020. On 24 April, you searched “I need to have an abortion but I’m past 24 weeks.”

    The assertion that the evidence of searches on Google proves her dishonesty reveals the thorny overlap between data privacy rights and abortion rights – the right to privacy and the right to choose. 

    Searches for health information online, regarding abortions or any other health-related matter for that instance, have no business being admissible evidence in law. However, conglomerate tech companies have normalised the collection and storing of data, along with web trackers and targeted ads. So, the economic underpinning of companies like Google results in fresh surveillance opportunities for law enforcement. 

    The burden of proof

    In the US, we can see this intersection more recently in the overturning of Roe V Wade.

    US law enforcement can subpoena data collected by period apps. Then, they can use that data as ‘evidence’ of a terminated pregnancy because of the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe, along with states’ subsequent criminalisation of abortion. The issue here is with Google searches being considered indicative of knowing exactly how far along someone is.

    I use Google to search for all kinds of things. I have often searched “how to know if you are pregnant” or “what to do if your period is 7-days late.” If I was pregnant at the time, this doesn’t prove that I know exactly how many weeks along I am. Nevertheless, it seems as though the woman’s search history influenced the sentencing.

    Pepperall went on to say:

    On 9 May, you took mifepristone. That same day you conducted internet searches suggesting that you were 28 weeks pregnant.

    What we search, click, and share online is not private. We make use of private companies to manage our personal lives. However, because of this we have no protections when it comes to online privacy, law enforcement, and in this case the criminalisation of abortion.

    Legalising misogyny via state surveillance

    You may think that the government is not legally allowed to track private citizens. However, there are legislative provisions under the 2016 Investigatory Powers Act that do in fact enable it to do so. Liberty, the UK’s largest civil society organisation, noted that this:

    Act grants [the government] wide-ranging powers to scoop up and store all of our emails, texts, calls, location data and internet history. They can also hack into our phones and computers and create large ‘personal datasets’ on us – all without needing to suspect us of any criminal wrongdoing.

    Our online lives are not separate from our offline lives. Women and other marginalised genders already suffer from the chilling effect that online harassment and abuse causes. This readily results in them choosing not to participate in social media.

    The criminalisation of abortion, and the use of search histories as surveillance, set a disturbing precedent for safe access to abortion for British citizens – and feed directly into misogynistic attempts to silence and control women. 

    Featured image via Mikayla Mallek on Unsplash

    By temi lasade-anderson

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • The jailing of a woman for her abortion exposes the misogyny at the heart of modern state surveillance

    On 12 June, a judge sentenced a 44-year old woman to 28 months in prison for aborting a ‘late-term’ pregnancy. The woman, a mother-of-three, allegedly received abortion pills through the “pills by post” scheme introduced during the first coronavirus (Covid-19) lockdown in 2020. 

    Abortion: criminalised under an archaic act

    The legal case for the prosecution was possible because the woman pleaded guilty to an offence under the Offences against the Person Act (OAPA). This is an archaic piece of legislation from 1861 which is supposed to ‘protect children in-utero’ by making abortion a criminal offence if a woman:

    with intent to procure her own miscarriage, shall unlawfully administer to herself any poison or other noxious thing”. 

    In the UK, abortion is only legal up to the 24th week of pregnancy. However, coronavirus changed this.

    People who were pregnant could receive a remote consultation with the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS). The woman followed this process to obtain the pills. Prosecutors say that she ‘misled’ the BPAS by suggesting she was earlier than 10-weeks pregnant. They alleged she ‘believed’ she was closer to 28-weeks. However, much of this claim seems to come from internet searches made on Google.

    Google searches as evidence

    In the sentencing remarks, the judge – Justice Pepperall – said:

    Messages found on your phone indicate that you had known of your pregnancy for about three months on 1 February 2020. By mid-February, you were conducting internet searches on ways to induce a miscarriage. By the end of February, you were searching for abortion services. Your search on 25 February indicated that you then believed that you were 23 weeks pregnant. Your internet searches continued sporadically through March and April 2020. On 24 April, you searched “I need to have an abortion but I’m past 24 weeks.”

    The assertion that the evidence of searches on Google proves her dishonesty reveals the thorny overlap between data privacy rights and abortion rights – the right to privacy and the right to choose. 

    Searches for health information online, regarding abortions or any other health-related matter for that instance, have no business being admissible evidence in law. However, conglomerate tech companies have normalised the collection and storing of data, along with web trackers and targeted ads. So, the economic underpinning of companies like Google results in fresh surveillance opportunities for law enforcement. 

    The burden of proof

    In the US, we can see this intersection more recently in the overturning of Roe V Wade.

    US law enforcement can subpoena data collected by period apps. Then, they can use that data as ‘evidence’ of a terminated pregnancy because of the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe, along with states’ subsequent criminalisation of abortion. The issue here is with Google searches being considered indicative of knowing exactly how far along someone is.

    I use Google to search for all kinds of things. I have often searched “how to know if you are pregnant” or “what to do if your period is 7-days late.” If I was pregnant at the time, this doesn’t prove that I know exactly how many weeks along I am. Nevertheless, it seems as though the woman’s search history influenced the sentencing.

    Pepperall went on to say:

    On 9 May, you took mifepristone. That same day you conducted internet searches suggesting that you were 28 weeks pregnant.

    What we search, click, and share online is not private. We make use of private companies to manage our personal lives. However, because of this we have no protections when it comes to online privacy, law enforcement, and in this case the criminalisation of abortion.

    Legalising misogyny via state surveillance

    You may think that the government is not legally allowed to track private citizens. However, there are legislative provisions under the 2016 Investigatory Powers Act that do in fact enable it to do so. Liberty, the UK’s largest civil society organisation, noted that this:

    Act grants [the government] wide-ranging powers to scoop up and store all of our emails, texts, calls, location data and internet history. They can also hack into our phones and computers and create large ‘personal datasets’ on us – all without needing to suspect us of any criminal wrongdoing.

    Our online lives are not separate from our offline lives. Women and other marginalised genders already suffer from the chilling effect that online harassment and abuse causes. This readily results in them choosing not to participate in social media.

    The criminalisation of abortion, and the use of search histories as surveillance, set a disturbing precedent for safe access to abortion for British citizens – and feed directly into misogynistic attempts to silence and control women. 

    Featured image via Mikayla Mallek on Unsplash

    By temi lasade-anderson

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • ‘Optimistic we will pull ourselves back from the brink’

    In her book new book, Man-Made, Walkley Award-winning journalist Tracey Spicer asks the hard quesitons about how AI will change our lives. What’s the point in agitating to change the present, if bigotry is being embedded into our futures? BroadAgenda editor, Ginger Gorman, sat down with Tracey and had a chat. 

    AI has been in the news a lot lately. What is AI (in a very basic way)? And why do you think people are so scared about it? 

    AI is a constellation of technologies that mimics the human brain. Every time we use a chatbot, search engine or robot vacuum cleaner, we’re interacting with artificial intelligence. Many people are scared of AI because of its capacity to appear sentient: like a human. For example, communicating with ChatGPT can seem like chatting with a friend. It’s quite disconcerting.

    Why did you want to write about AI?

    When my son was 11 years old, he asked for a “robot slave”. Taj had been watching the TV cartoon series South Park, in which Cartman orders around his Amazon Alexa in vulgar and offensive language. This was a lightbulb moment: I realised the 1950s ideal of women and girls being servile is being embedded into the machines of the future. Suddenly, I feared that the gains of the civil rights and feminist movements would be rolled back because of algorithmic bias.

    Cover: Man-Made How the bias of the past is being built into the future

    Cover: Man-Made
    How the bias of the past is being built into the future

    You believe folks are asking the wrong questions. What SHOULD we be concerned about?

    There’s been a lot of coverage about data privacy, copyright and how artificial intelligence challenges what is means to be human. These are important issues. But most of the people speaking about this are male technologists. Bias and discrimination are seen as lesser-order problems. However, this bigotry can be a matter of life-and-death. Algorithms are deciding whether you can emigrate, get a promotion, or access medical treatment in hospital. These real-world conundrums are happening right now, all around the world.

         What does misogyny and bigotry have to do with AI?

    EVERYTHING. The majority of AI innovations are being created by a small group of white men in Silicon Valley. They’re creating a perfect world in which technology works really well – for them. One of the most obvious examples is pointed out by Chukwuemeka Afigbo, a Nigerian tech worker. 

    Afigbo tweets a video of a ‘racist’ automatic soap dispenser at a Marriott hotel: it works for a white person’s hands, but not a Black person’s. Issues like this would be easily avoided by testing devices on people with a variety of skin tones. But creators are beset by their own unconscious bias.

    What kind of world will unfold if we don’t intervene now?

    There’s a clear and present danger we’re heading towards a dystopian future marked by authoritarian governments, mass unemployment and poverty, and digitally-entrenched injustice.

    What’s the alternative to this? 

    We need more women and people from marginalised communities in positions of power within the technology sector, to embed diversity and inclusion from the outset. 

    Ethics must be considered as a priority. And we should harness the power of radical compassion to embrace humanity, instead of outsourcing it to the corporate sector. Ultimately, I am optimistic that we will pull ourselves back from the brink. 

    ‘I tend to think we have an obligation to tell stories about a future that is more just and fair and equitable and sustainable, and thus also more optimistic,’ Distinguished Professor Genevieve Bell from the ANU tells me. ‘And I think we also have an obligation to actively disrupt the present to make those stories possible.’ 

    Your book is very funny! What’s your favourite hilarious anecdote in the book? 

    During online shopping expeditions, are you asked to approve replacements if items are out of stock? Add artificial intelligence, and you end up with some hilarious suggestions. One Facebook user posts a screenshot of a product substitution attempted by Walmart in the US.

    Tampax Pearl tampons are unavailable, so the robot suggests whole white mushrooms instead. I’ve never tried to shove a mushie up there to absorb the bleeding, but who knows? It could become a natural alternative.

    What did you learn that you weren’t expecting? 

    That there is a childcare robot in Japan which says, “I’m watching over you, even when you are sleeping”. Creepy.

    What do you hope people take away from your book? Is there anything else you want to say?

    I hope Man-Made opens people’s eyes to the tectonic shifts happening in recent years. We’re living through the Fourth Industrial Revolution. This is a priceless opportunity for all of us to play a part in a future made for humans, by humans. It’s time to stand tall and say, “Enough!”

    Picture at top: Walkley Award-winning journalist Tracey Spicer. Picture: Supplied

    The post ‘Optimistic we will pull ourselves back from the brink’ appeared first on BroadAgenda.

    This post was originally published on BroadAgenda.

  • Pacific Feminist Forum: a growing movement for change

    The 3rd Pacific Feminist Forum will be held in Fiji from 8- 10 May 2023. It is described by the organisers as “a platform for Pacific feminists to come together and share their experiences and strategies and inspire others to take on new challenges in their advocacy work and commitment and fight to address the issue of discrimination women face within their own countries and regions.”

    This coordinated and diverse Pacific feminist civil society Forum generates and affirms Pacific feminist knowledge sharing and strategy.  It provides an accessible and egalitarian space for feminist community building and organising . This has given a greater opportunity to Pacific Island civil society actors to harness, influence and promote political and social change.

    Pacific regional feminist civil society is collectively creating spaces to be heard. Pacific feminists share initiatives, reconcile differences in goals, resolve tensions, have open processes, work across difference and sustain actions which have resulted in Pacific feminist civil society being able to build a space for influencing other regional decision makers.

    In doing so, they have also been responding to the perceived problem of a global backlash against women’s rights and rights of sexual orientation and gender identity, a failure to progress the Beijing Platform for Action and the Sustainable Development Goals, and shrinking civil society spaces for feminist civil society in global decision-making.

    An example of one outcome statement from the Pacific Feminist Forum in 2022. Picture: Supplied/Jane Alver

    An example of one outcome statement from the Pacific Feminist Forum in 2022. Picture: Supplied/Jane Alver

    The individual country national level feminist forums that have emerged in the last year and the Pacific regional level forum held in 2016, 2019 and now this year all provide ways forward to foster diversity in Pacific feminist alliances made up of individual entities, and negotiate and amplify common goals. Feminist civil society acting with greater cooperation and collaboration is resulting in diverse inclusion of multiple voices of Pacific actors. The impact of feminist movements and other initiatives of marginalised groups organising to contest gender inequality is continuing to grow.

    The 3rd Pacific Feminist Forum is supported by the Australian Government through the We Rise Coalition and Pacific Women Lead at Pacific-Community-SPC (PWL at SPC), and the European Union in the Pacific, and the Pacific-UN Spotlight Initiative.

    The 3rd PFF Working Group includes Sista, Brown Girl Woke Pacific Feminist Forum – PFF, Pacific Disability Forum, Voice For Change – Jiwaka,PNG, Kiribati Association of Non-Governmental Organisation – KANGO, femLINKpacific and the Fiji Women’s Rights Movement.

    These coalitions and forums can be seen as forming a broader movement across difference within their own organisations and networks, but also as reaching out across movements to build numbers, amplify diverse voices and create more transformative change. The outcome statements from these forums also provide a negotiated platform that can be taken into other meetings and to grow impact and influence. To follow the PFF watch #𝐏𝐅𝐅𝟑 #𝐏𝐚𝐜𝐢𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐅𝐞𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐅𝐨𝐫𝐮𝐦 #𝐏𝐅𝐅𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟑 #𝐏𝐚𝐬𝐢𝐟𝐢𝐤𝐚𝐖𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐂𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 #𝐏𝐚𝐜𝐌𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭

     

    • Picture at top: We Rise Coalition (femLINKpacific, Fiji Women’s Rights Movement and the International Women’s Development Agency – IWDA) shares a statement of solidarity on anniversary of the 2nd Pacific Feminist Forum – PFF. Picture: Twitter

     

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