The Costa book awards shortlists have been announced and the one thing that dominates people’s first reactions has been the fact the fiction shortlist is made up entirely of women authors. Is the response…
An excerpt from Alison Bechdel’s comic strip, Dykes to Watch Out For (1985).
Wikimedia
Four cinemas in Sweden recently pledged to rate films based on whether they pass what is known as the “Bechdel test,” a means of evaluating gender bias in film, named after American graphic artist Alison…
Isolated, pigeonholed, marginalised: women in the UK press.
Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire
EDITOR’S NOTE: A correction was made to this article after publication. It was claimed that there were no female political correspondents at the Daily Mail. There were, in fact, three political correspondents…
With only one woman in Abbott’s cabinet, is it time to question the validity of the ‘merit’ argument?
EPA Image/Justin Lane
The presence of only one woman, albeit a high profile one, in Tony Abbott’s cabinet has prompted renewed calls for the introduction of quotas to ensure greater numbers of senior women in government. And…
If we weren’t all created equally with equal upbringings, should we scrap the concept of ‘merit’ in decision-making?
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Just one woman has been appointed to new prime minister Tony Abbott’s first Cabinet of 19. As a result, online forums have been abuzz with debate about gender representation in federal politics. A number…
Autism is believed to affect more men but women should also be in the picture.
VikaUshkanova
Autism reveals itself in different ways in women than in men, according to new research from the University of Cambridge. And this has the potential to great advance our understanding of the condition…
In most of our workplaces and institutions there are subtle, cumulative, insidious judgements and responses that serve to reinforce the powerful status quo of leadership.
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Accounts in the media over the past week explain, or rather rationalise, the downfall of our first female Prime Minister. One-time feminist warrior Eva Cox found that Julia Gillard failed to communicate…
Women need to play a greater role at the top of Australia’s art institutions.
Man in gallery image from www.shutterstock.com
One of my favourite paintings in the Art Gallery of New South Wales is Emanuel Phillips Fox’s Art Students. It’s particularly notable because all the Melbourne Art School students pictured are women. In…
Julia Gillard’s appearance is regularly commented on: is it just another way to talk about her gender?
AAP/Alan Porritt
Much has been written in the past few days about the legacy of the late British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, including many mentions of her hair. It is difficult to imagine similar attention being…
The inclination to see differences between men and women makes us blind to their similarities.
Daniele Civello
We see gender differences everywhere – in the psychology, thoughts and behaviour of men and women. But the inclination to see differences makes us blind to the overwhelming similarities of men and women…
We’ve all seen the reports of studies demonstrating women’s inequality at work. It is well established that women are disproportionately under-represented in higher paid positions and industries, and that…
Two-thirds of Australia’s ASX500 firms have no female executives, a census released by the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace agency has found.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dangoorevitch/
Australian companies have the lowest percentage of women in top executive roles compared to other countries with equivalent corporate structures, a new report has found. The 2012 Australian Census of Women…
The public backslapping around the hiring of a pregnant Marissa Mayer as Yahoo’s CEO acknowledges this type of discrimination is alive and well.
AAP
The public praise heaped upon the struggling Yahoo for hiring a pregnant Marissa Mayer as its new chief executive shows a covert acknowledgement that this form of bias against women remains alive and well…