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 legitimacy has been questioned throughout, and the criticism aimed at her has been curiously gender-specific, from cries of ‘witch’ to calls for her to ‘make an honest woman of herself’.
And while feminism dominates social media and commentators like Clementine Ford and Caitlin Moran attract legions of fans, popular culture is constantly winking at us with storylines featuring submissive women, from Mad Men to Fifty Shades.
In the fiftieth Quarterly Essay, renowned memoirist and concert pianist Anna Goldsworthy lays bare the dilemmas of being a woman today.
Featuring
Anna Goldsworthy
Anna Goldsworthy is the author of the memoirs Welcome to Your New Life and Piano Lessons, and Quarterly Essay 50, On Women, Freedom and Misogyny. Her writing has appeared in the Monthly, the Age, the Adelaide Review and Best Australian Essays.
Anna has won numerous prizes and scholarships for piano performance. In 2004, she completed a world tour performing in festivals and concert halls in Australia, Asia, Europe and North and South America.
Her solo CD, Come With Us, was released in early 2008. In that same year she collaborated with her father, Peter Goldsworthy, on a theatrical adaptation of his book Maestro, which drew inspiration from her early life.
Sophie Black
Sophie Black is a writer, journalist and Crikey’s editor-in-chief. She has worked in senior management across cultural and media organisations, and has written for outlets such as The Guardian and The Monthly. As the Wheeler ...