When Meryl Streep and the stars of the upcoming film Suffragette donned t-shirts emblazoned with the quote “I’d rather be a rebel than a slave,” they reignited a contentious debate in feminism.
Anne Summers’ ambitious 1975 book reframed Australian history by placing women at its centre. It was a book of its time. But its groundbreaking approach ensures it is also a book for today.
The traditional picture of Vikings is one of boatloads of hairy men pillaging their way along the coasts of Europe. Though true to some degree, this stereotype has more recently been tempered with the…
As soon as the teaching term finished, I went into the bookshop to buy some holiday reading. I came away with three books: no tomes these. They were all graphic novels. Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s classic…
At the outbreak of World War I, British women had tried and failed to push through suffrage legislation almost 20 times. Women had been utterly excluded from all the major reform bills of the Victorian…
The 70th anniversary of D-Day also commemorates the beginning of the end for the Third Reich occupation of France. Starting with the Normandy landings of June 6 1944, Allied troops began to turn the tide…
Speculation is rife as to who will win the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction. The prize, which launched as the Orange Prize in 1996, has a distinguished list of former winners, including Kate Grenville…
In 1981, on a short trip back home to Australia from the UK, I saw a job advertised that I thought had been made for me. The Director, Women and Arts, according to the advertisement, was a special role…
Next month the Country Women’s Association (CWA) of New South Wales will vote whether or not to put one of their most valuable assets, their Potts Point headquarters, up for sale. The prospect of the sale…