One Woman Project

Dear Hillary,

You were an inspiration throughout this entire election campaign – a figure of poise, class, fury, power and, ultimately, hope. You gave hope to millions, even billions, of young girls (and boys) who had never even dreamt of the possibility of a woman for President, let alone imagined someone would run for it. You gave hope to the billions of people every day who face systemic oppression with no thought of a reprieve. You gave hope to every person who has ever been harassed, bullied or tormented in their lives.

Because, ultimately, what you did throughout this election campaign was constantly, unwaveringly and continually stand up against a bully.

A racist, misogynistic bully. A bully who held the people of his country to ransom. A bully who believes it is his entitlement to be President of the United States of America. A bully without humanity, compassion or reason.

You stood up against one of the biggest bullies the world has ever laid eyes upon. And regardless of what the polls show, that alone makes you a winner in our eyes.

Because if you can stand up against a bully of that power, magnitude and ferocity, then we can too.

If you can stand up against the epitome of entitlement, patriarchy and toxic masculine culture, then we can too.

If you can stand up against Donald Trump, then we can too.

We may differ on policies, or political decision-making, or views on feminism, but this election was bigger than that. This election was about standing up against a bully.

And that bully may have succeeded in this round, but he failed in so many rounds before. He may have risen, but so have we.

We have seen you do it, now it is our turn to take down the bullies of the world.

Thank you for showing us it can be done.

This lesson will never be forgotten.

And, in the immortal words of Helen Reddy;

“You can bend but never break me 'Cause it only serves to make me More determined to achieve my final goal And I come back even stronger Not a novice any longer 'Cause you've deepened the conviction in my soul.”

Thank you Hillary, let us take the baton from here.

 Madeline Price is the founder and director of the One Woman Project. ‘The Weekly’ is a weekly (as you might have guessed) instalment from Madeline around issues related to gender. Keep your eyes out for next week!  

with Madeline Price

CW: systemic racism, violence, meninists, rape

In 1963, whilst imprisoned in Birmingham Jail, Dr Martin Luther King Jr. wrote the following passage;

I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride towards freedom is not… the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action.’

This passage, from the impassioned civil rights leader, demonstrated his frustrations with the social and political moderates of 1960s America – their emphasis on changing the system from within its inherent and systemic constraints, patience and compromise in the face of injustice. This type of criticism of the moderates of society is evident across a wide array of social movements – from historical civil rights to the current #blacklivesmatter movement, from neo-atheists fighting against religious culture in the USA to environmentalist movements, and more. (A whole blog post alone could be devoted to the sheer number of social movements we have had in the 20th and 21st centuries!).

Within all of these movements is a strong pushback on moderates and their views that action done quietly and peacefully and slowly will create change – these movements do not have time for slow, peaceful and quiet change when their members are being killed by the system moderates want them to work within (if we look at the historical civil rights movement and the modern BLM civil rights movement), or their rights are being restricted by the processes moderates do not care enough about to change (if we look at neo-atheists joining with pro-choice organisations to fight bans on abortion globally), or where the world is being destroyed (#aninconvenienttruth).

It is not that moderates are bad people who do not care. It is simply that moderates either have not (yet) been directly impacted by the problems the social movement wants to change (if we look at the situation of white moderates during the civil rights movement) or they have been impacted and just do not believe they possess enough political/social power and will to do anything about it (if we look at those who state that their recycling is not enough to do anything about climate change). They support the idea of the social movement, but do not want to vocally support it, or get involved in creating the change needed. As implied by Dr. King (among others), you are either actively anti-racist (and vocally part of the civil rights movement), or you passively propagate the racist system you live in (if you are a moderate, by not being a vocal part of the social movement), or you are a racist (if you are a racist/against the movement).

When the stakes for you are lower, or you believe you do not have enough power to make a difference – you are more dangerous to a social movement and to wider social change than a racist, or a bigot, or a climate-change denier, or, even, a meninist.

The reason moderates are more dangerous to social movements than those actively against a social movement is simple – supporters, numbers and passion creates change. And if you support a movement but from the sidelines, if you are a lukewarm supporter who says ‘yes, I agree with your premise, but it’s too hard to change a system’, if you are happy to sit back and just wait for social change to happen organically, then you are not supporting the movement because you are, effectively, silent. You are, effectively, passively supporting the structures and systems of oppression that social movements are fighting against.

It is relatively easy to dismiss a climate change denier, or a racist, or a meninist (like that guy who said women could just hold their bladder instead of perioding everywhere so tampons should be taxed). It is harder to convince a moderate to stand up and be counted, so that a social movement can progress and create active change.

And it doesn’t take much to stand up and be counted when we look at the movement towards global gender equality. It could be as simple as recognising that the way you are treating two people differently because of their gender is related to inherent subconscious gender bias. It could be as simple as raising your sons like you raise your daughters. It could be as simple as talking about consent to your sexual and romantic partner/s, or your parents, or your children, or your friends. It could be as simple as calling out or calling in someone who makes a rape joke, or asks ‘what were they wearing?’ rather than ‘what sentencing is the perpetrator receiving?’. It could be as simple as not saying ‘man up’, or ‘the boy hit you because he likes you’ or ‘boys don’t cry’, when talking to children and instead providing positive statements that don’t perpetuate gender disparities and inequalities. When we are talking about global gender equality, it is easy to move from a moderate-passively-accepting-gendered-norms-and-structures to a supporter-of-the-movement. You don’t have to be a radical to not be a moderate, you can simply be someone who does something to not perpetuate active structures of systemic oppression based upon gender.

What is rare though, is a strong pushback on and impatience of the moderates when talking about global gender equality. The simple reason?

The moderate tend to be our friends. Or our family members. Or our politicians. Or our community leaders. Or our teachers, or our professors, or our mentors, or our advisers.

The moderates when it comes to global gender equality, tend to be the people closest to us. And that is why it is hard to get them on board – we still value our personal relationships more highly than systemic and social change (I get that though).

But let’s face it, the personal is political. The movement towards global gender equality is forging ahead, and you’re either vocally with us, or you’re against us.

Madeline Price is the founder and director of the One Woman Project. ‘The Weekly’ is a weekly (as you might have guessed) instalment from Madeline around issues related to gender. Keep your eyes out for next week!  

with Madeline Price

CW: rape, sexual assault, suicide, domestic violence and mental illness

I have been a named-feminist for over a decade, a woman my entire life and a supporter of equality since the day I realised that my childhood buddy Jacob could bite my ear until it bled and get away with it, but I got in trouble for throwing rocks, and, over that time, have been told a lot of things – as a woman, as a feminist and as a supporter of equality.

These are just some of those things.

1.       Don’t walk home alone at night

The phrase ‘don’t walk home alone at night’ frustrates me beyond belief, because it does two things;

(a)    It perpetuates stereotypes about rape, sexual assault and women; and

(b)    It places the onus of preventing criminal behaviour upon the person who, if criminal behaviour was to occur, would be the victim of that behaviour.

Telling women to not walk home alone at night, perpetuates two main stereotypes; that women are vulnerable and need to be protected, and that rape and sexual assault occurs in a dark alley at night by a stranger.

Let’s look at the facts here; in 2013, sexual assault occurred at a rate of 86 victims per 100 000 people in the population in Australia. By 2016, this figure has reached 92 victims per 100 000 people. The most vulnerable age and gender demographic is 10 – 24 year old women, with the rate of victimisation for girls aged 10 -14 being 559 per 100 000 people in that age demographic, and for women aged 15 – 24 the rate was 419 per 100 000 people (the rate for men in this latter age group was 48 per 100 000).

But what is interesting is this fear of ‘stranger sexual assault’. In actual fact, the least likely person to sexually assault you, is a stranger. The most likely person is a person known to you who is not a family member (the second most common person is a family member). So essentially, by telling people to ‘not walk home alone at night’, you are telling them that by doing so they will limit (or even prevent entirely) the possibility of being sexually assaulted, because, you believe, sexual assault occurs in a dark alley by a stranger.

It doesn’t. Sexual assault, in Australia, 63 per cent of the time occurs in a private dwelling by someone known to the victim (in 2013, less than 6 per cent of assaults occurred on a street, footpath or alley).

The most dangerous place for an individual to be is at home, or at someone else’s home, with someone known to them. The most dangerous gender for that person to be is a woman.

(As a side note, the most vulnerable time for men in terms of sexual assault is aged under 15 years, predominantly in the 0 – 9 year old category, where victimisation is at 65 per 100 000 male population. By telling people to ‘not walk home alone at night’, this further discounts the experiences of this vulnerable demographic – young men – who are most at risk of child sexual abuse in their own home by a person known to them or a family member.)

The second point, refers to placing the onus of preventing criminal behaviour upon the victims (or survivors) of such criminal behaviour. It is essentially saying, ‘don’t walk home alone at night, because if you do and you are a victim of sexual assault, it’s basically your fault for not heeding the warning’. This is commonly referred to as victim blaming.

If your first thought, when you hear about a sexual assault or rape on the news was ‘were they walking home alone at night?’ then you just victim blamed. If your first thought (or even second thought, if your first thought was whether they were alone at night) was ‘what were they wearing?’ or ‘were they drinking?’ then you just victim blamed again!

Stop it. No one likes it. You are damaging society.

The onus of preventing criminal behaviour should be upon the person who is going to commit that criminal behaviour, not the person they are going to commit it against. Basically, let’s start teaching ‘don’t rape’ instead of ‘don’t get raped’. Comprende?

1.       I’m a feminist!

Now don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love people self-identifying as a feminist – it strengthens the cause to use the word feminist as a way to describe a belief in equality for all.

But stop telling me you’re a feminist and actually be a feminist.

This is where it gets tricky. I once heard this great analogy; ‘For women to be a feminist and to justify calling themselves one, they just have to live day-to-day as a woman. For men to be a feminist and to justify calling themselves one, they have to take feminist actions’. (side note; this analogy failed to look at the scope outside of the binary genders, but arguably if you identify as a gender that is not a man, you are already going against the social norms and can be a feminist by living life day-to-day. Let’s discuss this further.)

The reason for this, is that by living day-to-day, women are already taking feminist actions – by calling out cat-calling, by working in male-dominated spheres, by existing as women in public places. These are all feminist actions because they go against the patriarchy. Women simply existing, women having a voice in society, are feminist actions.

But for men, the standard differs because men existing in society is not unusual – patriarchal society was designed for this. For men to call themselves a feminist, they need to take feminist actions.

There is no set minimum standard for what these actions should be – there is no checklist. But look at the examples we have around us of incredible feminist men. Jimmy Barnes talking about the effect of domestic violence upon himself as a child and his mother, and how we need to take action against domestic violence, is a feminist action. Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau establishing a cabinet that is predominantly women and denouncing the existence of a meritocracy (we do not live in a meritocracy, the only people who think we do are those who benefit from privilege) is a feminist action. Tasman Bain (from the incredible feminist organisation Meri Toksave) ensuring that, when he’s on a panel discussion, that women get the opportunity to speak is a feminist action.

Stop telling me you’re a feminist and go out and be one.

1.       #notallmen

This one thing, over everything else, frustrates me most of all. It frustrates me so much that I could spend an entire blog post, no, an entire book, discussing why this is problematic.

But, instead, I will be brief.

When a woman talks about her individual experiences of being cat-called or sexually assaulted, and you respond with ‘but not all men do [insert thing here]’, what you are saying is that your ego is more important than that woman’s experience. By saying ‘not all men’, you are defensively trying to argue that you do not undertake the action being discussed.

But this isn’t about you.

When a woman is talking about her personal experiences, unless you were the person who cat-called or who sexually assaulted or who harmed her in some way, she is not talking about you. She is not talking about ‘all men’. She is not trying to damage your ego. She is talking about the personal experience that she had (and she obviously trusts you enough to share it with you, so pull your head in and be a decent human).

Of course not all men commit sexual violence, or rape, or assault, or cat-call, or discriminate in the workplace. Everyone knows this.

But women have the right to share the experiences they have had, and the majority of women have had negative experiences in relation to cat-calling, or sexual assault, or being groped in a club.

And by arguing back ‘not all men’, you are derailing the conversation from one about the personal experiences of an individual, to one about your ego. You are literally arguing that a person’s traumatic experience is less valuable, less important and of less worth than protecting your ego. 

Have you ever wondered why the Brock Turner case received so much more condemnation from young men than any other case of sexual assault before it? Because, the people who stopped the sexual assault were two young men. In this story, of a sexual assault by a young man against a woman, there were two positive role models who were also men – instead of it being a case of ‘not all men’ commit sexual assault (which occurs whenever we see a sexual assault case in the news) it was a case of ‘Brock Turner is bad, these men are good, I support these men’.

If you argue #notallmen whenever a woman shares her personal experience about existing in the world, then you are one of those men.

1.       I cannot see the inequality!

The best example I saw of this claim that ‘I cannot see the inequality you are talking about!’ was on a post made by my dear friend Lauren Shuttleworth, founder of Words with Heart. She had just made a Facebook post about all-male panels discussing social enterprise and how this disadvantages women (who make up the majority of the field). She went on further to cite some specific personal examples of how she was discriminated against because she was a woman in social entrepreneurship.

One of the first comments on this post was from a young man stating that, ‘I have read all the academic pieces about this inequality that women claim exists. But I just cannot see it in real life.’ He went on to emphasise that he works in a firm where his boss is a woman, and he’s struggling to see all the inequality that women complain about.

He cannot find examples of the inequality that women experience, on a post dedicated to personal experiences of discrimination in the workplace.

This entirely baffled me, so I said that ‘The examples Lauren gives in this post are examples of discrimination and inequality in her field because she is a woman.’ I then told him to talk to the women around him, the women who work alongside him, indigenous women in his firm (if there are any – if there are not, then isn’t this telling of discrimination?), the queer women, the women with a dis/diffability, the refugee and migrant women, the women of colour, that work, exist and live alongside him. If he wants personal experiences to back up the academic claims, why doesn’t he ask someone for them?

Because we all have personal experiences of discrimination, oppression, and inequality. So don’t claim you cannot see them, if you’ve never bothered to look.

2.       #feminazi

Come on. If you have ever used this term, you have angered two very distinct groups; Nazis (who obviously don’t believe in equality) and feminists (who have never invaded Poland and obviously do believe in equality).

And your chat is lacking if this is the best way you know to insult a feminist.

3.       Men face discrimination too you know!

We know this. We actively work in the field of equality – we know that men are disproportionately more likely to commit suicide than women (the biggest killer for men aged 14 – 44 in Australia is suicide). We know that men are more likely to be victims of accidental death, workplace accidents and high-speed vehicle collisions. We know that stereotypes hinder men from accessing children in cases of divorce, and from paid parental leave when they have a child. We know that men are more likely to be victims of random violent physical assaults in public. We know that male victims of sexual assault and domestic violence have difficulty being believed or accessing support services (and there is mass underreporting of this in our justice system). We know that girls are overtaking boys in terms of academic achievement in school. We know that indigenous men and queer men face rampant racism and homophobia. We know that young boys are disproportionately victims of child sexual abuse and assault.

We know all of this, and by fighting for equality, we are fighting for men as well.

All of those aforementioned issues of discrimination, oppression and inequality against men are directly related to the patriarchy.

Men commit suicide at a higher rate than women because they are told as children that they are not allowed to show emotions (because emotions are for ‘girls’ or ‘sissies’ = gendered stereotype). Men are more likely to be victims of workplace accidents because more dangerous industries tend to be male dominated industries (another example of gendered stereotypes at work, because women are dainty and fragile and men are strong and tough – ergh). Men have difficulty accessing paid parental leave schemes because caregiving is still seen as the role of a woman in a relationship (not to mention how heteronormative that all is!).

The list goes on.

But the essential thing to take away from this, is that the disadvantages faced by men can be fixed by feminism.

So instead of arguing against us feminists, why don’t you just join us already?

Madeline Price is the founder and director of the One Woman Project. ‘The Weekly’ is a weekly (as you might have guessed) instalment from Madeline around issues related to gender. Keep your eyes out for next week!  

with Madeline Price

Having founded the One Woman Project and started my own non-for-profit organisation, I often get requests from individuals as to how they can start their own non-for-profit, what steps they need to take and can I assist them along the way.

These are my favourite kinds of meetings – I love hearing from individuals with passion, enthusiasm and drive to create change in our big, wide world. I love being able to direct people as to how to register their organisation, or find funding, or explore stakeholder partnerships. I love being able to share the tricks of the trade that I learned from others before me, who took the time out of their day to sit with me and explore my own journey in its initial stages (big shout out to Ayesha Lutschini from Meri Toksave and to Chrissie Nowland from Visible Ink for that one!).

But they are also my least favourite kinds of meetings – meetings where I have to deliver some hard truths.

So before you start a non-for-profit, or before you come chat to me about starting a non-for-profit (but if you still want to, hit me up because I love talking about these things! Email me at [email protected]), have a quick read over my few hard truths about starting a non-for-profit organisation.

If It Already Exists, Join It and Make It Better (also known as ‘do not reinvent the wheel’)

The non-for-profit and charity environment is absolutely saturated with organisations who all have the same purpose and the same goal, trying to achieve it in the same or similar ways, whilst simultaneously competing for limited grant funding and sponsorship opportunities. We have seen examples in the past (namely, the Campaign for Australian Aid) where all these organisations have joined together for a common purpose and have seen the incredible impact they have made, but what if we did not have to do that in the first place?

If you have an idea for a non-for-profit, google it and see if that idea already exists. If it doesn’t, go ahead, you have a unique perspective on the issue. If it does exist, join an existing organisation and make it better. Instead of competing against other organisations who are all trying to achieve the same end goal – end poverty, educate about gender inequality, end sex trafficking of minors – join organisations who are already doing it and bring your passion, enthusiasm and expertise to them!

Make Sure a Non-Profit Structure Is Right For You

There is only a finite supply of grant money and elderly people dying and leaving bequests to charities and non-for-profits, and a lot of that is drying up with government cutbacks of grant programs. Non-for-profits and charities are old, and social enterprises are the new form of charity – having a for-purpose business or corporation, that does the charity work on the side.

A great example of this is Words with Heart, who produce stationery (and now own a printery!) where proceeds from the sale of their products goes to funding the education of girls through One Girl and other organisations.

If you want to start a non-for-profit in todays age, it needs to have a way to sustainably make money. For instance, the One Woman Project is moving towards a social enterprise based model where our in-school workshops and corporate engagement provide the funding for our non-for-profit free program deliveries (our engagement and outreach events, seminar series, high school intern program, etc).

If you want to start a non-for-profit in the 21st century, try and make it a social enterprise instead (or at least have several sustainable, renewable funding streams that you can access because grant money is dead).

Know That Your Life (as you know it) Is Now Over

There is a saying that, if you can make it over the two-year hump, you have left the most risky place of any startup. Essentially this means that if your organisation, or social enterprise or non-for-profit can run for two years without failing, you have something pretty good on your hands.

You also still have a long way to go.

Now this is where your passion comes in – because the non-for-profit and startup life will eat away at your home life, your paid employment, your social life, your sporting commitments, everything. And this is not necessarily a bad thing (for instance, my entire social life is now consumed by the fantastic people I work with at the One Woman Project!), it is just something that you need to be aware of, and able to plan for.

The Aim Should Be To Become Irrelevant

Bill Gates once said that the aim of charity should be to make yourself irrelevant – if we are aiming to end extreme poverty but are putting away money in charity savings accounts to help ‘fight poverty in the future’, are we really doing all that we can to end poverty now?

The aim of charity and non-for-profit work should be to make yourself irrelevant. If you are setting up a service that doesn’t exist, but could be easily provided by our federal Social Services department (and should be provided by them) then a dual aim should be to get them to provide this service. If your aim is to educate young people about global gender equality, then a dual aim should be to introduce this education into the mandatory school curriculum. If your aim is to end poverty, then you should be putting every effort into ending it (even if that means that you lose your job because you successfully ended poverty and there is now no need for you!).

Non-for-profits and charities aim to fix current social issues, but a dual aim should be ending these social issues so that there is no need for us anymore.

Madeline Price is the founder and director of the One Woman Project. ‘The Weekly’ is a weekly (as you might have guessed) instalment from Madeline around issues related to gender. Keep your eyes out for next week!  

with Madeline Price

Every so often I will have a conversation with an aspiring feminist, or a feminist who has been engaged in the movement for some time, and they will tell me – ‘the One Woman Project needs to produce a document of all these new terms – gender binary, queer, fluidity, intersectionality – because I have no idea what they all mean!’. This short (and non-exhaustive list) is a good start.

This list of 5 terms every feminist needs to know is not a list of the most important terms, just a list of the terms that may come up in feminist spaces (both online and offline), terms that ensure you are as inclusive and intersectional (we will cover this word!) as you can be in your feminism, and terms that will make you a better feminist.

So let’s get cracking!

1.       Feminism

Historically, feminism was defined as the social, political and economic equality of the sexes. Whilst this is still a relatively accurate definition (and is still commonly used by many famous feminists, Clementine Ford and Gloria Steinem among them), if we want to look towards a more intersectional view (see definition below) of feminism, then it needs to be expanded. This expansion can be simply altering it to be ‘the social, political and economic equality of the genders’ (as opposed to sexes).

But, at its heart, feminism is simply about equality for all, taking into account all the axes of oppression that rest upon an individual.

2.       Intersectionality

Intersectionality is the catch-phrase of fourth-wave feminism (let’s face it, we are moving out of the third-wave and into the fourth-wave with our new generation of feminists). In a nutshell, intersectionality and intersectional feminism is looking at how different systems of oppression interact with and reinforce one another. For instance, an intersectional feminist would not only look at how domestic violence in Australia impacts upon women, they would consider how it impacts differently upon indigenous women, or women of a different social class, or women of different educational ability, or women with a dis/diffability, or migrant and refugee women, or women who identify at LGBTIQA+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual/pansexual/polysexual, transgender, intersex, queer, asexual/agender). Or, all of the above – an intersectional feminist would look at how domestic violence impacts upon all kinds of women differently, from middle class migrant women with tertiary education, to lower-socio-economic white women living in homelessness, to women of colour with a dis/diffability, all individuals (and their unique circumstances) would be considered.

Taking an intersectional approach means we look away from the historical ‘white, able-bodied, cisgender (see definition below) feminism’ that has existed for decades, and instead encompass the lived experiences of all women.

The goal is for all feminists to be intersectional feminists. We do not want feminism to be racist (prejudiced against people of colour), ageist (prejudiced against people of young or older age), ableist (prejudiced against people with a dis/diffability), homophobic or biphobic (prejudiced against non-heterosexual people), transphobic (prejudiced against trans people), or classist (prejudiced against people of a different or lower class), and it needs to consider educational attainment, geographic location, body type and shape, health, indigeneity and more.

3.       Gender binary and gender spectrum

Gender binary and gender spectrum are two quite recent introductions into the feminist vocabulary, but two of the most important.

Gender binary refers to the classification of sex and gender into two distinct, opposite and disconnected forms of masculine and feminine. The gender binary essentially says that there are only two sexes (male and female) and these correspond directly to our only two genders (man and woman) and they further correspond to masculine and feminine behaviours, traits and actions.

As anyone with any knowledge of the world knows, the gender binary is wrong. We have more than two sexes (sex being a biological construct of hormones, genitalia and reproductive organs, where, at last count, we have over 13 different classified sexes). We have more than two genders (gender being the social construction of masculine and feminine) – and this is where the gender spectrum comes in.

Gender, as a spectrum, means that we can have more than two genders. Instead of man and woman, we have a spectrum that goes from 100% man to 100% woman, and every state on the spectrum in between is a valid, accepted and legitimate identity. This includes (but is not limited to) the gender identities of gender fluid (where you may feel more like a woman one day, and more like a man the next), gender queer (where you identify with some or neither genders), agender (without a gender at all) and more.

Today, it is widely accepted that gender exists on a spectrum, not in the form of a gender binary.

Super fun extra fact: sexual identity also exists on a spectrum! Yay!

4.       Privilege

Now, whenever individuals hear the word ‘privilege’, they get all riled up. There are outbursts of ‘I’m not privileged! I have had a hard life! You don’t know me!’. What isn’t realised though, is that privilege is not a bad thing. Everyone in the world has some form of privilege over another. What is necessary to consider is instances where you have more privilege than another and where that means your lived experiences differ.

Privilege essentially means that in one, or more aspects of your life, you are at a greater advantage than another individual or group. For example, white privilege (in the USA context) means that white people, Caucasian people and people who present as light-skinned are advantaged over black people, indigenous people, African-American people, and people of colour. White privilege in the USA means that these individuals have more access to employment, to welfare, to the justice system, to legal assistance, to economic advancement, to safety (and more!) than people of colour. This does not make white people bad people. They just receive advantages from a system (that has existed for centuries) that marginalises and oppresses another group.

If we look at Australia, for example, and take a look at heterosexual privilege. Heterosexual people (people who are not LGBTIQA+) have the privilege to get married. This does not make heterosexual people bad (unless they believe they should be the only ones to get married, and that makes them a homophobe, but that’s another blog post entirely). This just means that they receive advantages from a system (the government-enforced and regulated institution of marriage) that oppresses and marginalises people who are LGBTIQA+.

The most important thing to remember is that privilege is not a bad thing. Failing to recognise that you have privilege over another, or over an entire group of people, is a bad thing.

Privilege = not bad human

Failing to check your privilege = bad human

5.       Cisgender and Transgender

Cisgender means that your gender identity and expression conforms with your assigned sex at birth. The easiest way to demonstrate this is through an example – if I am born female, and identify as a woman, I am a cisgender woman (also known as a cis-woman).

The inverse of this is transgender, which a lot more people are familiar with. Transgender is where your sex assigned at birth does not conform with your gender identity. A great real life example is Laverne Cox (also known as Queen Laverne, because we love her) who was assigned male at birth (also known as AMAB, or AFAB where you are assigned female at birth – everyone is learning so much today!) but identifies as a woman.

As modern-day feminists, using the word cisgender to describe yourself (if your gender identity conforms with your assigned sex at birth) is fabulous! The reason – it normalises the use of transgender and cisgender as identities.

As a side note, remember that cisgender people have privilege over transgender people.

6.       Bonus word: Heteronormative

Since we are on the topic, let’s discuss the word heteronormative. Coined in the 1990s, heteronormative denotes a world view which regards gender roles as fixed to biological sex (also known as the gender binary) and heterosexuality as the normal sexual orientation. Essentially, it describes a world view where cis-het (cisgender, heterosexual) people are the norm. To take this one further, it describes a world where cis-het-white-men are the norm (cisgender, heterosexual, Caucasian men).

For many many many decades, this was what was seen as the ‘norm’ – anything outside of this (women, the LGBTIQA+ community, people of colour, people with a dis/diffability, indigenous people) were seen as ‘abnormal’.There is nothing wrong if you are this heteronormative person, what is wrong is imposing these standards upon everyone.

This norm is (slowly) changing, but there are still a lot of heteronormative institutions in the world. For example, Australia’s institution of marriage (we discussed this one before). Our health system (where our medical professionals are taught the symptoms of cardiac arrest for biological males – leaving out the unique symptoms attached to biological females – leading to misdiagnosis and death of biological females). Our pharmaceutical industry (where people with a uterus, who are only reproductive at certain times of the month have to bear the brunt of reproductive control – and the associated depression that comes with it – despite people with a penis being sexually reproductive all the time). Our legal system (which still victim blames survivors of sexual violence, marginalises our indigenous Australians and, until recently, saw the gay-panic defence as legitimate). The list goes on.

For the majority of it, we live in a world that is heteronormative. And it is about time that began to change.

 Happy learning!

 Madeline Price is the founder and director of the One Woman Project. ‘The Weekly’ is a weekly (as you might have guessed) instalment from Madeline around issues related to gender. Keep your eyes out for next week!  

with Madeline Price

Last week, I attended a free screening of She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry, a phenomenal documentary about the women of every race, class, ability and sexuality who joined together throughout the second-wave feminist movement in the United States of America.  

For those who haven’t seen it yet (it’s on Netflix, I can loan you my password!), the documentary follows, among other things, the fight for reproductive bodily autonomy, equal access to contraceptives and access to effective, safe and affordable abortions. It explores the underground movements providing women with services they couldn’t legally receive. It follows the stories of women in the progressive left movement who, upon finding their voice, were victimised and assaulted by men within that same progressive movement. It details the histories of women fighting for equality for all.

And it made me angry.

No, it made me furious.

It made me furious, because the protests, the discussions, the bills, the conversations, the movements that were happening in the 1970s in the United States of America towards women’s bodily autonomy, we are still having in Queensland today.

The fight for legal access to safe, effective and affordable abortion services, is a fight that is still occurring in Australia – in my home state of Queensland – this very minute.

And it makes me furious.

Today, Wednesday September 28, is the Global Day of Action for Access to Safe and Legal Abortion, and I think it is fitting that we talk about the state of abortion law in Queensland.

In Queensland, access to an abortion is illegal unless it is being performed to prevent serious danger to the woman’s physical or mental health. The ‘serious danger’ guideline is rarely implemented, with hospital staff across Queensland having varying understandings of what the scope of this entails, what factors can be taken into consideration, and the complexity of the process. This means that women receiving abortions outside of this scope, and doctors performing these abortions can be charged under the Criminal Code 1899 (Qld) and convicted for actively procuring an abortion.

Despite the illegality of abortion in Queensland, they can still be accessed – it just depends who you are and where you are. For example, as a middle-class woman in Brisbane’s CBD, who is tertiary educated and employed in a stable occupation, my ability to access an illegal abortion is moderately easy (not as easy as if it were legal, but easier than for the majority of women). I have access to Children by Choice,  who can provide counselling, contacts with willing GPs and financial assistance.

But other women in Queensland, are nowhere near as privileged as I am in this respect.

For other women, less than 1% of their abortions will be performed in public health facilities. The remaining 99% will be provided through private clinics, day surgeries and a very small number of willing GPs. These cost anywhere between $250 to $4 000, depending on the term of the pregnancy and the location of the woman. To use another example, in my rural hometown of Gympie, two hours north of Brisbane, abortion services would be completely inaccessible for young women – they would not have the funds (do any of us?!), the access, the open knowledge, or even a willing GP to perform this service. The biggest barrier (other than funds) for a lot of rural Queensland women, is that of a willing GP. In Queensland, GPs are more likely to identify as anti-abortion than the national average (26% in Queensland, 20% nationally) and more than half of all Queensland GPs have little understanding of the state of abortion law in Queensland.

To put this into perspective, Queensland’s abortion laws (that are illegal unless the pregnancy poses serious danger to the woman) are the equivalent to abortion laws in Sudan (where it is still illegal for women to wear trousers), in Malta (where the penalty for abduction is reduced if the perpetrator marries – or at least intends to marry – the victim), and in Egypt (where a man can kill his wife and receive a more lenient punishment than that of murder, if she is caught in the act of adultery).

To put this further into perspective, Pakistan, whose executive branch recently debated a bill allowing men to ‘lightly beat’ their wives as a form of discipline (where she defies his commands, or does not dress to her husband’s desires, or refuses intercourse, or fails to wash immediately after intercourse or menstruation), has better abortion laws than Queensland. In Pakistan, any threat to the health of a woman (not just ‘serious’ threat) allows for an accessible abortion. In India, where you are legally allowed to sexually assault your wife (provided she is over the age of 15), abortion is accessible on socioeconomic grounds. Cameroon, a nation which permits men to control what jobs their wives have (and can thus exclude her from any profession) permits unrestricted abortion in circumstances of rape – an exemption still not technically legal in Queensland. In Israel, where women cannot request divorces (it can only be done at the request of the husband), abortion is legal for instances of rape, incest, foetal impairment, or on account of the age, mental health, socioeconomic status or ability of the woman to care for her child. In Tunisia, a country where women inherit half as much as their brothers, access to abortion is unrestricted. All of these nations have better abortion legislation than Queensland.

I could go on and on about how outdated our abortion laws (originally constructed in 1899) are, and how they fail to reflect the wider society of Australia.

But I cannot. I am just too furious that we are having the same conversations that our mothers had. We are having the same conversations that our grandmothers had.

And I have to have this same conversation with my daughter, or my granddaughter, or my great-granddaughter, then I will have done something wrong. I will have failed.

Because abortion needs to be safe, accessible, affordable and legal in Queensland.

And we are going to get it there.

Because this isn’t about your moral beliefs, or your religious beliefs, or being anti this or pro that.

This is about the right to choose.

To join the fight for abortion rights (which the USA got right back in the 1970s) visit Pro Choice Queensland.

Madeline Price is the founder and director of the One Woman Project. ‘The Weekly’ is a weekly (as you might have guessed) instalment from Madeline around issues related to gender. Keep your eyes out for next week!  

with Madeline Price

This year, General Motors became the first (and only) major industrial company to have gender parity on its board of directors, after electing Jane Medillo (CEO of the company that manages Harvard University’s endowment) to the board and splitting its twelve members evenly along traditional gender divisions.

Whilst emphasising heavily that this was not a manufactured outcome (but rather through a thorough vetting of candidates, removing unconscious bias) this is an absolute milestone for an industry which, on average, only has 11% of board positions allocated to women.

The position of representation on boards in Australia, is slightly better with 23.4% of board appointments on the ASX 200 held by women. 2016 has also seen the largest increase of new appointments to boards, with 40% of new appointments to boards on the ASX 200 identifying as women (up from 34% in 2015 and a dismal 5% in 2009). This 40% increase, in numbers, accounts for 36 women appointed to a board position in 2016.

However, despite this progress there are still 20 companies listed on the ASX 200 that have failed to appoint a board member who identifies as a woman;

1.       TPG Telecom (you know, that internet provider that every university student signs up to in their first-year and then never again);

2.      Ivesta Office Fund (who previously had four women at the helm but, after a takeover bid, were replaced by five men);

3.      Evolution Mining (a ten-member, all-male board governing mining sites in Queensland, NSW and WA – apparently all places where women don’t exist);

4.      Qube Holdings (a logistics and infrastructure company with an eight-member, all-male board);

5.      Northern Star Resources (more all-male goldmining);

6.      Aveo Group (ironically, women live longer than men on average, yet have no input into retirement homes);

7.      Independence Group NL (a mining company that not’s very independent from gender stereotypes);

8.      Regis Resources (more goldmining – I think there’s a trend here);

9.      Mineral Resources (THIS ONE IS JUST REGULAR MINING! PHEW! I THOUGHT ONLY GOLDMINING HAD A PROBLEM! WHAT A RELIEF!);

10.  Mayne Pharma Group (manufactures drugs, has 600 staff, employs 180 scientists, 0 women board members);

11.  ARB Corporation (apparently only men enjoy 4WDing);

12.  Flexigroup (despite manufacturing whitegoods – a traditionally gendered product – we are not involved in the running of the manufacture of whitegoods);

13.  Altium (software company, Australian-owned, all-male, four-member board);

14.  Australian Agricultural Company (a beef cattle company which owns about 1% of Australia’s total landmass – are women excluded from there as well?);

15.  Monadelphous Group (engineering. Blergh.);

16.  GWA Group (similar to the traditional association of women with whitegoods, this company supplies bathroom and household fittings – BUT I THOUGHT ONLY WOMEN WERE ALLOWED IN THE HOME? Oh, that’s right, we are. And that’s why we are not on the board.);

17.  Western Areas (mining. again.);

18.  National Storage REIT (a storage company who is a major sponsor of the Broncos – I do not know who I am more disappointed in);

19.  Austral (builds boats);

20.  Mesoblast (just saying, this stem-cell developer recently hit a six-year low whilst being governed by their seven-member, all-male board – maybe their hormones were impacting upon their governing skills?).

There are 20 corporate entities in Australia, listed on the ASX 200, who fail to have a woman on their board. Despite this, (namely women only consisting of 23.4% of board members and 20 companies in Australia’s corporate environment failing to appoint any women to board positions) corporate Australia is still hesitant to bring in mandated quotas to increase diversity and representation to the 30% by 2018 standard set by the industry. Essentially, the industry wants to see 30% of board positions, by 2018, occupied by women, but are reluctant to do anything in order to achieve that.  

But why is the inclusion of women (and other aspects of diversity) on management boards and boards of directors so important?

A recent study by McKinsey has found that diverse teams, in terms of ethnicity and gender, outperform non-diverse teams by 35%. This study, across sectors of business, non-for-profit, community and educational platforms, found that having a diverse leadership team positively impacts upon the performance outcomes of that team, and of the wider organisation as a whole. Where teams are on equal playing fields – there are equal numbers of women and men, of people of colour and people not of colour, of people with and without a disability, and of LGBTIQA+ and heterosexual people, this number increases to 41%. Where leadership teams consist of equally represented people, they outperform non-equally represented teams by 41%. And these teams outperform non-diverse teams for a number of very simple reasons: they are able to take advantage of a greater diversity of experiences and wealth of perspectives, they are able to cater their events, activities, products and campaigns to more demographics, and they each bring a wide array of skillsets to the table, that would otherwise be missing in non-diverse teams.

Now don’t get me wrong, I understand that one of the main reasons that diversity and inclusion are difficult to manage is that, as humans, we fear difference. So, how do you start managing diversity in your team?

The starting point, is our own self-awareness. You need to consider why are there no people of this particular diverse intersection within our team? Do we actively seek to exclude them, or have we simply failed to include them? Is your recruitment process subject to issues of bias (either unconscious or conscious)? What is your own background, influences, values and perspectives, and how does that differ to someone elses? How do these background values and perspectives influence recruitment, promotion and hiring practices? What is your leadership style and how does that differ to someone elses, and cross-culturally? How do gender roles and stereotypes impact upon appointments within a team, company or, most importantly, a board?

I want to live in a society where every young woman who is told that she is bossy, is instead told that she has leadership skills. I want to live in a society where every young person who moved to Australia from another country, or whose parents, or whose grandparents moved here from another place, and are told that their ethnicity is a disadvantage in the workplace, are instead told that their diverse skills, beliefs and values enhance their leadership qualities. I want to live in a society where every young man who is told that empathy is a sign of weakness, is instead told that empathy is a powerful skill in leadership. I want to live in a society where every young person with a disability who is told that their difference is a disadvantage, is instead told that their difference and their varied experiences in life are valuable leadership qualities.

I want to see more diverse representations of leadership in our local community, in our state and in our society.

And it all starts with women on boards.

Madeline Price is the founder and director of the One Woman Project. ‘The Weekly’ is a weekly (as you might have guessed) instalment from Madeline around issues related to gender. Keep your eyes out for next week!  

The dramatic meaning for this production is throughout history women have been marginalised compared to men, and men and women will only become equal when society stops oppressing women. The purpose of this play is to educate the audience of the seriousness of gender inequality and to shock them so they see what a huge problem it is in today’s society. This is specifically evident in everyday sexism, the misrepresentation and underrepresentation of women in the workforce and the large increased amounts of rape and domestic violence. This injustice needs to cease because people being marginalised because of their gender is ludicrous. Furthermore, I want the audience to question why certain choices and comparisons have been made throughout the play, as they should be an active audience in this production. Once the production has ended, I would like for the audience to feel angered that such an injustice is still occurring in today’s modern society and that they should feel empowered to do something to bring these injustices to an end.

ACT I Episode 1

Fully lit stage. The actors are scattered around the outsides of the stage, walking around and mingling with each other. Two women, GIRL 1 and GIRL 2, make their way to centre stage, without drawing attention to themselves. GIRL 1 walks to centre stage right on the middle step, and GIRL 2 walks to centre stage left on the middle step. GIRL 1 is wearing a white t-shirt and a pink skirt and GIRL 2 is wearing a blue shirt and a long white skirt. The words "Life isn’t a fairytale" is projected onto left wall of the theatre.

Spotlights turn off from the glass stained windows.

GIRL 1 What are little boys made of?

A picture of a stereotypical boys’ toy (e.g. a dinosaur) is projected onto the left wall of the theatre with a sound effect of a changing projection slide.

GIRL 2 What are little boys made of?

GIRL 1 AND 2 Snips and snails And puppy-dogs’ tails That’s what little boys are made of.

A picture of a Barbie Doll is projected onto the left wall of the theatre with a sound effect of a changing projection slide.

GIRL 1 What are little girls made of?

GIRL 2 What are little girls made of?

GIRL 1 AND 2 Sugar and spice And all things nice That’s what little girls are made of.

A picture depicting sexism (e.g. men catcalling a women) is projected onto the left wall of the theatre with a sound effect of a changing projection slide.

GIRL 1 What are teen boys made of?

GIRL 2 What are teen boys made of?

GIRL 1 AND 2 Girls and sport And earning more! That’s what teen boys are made of!

A picture depicting an eating disorder is projected onto the left wall of the theatre with a sound effect of a changing projection slide.

GIRL 1 What are teen girls made of?

GIRL 2 What are teen girls made of?

GIRL 1 AND 2 Make-up and love And dieting to impress boys! That’s what teen girls are made of!

Spotlights on the men in the pyramid and the men in the stained glass window. A picture of a male CEO in a workplace is projected onto the left wall of the theatre with a sound effect of a changing projection slide.

GIRL 1 What are men made of?

GIRL 2 What are men made of?

GIRL 1 AND 2 Power and money And climbing the corporate ladder! That’s what men are made of!

Spotlights on the men in the pyramid and stained glass windows are turned off, and spotlights on the women in the pyramid are turned on. A picture of a screenshot of the ’Blurred Lines’ music video is projected onto the left wall of the theatre with a sound effect of a changing projection slide.

GIRL 1

What are women made of?

GIRL 2

What are women made of?

GIRL 1 AND 2 Degradation and oppression, And facing every day sexism! That’s what women are made of!

There are bright neon lights around the stage and behind the stain glass windows that turn on and stay on during the episode change. Have a song playing very loudly that is sexist towards women, e.g. ’Blurred Lines’ by Robin Thicke. The actors around the stage bring on a Lemonade Stand and place it stage left on the middle step. Meanwhile, GIRL 1 changes into a childlike costume, wearing a white t shirt and denim overalls and also hangs a large sign around her neck which states her character’s name and she now becomes OPPOSING SOCIETIES IDEALS, and GIRL 2 changes into a costume suited for a mother - a blue t shirt and a grey cardigan and baggy jeans and also hangs a sign around her neck which says her character’s name and now becomes BRAINWASHED. 

Episode 2

Neon lights turn off and the music stops. Fully lit stage. OPPOSING SOCIETIES IDEAL enters from stage right and walks towards the Lemonade Stand and stands on the bottom step, and BRAINWASHED is already on stage standing behind her lemonade stand. The lyrics from Clean Bandit’s ’Rather Be’ will be playing throughout the scene: "If you gave me a chance I would take it. It’s a shot in the dark but I’ll make it. Know with all of your heart, you can’t shake me." The words "Nothing but a pretty face" is projected onto the back wall of the stage.

BRAINWASHED Hello, how can I help you? Would you like anything?

OPPOSING SOCIETIES IDEALS Yes, hi, I would like a post-patriarchal society where women are liberated an unoppressed.

BRAINWASHED Oh wow, that’s an interesting idea but I don’t think we have that... but we do offer designer makeup for young girls! Never too early to start collecting your boyfriends!! 

OPPOSING SOCIETIES IDEALS Excuse me?

BRAINWASHED Well dear, you have to look pretty for boys to like you! After all, they won’t like you for your brains or personality!

OPPOSING SOCIETIES IDEALS Oh uh right, well nevermind then.

The bright neon lights around the stage and behind the stain glass windows turn on and stay on during the episode change. Have a song playing very loudly that is sexist towards women, e.g. ’Wiggle’ by Jason Derulo.

Episode 7 Fully lit stage. UNDERREPRESENTATION and CORRUPTED are politicians. UNDERREPRESENTATION is wearing a bright pink suit jacket and skirt and CORRUPTED is dressed in a grey business suit and wearing a very animated half mask (from his nose up) with exaggerated features. The chorus of actors come on stage and stand on the steps with UNDERREPRESENTATION in the middle of the group on the middle step, and CORRUPTED is directly behind her on the top step. The chorus are all wearing grey suits and they are wearing masks of famous (or infamous) male politicians such as Adolf Hitler, Tsar Nicholas II, Joseph Stalin, King Louis XVI, George Clemenceau, King George III, David Lloyd George, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton,and Alexander Hamilton. The words "We’ll never be royal" is projected onto the back wall of the stage. Spotlights on the stain glass windows. 

ANNOUNCER Hello rich white male politicians! I’m the sexist public and I will be voting on which one of you should be our next leader! Now clearly my decision will be solely based on your ideas, and will not be swayed by your gender, sexuality, ethnicity or your family background. Now Mr. Corrupted, as we are heading into the future, where do you plan on guiding the ’Boys Rule, Girls Drool’ party if you were elected the leader?

CORRUPTED Thank you Sexist Public, I believe that with a strong sense of leadership, I will be able to guide the Boys Rule, Girls Drool and our country into the future.

ANNOUNCER Oh brilliant, thank you Mr. Corrupted. And what would you say is your most important policy that you plan on implementing?

CORRUPTED I would have to say that my favourite policy is continuing to represent the hard working men of our country by having my cabinet and possibly even all of parliament full of men. It’s really important to value the men in politics.

ANNOUNCER Ah yes Mr. Corrupted that is a very valid idea. Clearly men currently are represented much more in parliament than women are. And now to another candidate, Mrs. Underrepresentation.

Spotlights on the women in the pyramid, and the spotlights on the stain glass windows remain on. 

ANNOUNCER

Underrepresentation, there have been many criticisms of how you are a mother, do you think you really have what it takes to be a hard hitting politician or will your mothering instincts take over?

UNDERREPRESENTATION Well, Sexist Public, I personally do not believe that my family situation has anything to do with politics. However I can answer anything about my planned policies if you would like?

ANNOUNCER You see Underrepresentation, this country thinks that as you are a mother, you will not be able to handle politics as it’s quite a dog eat dog world and lets face it, as women, you may not fair too well.

UNDERREPRESENTATION Excuse me, but I do notice that all of your questions directed at me are all about my gender and family, however you never asked any of my male counterparts similar questions. Mr. Corrupted is a father and yet that doesn’t seem to concern you? Just because I am indeed a woman and a mother, that shouldn’t concern you either.

ANNOUNCER Yes well Underrepresentation women aren’t known for being in politics. Look around you Underrepresentation, the great and noble politicians throughout history have all been male! will you be able to handle it?

(Getting louder )

Will you be able to handle the scrutiny? How will you cope being away from your child? How will you work with the men?

CHORUS OF ACTORS Directed at Underrepresentation. They each asking different questions, while speaking over the top of each other

How will you work with the men? Women have no history in politics! Will you be able to handle the scrutiny? How will you cope being away from your child? You’re not good enough!

UNDERREPRESENTATION Frantically looking around at the chorus of men I’ll write my way into history! I can make history for myself and all other women

ANNOUNCER (Loud) Do you honestly think that as a woman, you will be able to lead the country?

UNDERREPRESENTATION   Slowly and quietly singing. Stage lights turn off while spotlight on the women in the pyramid and the stain glass windows remain on. A single spotlight is on UNDERREPRESENTATION.

And we’ll never be royal, royal. It don’t run in our blood,that kind of life just ain’t for us. Let me be your ruler, ruler. And baby I’ll rule, I’ll rule, I’ll rule, I’ll rule.Let me live that fantasy.

CHORUS OF ACTORS Directed at the audience

History really is his story.

Stage lights turn back on and the bright neon lights around the stage and behind the stain glass windows turn on and stay on during the episode change. Have a song playing very loudly that is sexist towards women, e.g. ’The Fix’ by Nelly.

Episode 8 A dishevelled and drunken man, TONY, stands at the top of the stairs. TONY is holding a bottle labelled masculinity and is clearly drunk. He occasionally drinks from the bottle of whiskey throughout the scene.TONY has a very strong Australian accent. The words "A Drunken Bastard" is projected onto the back wall of the stage.

TONY (Slurring his words ) A picture of Tony Abbott is projected onto the left wall of the theatre with a sound effect of a changing projection slide.

The problem with the Australian practice of abortion...is that an objectively grave matter has been reduced to a question of the mother’s convenience.

Muttering to himself as he pulls out a little notebook from his pocket and writes in it.

Stumbles down the first step

Ah yes yes that’s good.

A picture of Tony Abbott is projected onto the left wall of the theatre with a sound effect of a changing projection slide.

(To the audience while still stumbling down the second step.)

I think it would be folly to expect that women will ever dominate or even approach equal representation in a large number of areas simply because their aptitudes, abilities and interests are different for physiological reasons.

(Muttering to himself as he jots that down in his notebook )

Ah yes quite good if I do say so myself

A picture of Tony Abbott is projected onto the left wall of the theatre with a sound effect of a changing projection slide.

(To the audience.)

I think there does need to be give and take on both sides, and this idea that sex is kind of a woman’s right to absolutely withhold, just as the idea that sex is a man’s right to demand I think they both need to be moderated, so to speak.

(Chuckles )

A picture of Tony Abbott and his family is projected onto the left wall of the theatre with a sound effect of a changing projection slide.

(Directly spoken to the audience. )

What the housewives of Australia need to understand as they do the ironing is that if they get it done commercially it’s going to go up in price and their own power bills when they switch the iron on are going to go up, every year.

A picture of Tony Abbott and Fiona Scott is projected onto the left wall of the theatre with a sound effect of a changing projection slide.

(Spoken to a male in the front row of the audience)

Did you know my candidate Fiona Scott, well just between you and I, I think I can probably say she has a bit of sex appeal.

Walking back to the middle step. A picture of Tony Abbott is projected onto the left wall of the theatre with a sound effect of a changing projection slide.

While I think men and women are equal, they are also  different and I think it’s inevitable and I don’t think it’s a bad thing at all that we always have, say... an enormous number of women simply doing housework.

A picture of Tony Abbott winking is projected onto the left wall of the theatre with a sound effect of a changing projection slide. The spotlight above the men in the pyramid are turned on. 

VOICE OVER Spoken by Prime Minister of Australia and Minister for Women, Mr. Tony Abbott and authorised by the Australian government, Canberra

The bright neon lights around the stage and behind the stain glass windows turn on and stay on during the episode change. Have a song playing very loudly that is sexist towards women.

This piece was written by one of our High School Interns.

Transformation:

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: Upcoming Biannual Department Promotion Nomination

Dear Alex,

I am emailing to put my name forward for the upcoming biannual department promotion at Holloway Enterprises.

I am resolute that, with my abilities in this area, I would do as well as, if not better than other applicants, if given this position. I have a strong work ethic and give the greatest care and effort to my work which is evident in my stellar reputation among clientele. I have received several employee commendation awards highlighting my superior ability in this area. Not only am I more than capable at my work, the pillar values of leadership, respect, independence and intelligence upon which I build my career have allowed me to achieve highly in this profession and will continue to assist me in my pursuit of success at Holloway Enterprises. Thus, I am evidently the most fitting candidate for the upcoming promotion.

Please see attached a more detailed outline of my suitability for this role in my Resume.

Thank you in advance for considering my application.

Kind Regards,

Addison Barker

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: Upcoming Biannual Department Promotion Nomination

Dear Alex,

I understand that Addison recently put in an application for the upcoming Biannual Department Promotion and am emailing to inform you that I too will be applying for this position.

Having worked at Holloway Enterprises for many years, I have a unique understanding of the culture here and exhibit a strong relationship with work colleagues as well as clients. My skills in this area of work allow me to fulfil my current role; however, I believe that I would be better fitting in the promotional position. I am a diligent worker and am highly recommended by all clients.

Please see attached a more detailed outline of my suitability for this role in my Resume.

Thank you in advance for considering my application.

Kind Regards,

Jamie Connors

To: [email protected]; [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: RE: Upcoming Biannual Department Promotion Nomination

Dear Addison,

Thank you both for notifying me of your application. You are both fitting candidates for the position and your applications will be considered.

You are both clearly very smart, professional and promising employees of Holloway Enterprises. I wish you luck in your applications and hope to soon have the pleasure of working with you.

Kind Regards,

Alex Jameson

Defence:

The 2005 hit pop song by the Pussycat Dolls, Don’t Cha, focuses on the competitiveness of women in attaining the attention and approval of men. The song exhibits a discussion between a man and a woman in which she encourages him to believe that she is a worthier companion than his current partner. In response, he approves of her sexual prowess, expressing his desire for her and highlighting her physical features.

Structural and Linguistic features of the text support the invited reading that in order to capture the attention of males, which is constructed as a woman’s primary objective, women must compete with each other and flaunt their superior physical features and sexual prowess to establish their worthiness. Men are constructed as sexually-driven beings with little self-restraint or consideration for women beyond their physicality or sexuality. Women are represented in two ways - as ‘femme fatales’ and sexual objects or as sexually inadequate and incapable of pleasing men.

By applying techniques of close textual analysis through the lens of New Criticism and structuralism, several textual features were identified in Don’t Cha, which will henceforth be referred to as the base text, that assisted in making explicit the invited reading. For example, the most prominent piece of textual evidence in support of the invited reading is when the female speaker asks the male “Don’t you wish your girlfriend was a freak like me?” and similarly phrased questions pertaining to her physical worth. The repetition of this textual feature positions listeners to view women as dependent and needy of the approval of men, which can be attained through parading one’s physical attractiveness. It also places males in a position of power. Furthermore, the use of rhyme in the phrase “See I don’t care but I know she ain’t gonna wanna share,” positions listeners to draw comparisons between the sexually ‘adventurous’ woman and the selfish and sexually-inept girlfriend, supporting the invited reading.

These textual features also promote the rigid and restrictive gender stereotypes and associated denotations of males and females and the ways in which they interact. Thus, the invited reading is problematized and through the application of contemporary text-centred approaches and world context-centred approaches, these issues can be identified. For example, through the construction of gender in the base text, there is a clear binary opposition which is evident in the primary question, “Don’t you wish your girlfriend was hot like me?” posed by the female to the male. Her incessant need to defer to the male for approval perpetuates the femininity/masculinity binary opposition by representing women as subservient and representing men as sexually-driven and controlling. Furthermore, a subset binary opposition within the construction of femininity is also emphasized between the woman and the male’s girlfriend, representing the sexually explicit version of femininity in opposition to the inexperienced femininity of the girlfriend. This is evident as she refers to herself as “fun”, “hot”, “raw” and “a freak” and in asking whether the male wishes that his girlfriend is more like the woman, it is implied that the girlfriend is unsatisfactory and undesirable. These binaries create an inequitable balance of power in the text, as “one element… is… privileged over the other” (Moon, 2001, p.3).

Themes of oppression of women are common throughout the base text, particularly in the type of language utilised by the woman who asks “Don’t you wish your girlfriend was fun like me?” Feminist theorist Robin Lakoff’s Muted Group Theory explores the strategic use of language by marginalized groups, namely women, who adopt such a thing as 'women's speech', whereby they interrupt less, speak with less certainty, often using hedges and tags like "don't you think?", and speak less with less authority (Lakoff by Lye, 2008). This lyric in the chorus of the base text is clearly a form of ‘women’s speech’, insinuating not only that the female speaker is of less authority, but that as a woman, she belongs to a discourse that is marginalized, while males are privileged. These power imbalances problematize the invited reading and call for intervention.

Through this close reading of the lyrics, I was able to harass the base text “to make it reveal what it tries to conceal”, making clear that an intervention needed to occur (Moon, 2001, p. 139). To highlight this, the process of deconstruction, which is “not a dismantling of the structure of a text, but a demonstration that it has already dismantled itself,” was applied (J Hillis Miller in Appleman, 2000, p. 98). Through this deconstruction, as Post Structuralist theorist Jacques Derrida would say, a moment of “aporia” was found through which the “text came… unstuck [or] offered to contradict itself” (Eagleton, 2008, p.116), disrupting and unravelling the once tightly-wound totalising constructions of men and women. A “moment of aporia” occurred in the base text when the woman refers to the man as “friend”, contradicting the construction of women as solely sexual beings. The use of the word ‘friend’ represents a relationship that is not sexually-driven and confirms that a woman has the capacity to relate to those around her and to be related to in a respectful and equal manner, contradicting the base text’s construction of femininity. Another moment of aporia occurred when the male speaker states “Gimme the number but make sure you call before you leave”, demonstrating the man’s vulnerability and contradicting the common construction that hegemonic masculinity entails emotional vacancy.

In identifying these ‘moment[s] of aporia’, micro and macrolinguistic changes were made in my transformation of the text that aimed to subvert rather than invert, following “the more socially responsible path for textual intervention work” (Hourihan in Johnson, 2001, p.52). To do this, text-centred theorist Robert Pope asserts that “changes at all levels of language” must occur and so, I transformed the genre of the base text, writing “against… the grain of… the text’s dominant preoccupations and major strategies” (Pope in Johnson, 2001, p. 2).

Under New Critical theory, the base text, written in the lyrical genre as a song, is confined within the parameters of the often sexualised musical genre of pop in which the objectification of women is common and the representations of stereotypical femininity and masculinity are promoted. Thus, by maintaining this genre, my transformation could not fully occur with the restrictive parameters of the pop music genre. Jacques Derrida maintains that “as soon as the word genre is sounded…a limit is drawn. And when a limit is established, norms and interdictions are not far behind” (Derrida & Ronell, 2008, p. 223). To remove the associated limits of the pop music genre, I transformed my text into a series of work emails between colleagues regarding an upcoming promotion in which the use of professional and respectful language could occur, highlighting a placement of value in each of the speaker’s intellectual capabilities and eliminating sexualised language. This is made explicit when Addison states “I am evidently the most fitting candidate for the upcoming promotion… Thank you in advance for considering my application.” Through this transformation, I was able to promote an alternative reading that women amount to more than their sexuality and that men and women can refer to each other in an equal and respectful manner.

 In the base text, the perspective of the girlfriend is not considered. Silences, as discussed by theorist Brian Moon, “result from the fact that textual gaps enable readers to avoid questioning certain cultural values” (Moon, 2001, p. 53). The base text remains silent about the male speaker’s wrongdoing in pursuing the female speaker while still in a relationship with his girlfriend. This silence encourages listeners to accept the male speaker’s sexual behaviour and even positions them to adopt a set of cultural values that look down on the male speaker’s girlfriend for not satisfying him sexually. Post-Structuralist Theorist Pierre Macherey asserts that a text is “not self-sufficient; it is necessarily accompanied by a certain absence; without which it would not exist” (Macherey & Wall, 1978, p. 85). The absence of the girlfriend’s perspective facilitates the text in promoting a cultural value that constructs women as disposable sexual objects and men as sexually-driven beings as the male’s acts of betrayal are avoided. To demote such values and to allow the male speaker’s girlfriend to be considered, in my transformed text, I have introduced a second applicant representative of the girlfriend who is also applying for the promotion. She states “I understand that Addison recently put in an application for the upcoming Biannual Department Promotion and am emailing to inform you that I too will be applying for this position,” allowing readers to appreciate all perspectives and perpetuating the alterative reading that combats the stereotypical sexualised construction of women in which their worth is determined by their physical features and prowess.

To equalise the gender binaries present in the base text, I looked to masculinities theorist Helena Gurfinkel to understand and modify the “crucial relationship [that] exists between gender and power” (Gurfinkel, 2012). Gurfinkel asserts that the purpose of masculinities studies is to “interrogates the constructions of masculinity” (Gurfinkel, 2012). Applying this approach in my interrogation of the base text, it was clear that a construction of, what masculinities theorist Raewyn Connell would call “hegemonic masculinity” is encouraged through which power, dominance, emotional vacancy and the inherent objectification of women problematizes and imbalances the text (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005, p. 829). This is made clear in the base text when the male states “Prowl for the best chick, yes I’m on the lookout.” However, in identifying a moment of aporia that contradicted this construction, I created a construction of masculinity that did not assume a masculine tone, evident when Alex states “Thank you both for notifying me of your application.” His equal manner in thanking them asserts this subversion (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005, p. 829). However, this dismantling of hegemonic masculine language provides only half a solution to the power imbalances between genders and so, to fully develop a subverted reading of my transformation, I drew from the teachings of feminist-centred Muted Group Theory in which submissive ‘women’s speech’ is adopted by women when referring to men (Lakoff by Lye, 2008). To truly remove the inequalities associated with both gender constructs and to dismantle the gender binary, I ensured that no speakers in the transformed text made use of this speech which would indicate femininity and in the same way, I ensured that typically masculine language was not used. Thus, an equilibrium between the power held by male and female characters was created as the language adopted by both speakers was neither female or male in nature, and thus did not oppress or submit to the other.

 In my complex transformation of the base text I applied various text-centred and world-centred theories to equalise the male/female binaries and gender constructs perpetuated by the base text. By altering the genre of the text, addressing silences and equalising hegemonic constructions of masculinity and femininity, my transformation shifted the reader positioning in a purposeful way, subverting the base text and promoting a more just and equitable alternative reading.

This piece was created by one of our High School Interns.

with Madeline Price

A lot can be said for the power of women supporting, assisting and encouraging other women, be it in words, financially, online and offline, physically and more.

So in this week’s edition of The Weekly, I want to share with you five opportunities for you to support other women. In particular, I want to share with you five phenomenal crowd-funding campaigns run by women, for women and about women that you should back immediately!

1.    Underneath We Are…

Created by photographer Amy D Herrmann, Underneath We Are… aims to photograph 100 women of all walks of life, shapes, sizes and age, to show the incredible diversity of health, fitness, body positivity and image we have across Australia. These images will be collated into a priceless coffee table photo book, showcasing the images alongside the incredible stories of these women.

To support this campaign, or purchase in advance a copy of the book, visit their Kickstarter page.

2.    Super Cool Scientists – A Women in Science Colouring Book

Created by marine biologist (and super cool scientist) Sara MacSorley this colouring book aims to celebrating women in science who are making a difference in their fields and are on the path towards inclusion in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). This colouring book will encourage young girls and women to colour in those who are not only scientists, but also educators, authors, artists, mentors, entrepreneurs, advocates and true leaders.

To support this campaign and grab your own copy of the colouring book (for a child or the child within you) visit the Kickstarter page.

3.    Carroll’s Kitchen

Carroll’s Kitchen is a non-for-profit, social enterprise restaurant which provides fresh, healthy food and job training to women leaving homelessness.

Opening their doors in September, Carroll’s Kitchen will provide housing, mentoring, employment and job skills to recently homeless single women. They aim to combine giving, social enterprise, and empowerment with employment, education and healthy food!

You can support their Kickstarter campaign here.

4.    Rebirth Garments: Queer Fashion for All Bodies and Abilities

Rebirth Garments is a fashion line of gender non-conforming lingerie and clothing for all people, regardless of gender, size or ability. With no standard sizes (instead, everything is ‘human size’), the clothing uses geometric patterns, bright colours and interesting shapes to highlight those aspects of individuals’ bodies that society has told you to hide.

Support from this Kickstarter campaign goes towards a show at the 2016 Queer Fashion Week, subsidized gender-affirming garments for young people, a fund for accessible garments for people in need, prototypes for more accessible outfits for people with disabilities and more!

The best part? If you support this campaign you can get some rad Rebirth Garments freebies.

5.    Fair Pay for Women in Footy

Started by local Victorian women (who happen to also run True Blue Migration Services, one of Australia’s leading migration agencies), this campaign aims to level the playing field for women in the AFL. As they were explaining to their daughters (avid AFL-players themselves) why the women only make $1 000/game and the men make $12 000/game, they knew they had to do something.

This campaign aims to send a clear message – pay inequality is not okay. They are aiming to raise $200 000 – 80% of which will go to the eight all-women teams competing in the inaugural women’s AFL league, and 20% to grassroots women’s footy.

The ultimate goal?

Reaching $500 000 and having the AFL matching it dollar for dollar in order to make a real difference.

Support this incredible, local campaign here.

Madeline Price is the founder and director of the One Woman Project. ‘The Weekly’ is a weekly (as you might have guessed) instalment from Madeline around issues related to gender. Keep your eyes out for next week!  

with Madeline Price

The imposition of sexist dress codes upon women has been a hot topic of debate for the past few weeks, with France’s burkini ban being overturned by their highest administrative court and peaceful protects occurring in Pretoria’s High School for Girls over the racist and sexist school dress codes.

Despite all this however, we still constantly see the imposition of sexist dress codes in schools, workplaces and venues, and we still have individuals denying that these dress codes disadvantage or harm individual groups.

So here are five ways that sexist dress codes harm everyone.

1.       Victim Blaming

A number of sexist dress codes, at their core, engage in the practice of victim blaming and holding victims and survivors of sexual assault or harassment responsible for the harm done towards them.

 A simple example of this, in the school dress code environment, is blaming girls and holding girls’ clothing choices responsible for distracting boys. There are two major problems with this;

 (1)    It places responsibility on girls for the actions of boys; and

(2)    It argues that boys and men are so inherently animalistic that they cannot cease to control their behaviours or not be distracted by the presence of the shoulders of a girl (or the fact that she is wearing yoga pants, or the fact that she is wearing pants rather than a skirt, or the fact that she is wearing shorts above her knee).

By placing the responsibility on girls for controlling the actions of boys, the old boys will be boys argument, we are failing to hold boys accountable for their negative actions. Think of it this way, if a boy pushes a girl in the schoolyard and is not punished because, well, ‘boys will be boys’ (or even worse, ‘he pushed you because he likes you’), he grows up without consequences for his actions. Later, down the track, he catcalls a girl on the street because she was wearing a skirt so ‘she was asking for it’. None of his family or friends call him out for sexually harassing a woman on the street, because ‘she was wearing a short skirt and obviously wanted it’. Even further down the track, he rapes a woman. All of a sudden, he faces consequences and cannot understand why – his entire life, he has been told that he is not responsible for his actions, the women and girls he imparts those actions upon, are responsible for them. He is a boy and these women distracted him, or were wearing a short skirt and were ‘asking for it’, or were attractive to him. Why is he all of a sudden held responsible for his actions at age 25 or 30 or 50 or 80, when he hasn’t been his entire life.

Do you see the problem here?

But do you know what should offend all of us – men most importantly? This idea that sexist dress codes impart, that men are so fundamentally animalistic that they cannot control their actions.

By stating that a girl wearing a strappy top showing her shoulders distracts boys, is stating that boys and men have so little control over their actions that girls and women need to police themselves to keep themselves safe.

Do you hear how ridiculous and offensive this is? This is the exact same as saying to an individual walking through a safari park watch out for the lions as their instincts overpower them. We are equating educated, civilised, empowered, empathetic men, to predators will no self-control. We are literally saying that women need to consistently and constantly be aware, afraid and conscious of the fact that men have no control over their impulses, decisions or actions.

I’m only a woman, but that is damn well offensive to men.

But that is the message that sexist dress codes impart.

2.       Sexualisation of Women’s Bodies

In addition to the victim blaming mentality of sexist dress codes, we have the simple fact that, by punishing women and forcing them to conform to sexist dress codes, we signal to young boys and men that girls’ bodies are inherently sexual all of the time.

 Have you ever wondered why we are constantly debating the acceptability of breastfeeding in public? Because we have told individuals all along, that women’s bodies can only be used in sexual ways – not for the provision of life.

 3.       They Detract from Education

If we look at sexist school dress codes, when they are breached, the punishment is detention, public humiliation, expulsion, mandatory assemblies, being sent home from school. Do you know the one thing that they aren’t achieving – the education of girls.

 Somehow, we have developed into a society, where what you are wearing at school is more important to the school administrators and teachers themselves than what you are learning at school. It has become more pivotally important to send girls home for breaching sexist dress codes than to educate them.

4.       They Treat Women as Second-Class Citizens

By imposing sexist dress codes upon only one gender, you are inherently treating that gender and people who identify with it, as second-class citizens. They are not given the same rights and privileges to wear what they want, as others of another gender are.

 Perhaps if we stop devaluing girls in schools by imposing sexist dress codes, if we stop implicitly telling boys that girls are of lesser value and can have things imposed upon them, we might have boys start respecting girls more (and not post explicit photos of them without their consent online).

5.       Sexist Dress Codes Don’t Just Impact Upon Women

Sexist dress codes impact upon everyone. When girls cannot wear shorts to school (although the boys can) it impacts upon their ability to play sport at lunchtimes. When boys cannot wear shorts or skirts in summer (only trousers, although the girls are allowed skirts) it impacts upon their comfort and ability to concentrate in the heat. When boys cannot have long hair and earrings and girls can, it impacts upon freedom of expression (for no apparent reason!).

We haven’t even delved into the issues of dress codes for gender queer, gender non-binary, agender, gender fluid or transgender individuals.

In summary, sexist dress codes suck and we need to get rid of them.

Madeline Price is the founder and director of the One Woman Project. ‘The Weekly’ is a weekly (as you might have guessed) instalment from Madeline around issues related to gender. Keep your eyes out for next week!  

 with Madeline Price

The One Woman Project’s current campaign focuses on the alarmingly high rate at which the number of Australian women experience sexual assault and family and domestic violence. This is an issue that needs to be addressed immediately, as we believe that any incident of this type is too many. We have created a campaign that aims to refocus the statistics away from what can be perceived as political rhetoric and into the personal realm.

The campaign draws its inspiration from something a significant number of us do every day, order and consume a cup of coffee. This is something that some of us pay little mind to, whereas to others it is part of a comforting daily ritual. Either way, a vast majority of us will spend at least a few minutes a day getting a caffeine fix.

These few minutes may seem inconsequential to us, however it is in these few minutes that women across Australia will experience some form of sexual or physical violence. We have used the annual reported incidents of sexual and physical violence against women from a report from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (link below) and calculated the frequency with which these types of incidents would occur.

By using an average of two minutes to order a coffee, 15 to 20 minutes to consume it and 45 to 50 minutes for the caffeine to be processed by the human body, we have used these figures to create a measurable and relatable timeframe.

The campaign aims to encourage people to pause and reflect on these figures, and to highlight the prevalence and pervasiveness of domestic and sexual violence in contemporary Australian society. We encourage people to engage with this campaign and use it as a stepping-stone into the wider conversation about gender equality.

Have you had your morning coffee?

Madeline Price is the founder and director of the One Woman Project. ‘The Weekly’ is a weekly (as you might have guessed) instalment from Madeline around issues related to gender. Keep your eyes out for next week!  

with Madeline Price

 CW: domestic violence, suicide, intimate partner violence

 I recently read two pivotal articles that both shook up my way of thinking about intersectional feminism and influenced this blog post – Tara Watson’s piece on Lindsay Lohan and domestic violence, and Huda Jawad’s piece on the ban of the burkini in France.

Now, on the face of it, these two articles may appear entirely unrelated.

Watson discusses the recent footage that has emerged of Lohan being assaulted by her (former) fiancé in Mykonos, Greece, and the lack of coverage that this public example of domestic and intimate partner violence has garnered (in comparison to the overwhelming public attention, sympathy and support for Nigella Lawson, for example).

Jawad, comparatively, discusses the recent announcement by Mayor of Cannes, David Lisnard, to prohibit access to the beach of anyone wearing inappropriate swimwear that does not ‘respect good customs and secularism’, and how this decision boils down to the restriction and regulation of women’s bodies and the lack of women’s bodily autonomy in public spaces (we do not see a similar ban upon the wearing of the Cross around your neck as you go to the beach in your bikini, or a ban upon beards of men, the length of which is historically tied to certain religious groups and denominations).  

On the face of it, these two articles discuss entirely different topics, but the underlying theme and message of them both is resoundingly similar – those advocates for global gender equality for would usually be up in arms over a public display of domestic violence, or the infringement of women’s bodily autonomy in public spaces, are deathly silent (with some minor exceptions).

We, as feminists, have remained silent on these (and similar) issues.

And the reason we have remained silent?

Because we aren’t really as intersectional all of the time as we like to believe we are.

It would be absolutely wonderful to believe that you are the ideal intersectional feminist all of the time, but, as anyone who has read Roxanne Gay’s recent memoir knows, there is not a perfect feminist, nor is there a good feminist who is good all of the time. Sometimes, our internalised biases that see a party girl with alcohol and drug problems (ie: Linday Lohan) as less deserving of our sympathies than a professional chef (ie: Nigella Lawson), impact upon our ability to intersectionally consider the global issue of domestic violence. Sometimes, our internalised cultural biases or religious stigmas that we do not realise we ascribe to, impact upon our ability to see that restricting the clothing choices for women in a public place of a particular denomination is something that we fight against every day when we sign a Change.org petition to allow a school student in Northern London to wear a sleeveless shirt on free dress days. Sometimes, our internalised biases lead us to make mistakes, to fail to consider every perspective, every concern, every woman within a particular issue. Sometimes, our internalised biases, result in us being bad feminists good feminists but only some of the time.

Often, as gender equality advocates and feminists, we critique those who fail to consider the gender dimension of a particular issue – be it the gendered element of domestic and intimate partner violence, or of media representations of men and women, or of high rates of suicide amongst young men. But, at the same time, we fail to critique ourselves for taking a narrow viewpoint upon a particular issue – supporting some survivors of violence whist forgetting others, criticising some misogynistic dress codes whilst remaining silent about others, demanding gender education for all as we fail to consider that education for all is still not universal.

If we want to become better, more well-rounded, global and intersectional feminists, if we want to be good feminists all of the time, we need to start critiquing our own subliminal, subconscious and internalised biases about other intersectional issues – race, culture, religion, educational attainment, geographic location, socio-economic status, personality and individual standing in the community –  as much as we outwardly critique those who fail to consider gender.

It is all well and good to have a focus within feminism – to focus upon one particular issue in order to avoid being overwhelmed by the number of issues we face, or because you are passionate about this one particular aspect – but within that issue, you cannot pick and choose who you decide to care about.

Otherwise, it’s not feminism, because it’s not equality for all.

 Madeline Price is the founder and director of the One Woman Project. ‘The Weekly’ is a weekly (as you might have guessed) instalment from Madeline around issues related to gender. Keep your eyes out for next week!  

with Madeline Price

Dear Supportive Women Friends (also known as SWF’s or #BossBitches),

I am absolutely privileged to spend every day working, volunteering, studying, exercising and living alongside you. The women I engage with in my everyday life are what inspire me to fight long and hard for gender equality because the future I want for myself, a future filled with equality for all, is a future I see as vitally important for the women in my life.

From those who I discuss issues of feminism and equality with over wine and dumplings, to those who I endlessly complain about the patriarchy (and those people who willingly and unapologetically knowingly benefit from it) to, to those who just share my love of other supportive women friendships (namely, Anne and Leslie on Parks and Recreation), my SWF’s are more on point, more inspirational, and more passionate than Taylor’s ‘squad’.

When I talk about ‘squad goals’, I talk about a photo filled with all my #BossBitches. Taylor’s ‘squad’ has nothing on us.

My SWF’s (as others who have such SWF’s would know) are one of the best things that exist in my life. Not only do supportive women friendships lead to longevity (literally, if you have a strong social network of women science says you will live longer), these communities reduce stress, they keep you accountable to your goals and objectives, they share in wins and successes, and they pick you up following losses.

SWF’s (or those #BossBitches in your life) are both what keep me accountable to my goal of achieving global gender equality and inspire me to keep fighting for it.

Thank you all.

Love,

with Madeline Price

Dear Malcolm,

Firstly, I gather that congratulations are in order – democracy has done what it set out to do and the Australian public re-elected you (and the wider proportion of the Liberal National Party) to continue the work you have started. I would argue that they made a mistake, but the bigger mistake was the election of Pauline Hanson, so this gives rise to the saying ‘you must pick your battles’.

Throughout the election campaign, you chose (and were allowed by party bosses) on two occasions to publicly proclaim yourself as a feminist, a rare feat for a member of the Liberal National Party (oh wait, no, it’s only rare for women members of the Liberal National Party – men who are members are fully welcomed and it does not serve to damage their standing within the party).

I am starting to wonder if you actually know what the word feminist (and the underlying movement) means (to give you a hint, feminism is about equality for all). Furthermore, I’m starting to wonder if you think just saying that you’re a feminist is the end of your obligations, responsibilities and commitment to the movement.

Let me give you another hint on that one – it’s not.

You are all well and good to call yourself a feminist, but if your actions failure to underlie that feminist mission, then you are not a feminist – you are just appealing to a voting public with an empty message (what? A politician spouting meaningless words to appeal to a voting public in election time? Absolutely brand new information!).

Have you even given one thought to how you could start belaying a feminist action to conform with your apparent ‘feminist beliefs’?

Because I have: stop the plebiscite.

If you are a feminist and you believe in equality for all, then a plebiscite is not the way to demonstrate your newfound feminist streak, because you do not need a plebiscite to allow a vote in parliament (and not along party lines!) on the issue of marriage equality. You do not need a plebiscite to ensure equality for all in the area of relationships and marriage. A plebiscite is not the only option and is not inevitable, it is not only a waste of money, but it will be a waste of lives.

I am not sure if you have ever been marginalised, dear Malcolm (and I do not wish to make assumptions in the negative), but let me tell you a bit about it; for marginalised communities, having a plebiscite (and the surrounding hate-speech of grounds outside of the funded ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ campaigns), is not just a political issue. For marginalised groups, the political is personal. What you choose to see as an election issue, as an opportunity to secure votes, as a marketing campaign, marginalised groups see as a direct impact upon their lives.

What has been an election issue and a political issue for you for the past six months to a year, has been directly affecting marginalised groups for five, ten, twenty, fifty, eighty years. Their entire lives.

And as so accurately put by Rodney Croome yesterday, this plebiscite is not only going to cost money and time and energy, it is going to cost lives.

And every single life that this plebiscite costs will be on your back Malcolm.

Now, I have had the pleasure of being engaged in student politics for the past year, and I understand that you, Malcolm, are simply the figurehead is a long line of puppeteers pulling your strings – party bosses, factions within political movements, (if my mass media and spin course is to be believed) spin doctors, and donors – but you would not be in this position if you did not have some form of sway. You would not be the elected leader of our democratic nation if you did not have some form of power, influence and, most importantly of all, responsibility.

And if you do not take responsibility for every life that this plebiscite costs, we are going to hold you to it.

If you want to continue calling yourself a feminist, we are going to hold you to it.

If you want to continue calling yourself a feminist, then stop this now.

Feminism is about equality, show that you care for it.

Or get the fuck out of our movement.

 Sincerely,

Feminists.

Madeline Price is the founder and director of the One Woman Project. ‘The Weekly’ is a weekly (as you might have guessed) installment from Madeline around issues related to gender. Keep your eyes out for next week!  

with Madeline Price

On Saturday, July 27 2013, I presented a project proposal for an educational organisation, an organisation teaching young people about global gender inequality, to a room of 12 international students gathered at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic.

I had just spent a sleepless night locked in my dorm room, furiously writing, editing, scoffing down these great cream buns (that you just cannot find in Australia) in dispersed with Thai curry, by the light of my computer and the streetlight outside (my dorm mate Jenny fast asleep), creating this project proposal, passionate about this idea that had been floating around in my head for two years previously. An idea, that the Global Leadership Program (in Prague) had forced me to get down on paper.

I remember rushing out the door early that Saturday morning, laptop in hand, forgetting that it was my own birthday (a surprise party at the local American waffle restaurant later that day would remind me), eager to present my project to this room of bright and enthusiastic young people.

And that day, Saturday the 27th of July 2013, was the first time I ever told someone (or a room full of 12 people at once!) about the One Woman Project. That day, was the day that the One Woman Project was born.

Within days of my arrival back in Australia, I had registered us as an Incorporated Association, was on track for achieving our status as a registered non-for-profit organisation with the Australian Charities and Non-Profits Commission, and I had built our first-ever website, announcing our first seminar series to being in January of 2014. I had also driven my family and partner absolutely wild with my constant gender-talk, my big picture aspirations and my idea to create Australia’s first gender-education organisation.

It is almost impossible to believe everything that we have achieved since those first early months in mid-2013.

From our first ever seminar series with literally one woman (myself) creating the content, facilitating the workshops and running the organisation, to our current seminar series encompassing four facilitators running our 101 and 102 streams as well as an additional two facilitators running our in-school programs. From our first year of operation turning over less than $80 to our most recent financial report showing an annual turnover of $18 000. From our team of myself in Brisbane, Queensland, to our team of now 28 volunteers across Queensland, the Australian Capital Territory, Victoria, New South Wales, Tanzania and China. From engaging with 37 participants in our first year, to now engaging with, at a minimum, three hundred people offline annually and, daily, 7 000 people online.

What we have done in the past three years, is simply inspirational.

But none of that could have been achieved without our team of volunteers. From the early volunteers – our first ever recruitment drive – in mid 2014 to our brand spanking new volunteers who have only come aboard in the past few weeks, none of this could have been achieved without you.

From our 2014 volunteers – Marina Burgin (past), Ashlee Teakle (past), Carla Sasse (current, Board of Directors), Hannah Kelly (current, Board of Directors), Jaimee O’Brien (current, Corporate Engagement), William Triste (past) – to our 2015 intake – Liz Oxenham (current, Campaigns), Imogen Reithmuller (past), Ella Bridges (past), Libby Feeney (past), Molly Frankham (current, Deputy Director), Isabelle Bowen-Rotsaert (current, Facilitator), Miranda Sparks (past), Jenny Liu (current, Conferences), Timothy Kariotis (past), Catherine Le Poidevin (current, Conferences), Ruth Horsfall (past), Pas Dreyer (past), Sonia Moradian (current, International Representative), Emmie Shields (current, ACT Co-Director), Celine Dettmann (current, Social Media Coordinator), Linden Peacock (current, High School Intern Coordinator), Katie Rasch (current, Facilitator), Caitlin Wall (current, Facilitator), Caitlin Lyons (past), Andjela Macura (current, Chief Financial Officer), Kate Robinson (past) – to our most recent 2016 intake – Ally Thompson (past), Ally Sarah (current, Facilitator), Samantha Kelly (current, Outreach and Engagement), Mariel Hunt (current, Outreach and Engagement), Bertrand Dungan (past), Erin Kirsch (current, High School Intern), Bec Hislop (current, High School Intern), Dana Absolon (current, High School Intern), Rebecca Stark (current, Facilitator), Jordan Wren (current, ACT Researcher), Laura Burfitt (current, ACT Co-Director), Vanshika Sinh (current, Facilitator), Sita Sargeant (current, Facilitator), and Jayme Ellis (current, Corporate Engagement) – you are what have made the One Woman Project what it is today (and hopefully I haven’t forgotten anyone!).

Our volunteers are what makes OWP as inspirational, energetic and successful as it has been.

Another special thank you on our third birthday goes out to our Board of Directors – Kaili Paker-Price, Hannah Kelly, Carla Sasse, Ayesha Lutschini and Julie-Anne Carroll – as well as our partner organisations (of whom we could not have done this without): Words with Heart, WILPF (Queensland Branch), UQU Women’s Collective, Diverse City Careers, Visible Ink, SHE Investments, Saheli Designs, Meri Toksave and Half the Sky. Without your constant advice, support and assistance with strategic planning, we would not be where we are today.

But the biggest thank you of all, for getting us to our third birthday, would be for our participants, attendees and supporters. Without you attending our seminar series, coming along to our International Women’s Day High Tea’s and our conferences, joining in on our campaigns and engagement events, and recommending us to your local high schools, we would not have been able to expand from one woman with a dream and a vision, to a team of powerful, fierce and enthusiastic volunteers set to take on the world. Thank you for supporting us and believing in our vision for a world free of inequality.

On a personal level, in addition to our volunteers (both past, present and, dare I say it, future), our Board of Directors, our partners and our participants, I have a number of people I would like to thank.

To my parents, Blair and Kaili, for your constant support (and advice, even when I did not want to listen to it) of my vision for the One Woman Project, for teaching me that I could achieve anything I set my mind to, for instilling feminist values at quite a young age, and for teaching me to value, in people, their ability to ‘show initiative’!

To my sister, Sophie, for helping me set up the first ever seminar I hosted, for being the best practice student I have ever met (from the age of two until today), for inspiring me daily and for being a fierce feminist force alongside me every step of the way.

To my close friends, for constantly (and uncomplainingly) putting up with my feminist ramblings both online and offline, for attending our OWP events, and for standing by me and the wider feminist cause.

To the GLP crew, who believed in me from the very start.

And to my partner Peter, for being there through thick-and-thin, from my first ever website crash to my horror-week of trolling to my panic over our sold-out events, your kindness, wisdom and patience has inspired (and at times frustrated J) me every day – you are my best friend, my guiding light, my biggest supporter and my partner for life.

We have just turned three, so, like a wary parent, make sure you keep an eye on what we are going to do next.

Because, just like an eager toddler, we have started running, and we are never going to stop until our world is free from inequality.

Happy birthday OWP.

Madeline Price is the founder and director of the One Woman Project. ‘The Weekly’ is a weekly (as you might have guessed) installment from Madeline around issues related to gender. Keep your eyes out for next week!  

xx OWP

with Madeline Price

The final part of my month-long series encompassing  ‘A Day in the Life of the Director of the One Woman Project’, ‘Stop calling me ‘busy’’, and ‘A Week in the Life of the Director of the One Woman Project’ is titled ‘How You Can Do It All As Well!’.

Despite the tongue-in-cheek title, I am not going to tell you how you can ‘do it all’. There are two simple reasons for this: one, because your all is different to anyone else’s all (including mine), and two, because what works for me may not work for you. My all refers to combining study, with non-profit work, with a relatively balanced social and relationship life, with exercise, with part-time work and with hobbies. Your all could be combining parenting, with full-time work, with volunteering and with numerous soccer games. Your all could be combining study, with full-time work, with caring for a family member, with exercise and with hobbies. Your all could be completely different to my all, so it is impossible for me to tell you how you can do your all. What works for me, may not work for you. On the other side of that coin, however, is that what works for me, may definitely, unequivocally work for you as well!

So, in all honesty, this blog should instead be titled, ‘How I Do My All (which may or may not be helpful to do you doing your all)’, but that would result in less popularity I’m afraid.

So here is my five ways that I achieve my all, which may be useful (or not) to you achieving your all.

1.       I keep a detailed diary (well, two really).

Since I was about thirteen, I have kept two detailed diaries: one for scheduling my day, and the other for reflecting upon it (before the age of thirteen, I only prioritised the ‘reflection’ process).

The scheduling aspect of my 2016 diary (on paper, not one of those new-fangled phone calendar diaries) allows me to keep tabs on what events I have coming up, when I am working (in one of my two part-time jobs), deadlines for study assessment, deadlines for One Woman Project work, birthdays, weddings, miscellaneous events, and more. It allows me, when someone says ‘Can we catch up on this day at this time?’, to conclusively answer them with a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ without having to reschedule because something else came up, or I did not leave enough time to complete a task, or a piece of assessment becomes due.

The reflection processes of my personal diary allow me to evaluate my progress towards my goals. It allows me to vent when something has gone awry (or rage – relatively healthily – about an individual, or an organisation, or an event). It allows me to reflect upon how something has gone and make suggestions for improvement. It is my outlet for frustration, pride, creativity and passion. And it allows me to chart my personal development and progress. When I look back on old diaries and laugh about things that previously frustrated me, that now occur on a weekly basis, I can chart my personal development and growth as a human.

2.       I supplement my diary with daily ‘To-Do’ lists.

Every morning, after I check my emails but before I start substantial tasks in my day, I re-write my ‘To-Do’ list, to reflect anything that entered my online inbox overnight. Whilst not the best use of environmental resources (going through a page a day can stretch the term ‘environmentally friendly’), it does allow me to prioritise everything, allocate timeframes for things to be completed and schedule in everything that needs to be done for that day.

Sometimes, this ‘To-Do’ list can include five complex items, sometimes it can include 40 easy (or relatively easy) items. Sometimes this ‘To-Do’ list includes things that really shouldn’t be on a ‘To-Do’ list (like eating lunch, stretching every hour, washing clothes) simply so that it ensures I actually do it (when you’re on a roll, eating lunch seems like an unnecessary waste of time, but if it’s on the list, it must be done) and that I can feel a sense of accomplishment when achieving a task (when you have five complex items that take hours with little reward, being able to cross off ‘eat lunch’ can feel like you have reached the summit of Everest).

I always include a reward for completing everything on my ‘To-Do’ list. Something as simple as watching an hour of Netflix, or as long-term as having a weekend with the family (with no ‘To-Do’ lists in sight) if I achieve every item on my lists for an entire week.

Because, you know, treat yo’ self.

3.       I schedule in everything. Literally everything.

Every single aspect of my life is scheduled to a tee. This may seem extreme to some people, but this is the way that I function – I schedule as follows;

8.30am – 9.30am emails, check social media, write daily ‘To-Do’ list

9.30am – 10.00am write ‘The Weekly’ blog post

10.00am – 11.00am practice workshop presentation for Music Industry College

11.00am – 11.30am eat lunch

11.30am – 11.45am walk to Music Industry College

11.45am – 4.00pm workshops at Music Industry College

4.00pm – 4.30pm finalise powerpoint presentation for Brisbane’s Finest Feminists

4.30pm – 6.00pm rock climbing at Urban Climb (Milton)

6.00pm – 6.30pm eat dinner

Every single thing is scheduled, from exercise to meal times, to work, to volunteering, to tasks. Absolutely everything I do is scheduled, simply because then, I get it done. This is less important in reference to paid work, volunteering and tasks, and more important with things like meals, daily exercise and social events – because if it is not scheduled, I will not do it.

And things like meals, exercise and social events are pretty important things.

4.       I shut off after 5PM.

Anyone who knows me well, knows that I am virtually unfunctioning as a human being after 5PM. I cannot study after 5PM, I cannot listen to lectures after 5PM, I cannot concentrate on tasks or work after 5PM, so I don’t.

I get up early, and work hard throughout the day, in order to be able to ‘shut off’ at 5PM, because after 5PM is my time. It is my opportunity to have dinner, to spend time with my partner or friends or family, to watch a documentary (I am currently obsessed with Stephen Fry’s Last Chance to See) or a movie, plan my upcoming trip to New Zealand, play boardgames or records, drink wine and eat cheese and be merry.

I am not on the clock after 5PM, because I am on my clock after 5PM.

For others, their my clock time is after 10PM. Or 9PM. Or 2AM. Mine is much, much earlier. But then again, my work clock starts up at 6AM.

5.       I look after my mental health.  

I admit it, I am most likely the least spontaneous person you will ever meet (save for that one time I turned the car around on a trip home from Rainbow Beach with some friends, in order to explore a cemetery my parents had told me was haunted). It is not that I do not like being spontaneous, it is simply that, at this point in my life, I cannot afford to be. When you have deadlines, and colleagues relying upon you, you choosing to be spontaneous throws everyone else out of whack.

My only exception: spontaneity for the sake of mental health.

When you are constantly achieving your all, your mental health can take a battering – your lifestyle and your passion can, sometimes, have a detrimental impact upon your mental health. That is where my rule of ‘no spontaneity’ comes into play – where it is for the sake of my mental health, I will take a spontaneous day off, or a spontaneous trip to Noosa or Imbil, or a day-long bubblebath reading a Khaled Hosseini novel.

Because you need to look after your mental health in order to achieve your all.

 Madeline Price is the founder and director of the One Woman Project. ‘The Weekly’ is a weekly (as you might have guessed) installment from Madeline around issues related to gender. Keep your eyes out for next week!