While Christmas shopping in a local bookshop, a handsome little volume stopped me in my tracks as I was leaving. The dust jacket is midnight blue with a gold-foil constellation slightly obscuring the title…
When we waved goodbye to 2014, we also farewelled one of my favourite initiatives – The Year of Reading Women. After reading Joanna Russ’ 1983 book How to Suppress Women’s Writing in December 2012, author…
Sport England has launched This Girl Can – an edgy promotional campaign that seeks to inspire women to challenge cultural assumptions about femininity that prevent them engaging in sport and exercise…
Michel Houellebecq’s Soumission has been greeted by a predictable mix of anger and uncritical bias toward the author, a typical reception for the most controversial French author of the past two decades…
In the epilogue to Jill Lepore’s new book, The Secret History of Wonder Woman, we learn about Wonder Woman’s importance to the American feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Lepore briefly notes Wonder…
It’s official: men are better writers than women. The news came as something of a shock to a hardened feminist such as myself, but a quick survey of prescribed and suggested texts set for senior English…
Three years ago Annabel Crabb argued on ABC’s The Drum that a lack of wives is what really holds back women in the Australian workforce. She jokingly suggested that what was needed was a “wife quota…
Our obsession with women’s weight and attractiveness manifests in different ways in the media, including being sold images that are far removed from reality and often impossible to achieve, or focusing…
Warning: this article contains spoilers. The eighth series of Doctor Who began by introducing a new Doctor, in the shape of Peter Capaldi. But now we’ve reached its end an even greater talking point is…
Women are paid less than men for the same work, despite the Equal Pay Act in the UK. These are statistics that we are familiar with. Women earn 85p for every £1 a man earns. But, adding insult to injury…
Television series Outlander made its debut on the small screen in August this year, to the acclaim of both reviewers and fans. Critical tongues are wagging, tumblr gifs abound, and Etsy has been inundated…
The persistence of violence against women across the globe is well documented, but what part do sports play in gendered aggression? It seems shocking to claim that sports and violence against women are…
The central premise of American director Lynn Hershman Leeson’s film !Women Art Revolution (2010), which screened at the Melbourne Festival over the weekend, is summarised near its conclusion: “When artists…
Shakespeare’s King Henry IV recently opened at the Donmar. And it has a twist. Directed by Phyllida Lloyd and starring Harriet Walter as the king, the production follows Lloyd’s acclaimed Julius Caesar…
It is now more than a week since actress Emma Watson delivered what has repeatedly been described as a “game-changing” speech about sexism at the United Nations New York headquarters. The response to the…
In less than a week since actor Emma Watson’s stirring United Nations speech on gender inequality, two big things have happened – but you’ve probably only heard about one of them. The first, which has…
Several British theatres have made a pledge to address the levels of gender inequality on the contemporary stage. And a theatre complex in Sheffield has gone a step further, promising to create parts for…
Three weeks ago, well-known feminist gaming critic Anita Sarkeesian was forced to leave her San Francisco home due to an ongoing tirade of abuse and threats. Members of a vocal minority of online trolls…
Having recently attended my university’s graduation ceremony, I noted again what seems to have become a global trend — design is becoming a field where the majority of practitioners are women. I have made…
The past four decades have produced gains around the world for women and girls in literacy, formal education, life expectancy, workforce participation and access to some professions. We have also seen…
Honorary (Senior Fellow) School of Culture and Communication University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne