Womens Issues

I realised, watching Germaine Greer reduce herself to the point of ridicule on Q and A last night, why she became the most famous feminist of her age. She speaks a type of feminism palatable to the fellas; body and sex centric; trivial and titillating.

There are so many first wave Australian feminists who have made a difference for women. Unlike Greer, Eva Cox, Anne Summers and the recently deceased Joan Bielski stuck around Down Under to see their ideas manifest into reality. They weren’t in feminism just to make a name for themselves on the publishing circuit. They have devoted their lives to women-centred policy jobs, committees and NGO’s whose sole purpose has been to improve the lives of women and men in Australia and beyond.

Feminism is so much more work than the shock and awe we saw last night; it’s more than an excuse to say labia majora and clitoris on free to air TV. I don’t have a problem with that – don’t get me wrong. But the whole point of feminism was to rescue women from being diminished to sexy bit parts. Greer didn’t do the movement any favours last night.

Continue reading "A limelight thief at the arse end of feminism" »

Just when womens boxing thought it was making progress, it has been dealt a brutal double left jab right cross combo right where it hurts the most – between the legs.

Next year female boxing will make its Olympic debut at the London Games, but celebrations and preparations have been soured by a push by the Amateur International Boxing Association (AIBA) to have the competitors wear skirts in the ring.

I kind of thought if there was one sport you didn’t want to piss off then it’d be boxing and the girls aren’t happy.

Continue reading "Boxing skirts the boundaries of credibility with sexist rule" »

Last September Julia Gillard rushed out her first ministry list and made a mistake no male Labor prime minister would have been allowed to live down. She forgot to appoint someone with responsibility for the status of women.

A few days later she fixed up that error by giving the job to Kate Ellis. The rebuke from feminists was mild. The first woman Prime Minister, sworn in by Australia’s first woman Governor-General, was not going to be savaged on her first official pronouncement.

It is absurd to argue that the fact Gillard is a woman has not affected the conduct of politics in Australia. It so obviously has.

Continue reading "She is woman: Gillard’s gender still too hard to ignore" »

My name is Yvette and I am a Masterchef addict. Not since Charlene married Scott on Neighbours have I looked forward so eagerly to my nightly fix of commercial TV.

Masterchef has been a revelation. With gripping culinary challenges, genuine emotion and insightful tips on cooking techniques it has become must watch TV. The prospect of its conclusion on Sunday night fills me with despair.

The show has also changed my mind about the culinary industry which up ‘til now I believed was full of offensive, egotistical, sexist chefs who thought it was OK for women to cook as long as they weren’t paid for it.

Continue reading "Macho-man chefs are now stuffed and skewered" »

One of the first of the sadly limited number of court cases arising from the death of Dianne Brimble on a Pacific Sky cruise came to an end this week.

Its conclusion achieved nothing, other than to reinforce the public belief in the cavernous divide between community standards and the sentencing practices of the judiciary.

While there are other cases on the horizon which cannot legally be the subject of discussion here, the unsatisfactory conclusion of this week’s case involving one of the “Brimble Eight”, the execrable Leo Silvestri, has raised the worst case scenario surrounding the shocking death of this young woman.

Namely that the plodding nature of justice and the pernickety application of the law – all these things may conspire to ensure that no-one faces any genuine punishment over that fact that a woman was left for dead in a drugged stupor on the cold linoleum floor of a cheap cruise ship.

Continue reading "The evil men do and the courts that ignore it" »

“Fair shake of the sauce bottle”: That’s the exact quote from a press conference Kevin Rudd has just held where he was accused of failing to promote enough women onto his frontbench.

Mr Rudd went on to say: “Turn it up. Get your hand off it. I mean, fair suck of the sav, Laurie. There’s a s..tload of sheilas and I for one can’t understand the s..torm.” Well alright he didn’t actually say that but it would have been nice if he did.

Continue reading "Enough sheilas? C’mon, fair shake of the sauce bottle" »