Search our site:
Western women today enjoy unprecedented freedom and power – but it can sometimes seem to be a game of two steps forward, one step back.Yes, Julia Gillard is our first female prime minister … but her …
The Country Women’s Association is not often thought of as a feminist organisation … if at all. But with the current interest in women’s rights and spaces, it’s arguably a ready-made grassroots…
Due to a technical failure, there will be no video of last night’s session with Anna Krien and Helen Garner. Luckily, we were there with a notebook and pen … please enjoy our account of last night’s…
In this very special event, two generations of Australian reportage royalty come together, as the world- renowned Helen Garner interviews Anna Krien, one of the brightest writers of her generation…
Anne Summers is a veritable godmother of the Australian feminist movement, author of the game-changing call to arms, Damned Whores and God’s Police. Lately, she’s been a vocal critic of the gendered …
In 2012, feminism became the literary world’s latest buzzword. The Stella Prize, Australia’s first prize to reward a woman writer for the best book of the year, was at the centre of the…
Studying a book or film can be a short-cut to consigning it to boredom. But our Texts in the City series – a gift to students, their teachers and lifelong learners – brings the VCE English and…
We bring you our favourite findings from around the internet this week.International Women’s Day: Media voices & the ‘glass ceiling index’It’s International Women’s Day today – and there’s a slew of …
Monica Dux is a writer, social commentator and co-author of The Great Feminist Denial. Her new book, *Things I Didn’t Expect (when I was expecting) will be published by MUP in March. Monica is…
It’s been an extraordinary fortnight for any Australian passionate about questions of gender and equality.The Alan Jones affair. The Brunswick peace march for Jill Meagher. Margie Abbott and the…
The Alan Jones affair. The Brunswick peace march for Jill Meagher. Margie Abbott and the Downton Abbey Defence. Peter Slipper’s texts and Julia Gillard’s speech. All of these events sparked debates o…
We look at the aftermath of an extraordinary week in politics, talking to Ben Eltham, national affairs correspondent of New Matilda, Stephanie Convery of Overland, feminist writer Alison Croggon and…
By Michelle Smith In this edited version of her Lunchbox Soapbox address, Michelle Smith looks at why girls’ bottoms are a major problem for the nation’s media and celebrity women, how today’s moral…
Today’s consumer culture persistently uses girls as icons of sexual attractiveness in advertising, film and television. In the nineteenth century, print media did not dare positively associate girls …
Today’s consumer culture persistently uses girls as icons of sexual attractiveness in advertising, film and television. In the nineteenth century, print media did not dare positively associate girls …
By Clementine Ford In this edited version of her Lunchbox/Soapbox address, Clementine Ford asks why men like Alan Jones think women are ‘destroying the joint’, exposes how Hollywood contributes to…
In a passionate attack on the idea that gender equality has been reached and feminism is irrelevant, Clementine Ford explains why there is much left to be achieved – and presents a slew of…
Feminism’s over, they say. It’s achieved all its goals. Women are equal now, so we should all shut up and go home. But if feminism has really succeeded, why does it still feel like we’ve got so much …
The Fifth Estate is the Wheeler Centre’s new series of fortnightly forums: a more measured approach to news and current affairs. Provocative and studied, authoritative and unhurried, this is real…
The Wire: As Told in Lego AnimationJust when you thought you’d seen and read everything you could possibly handle about The Wire (aka The Best TV Show Ever Made), here comes something you need to…
Ita Buttrose is, as she says, experiencing something of a renaissance, in the wake of the ABC TV biopic Paper Giants.‘A lot of the things I’ve done through Paper Giants are now back in the public…
Clementine Ford speaks back to a recent column by Sydney Morning Herald regular Elizabeth Farrelly, who prefers ‘writing with a higher IQ and lower pH than most women can manage’. Citing Jeanette…
Sexual violence against civilians is a common feature in modern wars. The impact on survivors, primarily women and girls, and their communities is devastating. There have been strong moves by the…
Sometimes there’s nothing better than a good rant. Every Thursday, the Wheeler Centre hostsan old-fashioned Speakers’ Corner in the middle of the city, where writers and thinkers canhave their say…
The Australian army needs more women, said Lieutenant General David Morrison, chief of the Australian army, in a Wheeler Centre event last week. He’s committed himself to increasing the quota of…
Over four days, our 20 plus speakers – philosophers and theologians, historians and writers, believers and non-believers – will consider what it means to be religious, and what role the voice of…
Asma Barlas moves between worlds; she’s a ‘cultural hybrid’. Born and raised in Pakistan, English was her first language and she received a western education. She now lives in the US, where she has b…
The arts aren’t immune to their own kind of sexism. So let’s talk about it. What can current generations of feminists learn? What’s different and what sticks? How are our public and media figures…
Masha Gessen is the author of a controversial new biography of Putin, The Man Without a Face. She has also written extensively on the lives and roles of women in contemporary Russia. Sheng Keyi’s…
Clementine Ford attended Bettina Arndt’s Lunchbox/Soapbox on Why Sex Matters So Much to Men at the Wheeler Centre last Thursday. She tells us why she vehemently disagrees with Arndt’s views on men…
Kathy Lette pioneered smart, funny fiction with a frivolous edge (and a feminist flavour). In 2012’s The Boy Who Fell to Earth, Lette’s character Lucy has more to manage than most: she’s trying to…
We share five of our favourite links to news, reviews or articles that we’ve discovered on the web over the past week.Fifty shades of spanking and Katie RoipheIt’s a bit weird to think that one of…
In light of Tony Abbott’s newly proposed policy aspiration to extend the childcare rebate to nannies, host Sally Warhaft discusses childcare and family/work life in Australia with Catherine Deveny…
This year, PEN Melbourne’s annual International Women’s Day event features a conversation with the playwright Tracey Rigney, a Wotjobaluk and Ngarrindjeri woman from Victoria and South Australia…
Christine Gordon, bookseller and Stella Prize committee member, delivered our Lunchbox/Soapbox on International Women’s Day, to a rousing crowd response.She talked about why sharing women’s stories…
Our article on the politics of pink and pastel Lego for girls provoked furious debate on our Twitter and Facebook accounts last week. Writer, philosopher and dad Damon Young, one of those who spoke…
Celebrating and acknowledging women’s stories, Christine Gordon – bookseller, book-lover, and passionate advocate of women’s writings, muses on why the political is personal, and reasons that the…
Celebrating and acknowledging women’s stories, Christine Gordon – bookseller, booklover, and passionate advocate of women’s writings, muses on why the political is personal, and reasons that the…
On International Women’s Day last year, Australian novelist Kirsten Tranter wrote for us about the under-representation of women writers in the literary pages. A month later, the all-male Miles…
The Age reported today that Lego’s controversial new line for girls, Lego Friends, has won Toy of the Year for its City Park Cafe.Lego Friends was launched last December, with curvy doll-like…
We share five of our favourite links to news, reviews or articles that we’ve discovered over the past week.Cooking with Poo and the Great Singapore Penis PanicThe whimsical Diagram Prize for Oddest B…
Since the end of the Cold War, much international attention has been devoted to building democracies to replace authoritarian regimes. East Timor, Afghanistan, Iraq and last year’s Arab Spring are…
Since the end of the Cold War, much international attention has been devoted to building democracies to replace authoritarian regimes. East Timor, Afghanistan, Iraq and last year’s Arab Spring are…
If you’ve been reading the Fairfax press (or surfing social media) recently, you’re probably familiar with the debate about writer and activist Melinda Tankard Reist – and whether she has the right t…
Ahead of She Kilda 2011, the Australian Women Crime Writers’ Convention, the Wheeler Centre welcomes some of Australia’s leading crime writers. They discuss why there’s such an appetite for women’s c…
Today we’re cross-posting a blog post written by Stephanie Honor Convery and published on the Melbourne Writers Festival blog. Stephanie takes a look at two Festival events looking at gender and…
One of the world’s finest thinkers and writers, the incomparable Amos Oz, delivers the 2011 Monash Israel Oration at Melbourne Town Hall, under the title ‘Israel: Peace, War and Storytelling’. The…
When Jonnie Marbles attacked Rupert Murdoch with a foam pie during Murdoch father and son’s appearance before a parliamentary committee last week, he chose a fine time to do it. It was just after…
Women are being increasingly represented in the business world and the global discussion on gender equality rages on. But in a century where we have seen women given the vote and the right to work…
This is an extract from a report by Bridget Chappell in the 85th edition of Voiceworks, the quarterly magazine of Wheeler Centre resident organisation Express Media, out now.The guards of…
(Click to watch video.) “We are in a crazy, crazy pornographic culture, and for that we need extreme measures, and I can’t think of anything better than…
“Australians have a unique capacity to celebrate failure,” writes crime novelist Angela Savage in a piece on travelling, writing, Australia and the grandeur of failure published today on her blog…
VS Naipaul has had a tumultuous week. On Monday, he patched up a feud with Paul Theroux. On Tuesday, he said he knew of no woman writer, including Jane Austen, who could match his talent. Of Jane…
During her visit to Australia for the 2011 Sydney Writers' Festival, academic, activist and social critic Dr Gail Dines stirred strong debate with her radical feminist position. Particularly…
A volume of lavishly-illustrated drawings for children by a pioneering Australian woman will be auctioned next month. Charlotte Waring arrived in Australia in 1826 at the age of 29. She’d been hired …
After former IMF chief and ex-presidential hopeful Dominique Strauss-Kahn was accused of rape at the beginning of last week, the most public of France’s public intellectuals sprang to his aid.
Image via WikiCommons Philip Roth, titan of male Jewish-American postwar literature, has taken out the biennial Man Booker International Prize, announced yesterday at the S…
(Click to watch video.) The problem with feminists, according to Australian Humanist of the Year Leslie Cannold, “is that there aren’t enough of them”. In t…
Image of c1880s stereo-optic view of Burmese pagodas via WikiCommons By Unpublished Manuscript Fellow Michelle Aung ThinFour years ago, I started writing my first novel…
(Click to watch video.) When the women of Australia started their march towards equal rights almost half a century ago, they envisaged broad-ranging…
When the women of Australia started their march towards equal rights almost half a century ago, they envisaged broad-ranging changes. Today, women make up slightly less than half the total…
When the women of Australia started their march towards equal rights almost half a century ago, they envisaged broad-ranging changes. Today, women make up slightly less than half the total…
On January 24 this year, Toronto policeman Michael Sanguinetti walked into a lecture room at Osgoode Hall Law School to deliver a talk to 10 people on campus safety. He began his talk with a line…
A group of Australian women writers and publishers are seeking a sponsor for a proposed literary prize for fiction by Australian women writers. Sophie Cunningham, Kirsten Tranter, Louise Swinn,
Last week, we reported that Jennifer Egan had won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her novel, A Visit from the Goon Squad. We also reported on the kerfuffle prompted by the announcement of the…
In her Lunchbox/Soapbox presentation, author and ethicist Leslie Cannold tackles feminism, and in particular, what ideals should inform how female representation unfolds in the popular imagination.Ca…
(Click to watch video.) What happens when women get behind a camera? How do they use cameras to cast a fresh look on the world around them? Organised by…
(Click to watch video.) Why is it that we see so few plays by Australian women on stage? Why is it that women are still so under-represented, despite the…
Why do we see so few plays by Australian women?Playwrights Patricia Cornelius and Van Badham, Artistic Directors Marion Potts and Ralph Myers and moderator Chris Mead discuss contemporary Australian …
She Must Be Seeing Things examines what happens when women use cameras to cast new eyes on the cultures around them.Organised by the Melbourne Centre of International PEN to mark 2011’s…
It’s the centenary of International Women’s Day today and we thought we’d mark the occasion. We’ve asked novelist Kirsten Tranter to write a piece on the under-representation of women in major…
An Ampelmädchen street light at a pedestrian crossing in Dresden, Germany, via WikiCommons Late last year a US-based organisation advocating for women in the literary…
We recently ran a piece that mentioned, among other things, the under-representation of women in literary journals. The imbalance is replicated in other areas of public life. Popular comic and…
Last week, as paid parental leave finally became a reality in Australia, both the Age and Sydney Morning Herald couldn’t resist turning the development into a winners and losers story. Both papers…
Novelist Amanda Craig has contended that the best female writers of her generation “worked in the shadow of the Amis-McEwan-Barnes-Rushdie generation” with “many of the worst omissions are…
Click to watch video. As the final speaker in the Feminism Has Failed debate is Wendy McCarthy, we’ve definitely saved the best for last. McCarthy sees…
For three decades Dr Vandana Shiva has been promoting an ecological path of harmony, sustainability and diversity as a means to survival and liberation.For one night in Melbourne, join Vandana Shiva …
Clare Bowditch on a recent album cover It began last night when singer/songwriter Clare Bowditch watched our latest Feminism Has Failed video. She tweeted about them…
Video of the Feminism Has Failed debate is live with two very different views presented.First was Virginia Haussegger who pointed out the injustices against women are still an issue in the…
The Intelligence Squared debate Feminism Has Failed of last week ago is still raging online. Virginia Hausegger One debater, Virginia Haussegger, has published an edited…
Last night’s debate in the Intelligence Squared series asked if Feminism had failed and had a resounding “No”. The debate series polls the audience on the way in and as they leave to see how the…
After generations of effort, women still bear a disproportionate burden of domestic labour. Women are under-represented in the senior ranks of politics, business and the professions. Women continue t…
Stephen Mayne asserts that women are still not getting a fair go in the workplace and women represent less than 10% of board members in Australian business. He recounts how he first saw sexism at…
“Traditional, cultural practices that assert male authority will always disadvantage women. So why do we kow-tow to them?” Virginia Haussegger states in the Intelligence Squared: Feminism Has…
Jennifer Byrne joins in the Feminism Has Failed debate arguing that it has “succeeded so powerfully… that we are in a position of scarcely even noticing it”. She believe feminism has brought women…
“Real feminism is constantly evolving and splintering. It’s broad. It’s dynamic. Feminism attempts to articulate and redress injustices against women in a dazzling variety of contexts,” Monica Dux…
Gay Alcorn talks about how media is still distinctly masculine and that feminism is about more than just individual success stories, but about “real change in the institutions that actually make a…
Wendy McCarthy wraps up our Feminism has Failed debate by concluding it has been “one of the most powerful social movements of the last 40 years”. She argues that some of the changes have happened…
While Australia’s first female prime minister begins her first post-election parliament, a new book in the US looks at how close (and how far) America was from its first female president.Rebecca…
Michaela McGuire I have spent most of my life avoiding thinking about whether or not I am a feminist. My earliest ideas about my place in the world as a young lady were…
Politicians say the dumbest things. Over at Slate they’ve compiled their favourite Palinisms, tweets, Facebook updates and other wit from former Vice Presidential hopeful, Sarah Palin.And she’s got p…
Australia’s first female prime minister is part of a growing trend of women coming to power and men becoming obsolete according to the latest issue of the Atlantic.“The End of Men” article points…
Novelist Anne Rice posted a message on her Facebook page last week saying “I quit being a Christian.”Best known for her Vampire Chronicles series, Rice’s reasons for leaving the church are not so…
Forthcoming Wheeler Centre guest, Ayaan Hirsi Ali has been criticised by Ms. Magazine for failing to see women’s efforts to reform Islam.The article cites “her refusal to recognise the subjective…
Why are women so mean to each other? Kate Holden, ashamed of her own judgmental tendencies, tries to work out why, in a world where women have so much to share, we are sometimes anything but fair.
