‘It is the spirit making you and me draw breath and making the plants grow and moving the wind. It gave rise to the stars and the stardust and the planets and eventually us.’ David Salomon is talking about tjukurpa. Misguidedly named ‘Dreamtime’ by white folk, the Pitjantjatjara word can mean a simple story; but…
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On Sunday, the women of Kazakhstan took to the streets to protest the impending ban on lace underwear. ‘Freedom to Panties’ was yelled as women gathered under the ‘Panties for the President’ protest, for the right to have access to lace underwear. Valery Koreshkov, minister for technical regulations in the Eurasian Economic Union, the planned successor to the Customs…
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When we think about domestic abuse, we see images of women, physically and emotionally damaged, by their partners. But technology, specifically used to stalk and harass, is becoming more and more common in abusive relationships. February is Teen Dating Violence awareness month, and the National Domestic Violence Hotline hopes to spread the word about abuse…
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The Federal government will put $4.2 million into two programs aimed at helping empower the women of Vietnam. Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop announced during her visit of the country that the money will be distributed equally between Vietnamese Women’s Union projects to end gender-based violence and for agricultural development. The funds for ending gender-based violence…
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Feminist punk rockers, Pussy Riot have been attacked in Sochi by the region’s Cossack militia. Video footage clearly shows members beginning to perform a song, when Cossacks cover singer Nadezhda Tolokonnikova (blue balaclava) with pepper spray and then proceed to whip, shove and unmask members. It additionally shows the militia – utilised by local police…
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Actor-comedian Rosie O’Donnell has revealed she would have come out ten years earlier if late US Cosmopolitan editor Helen Gurley Brown hadn’t canned parts of a 1992 magazine article. She told web series Mondays with Marlo she believed Gurley Brown was trying to protect her. ‘At that time it would have been a huge issue,…
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ONOMOllywood, is a project that challenges our perceptions of race in classic films. Unfortunately, looking back at the well-known classics brings to mind protagonists who are almost exclusively white. But Dakar-based photographers, Omar Victor Diop and Antoine Tempe, are changing the way we think about this. ONOMOllywood consists of a series of 20…
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Somayya Jabarti has made Saudi Arabian history as the nation’s first female newspaper editor, after being appointed to the top job at the national daily Saudi Gazette. English language broadsheet’s departing editor, Khaled Almaeena chose Jabarti for her strong work ethic. ‘It was not a question of gender but of merit that decided and earned…
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German artist Georg Baselitz has sparked backlash, recently telling a newspaper that women cannot paint well. Baselitz has dismissed female painters – even the most iconic like Frida Kahlo – saying that they ‘simply don’t pass the market test, the value test.’ Despite making up the majority of art students, Baselitz claims that women lack…
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Thirty-five asylum seekers escaped from Manus Island detention centre on Sunday, after a violent clash with security forces. Following a meeting on Sunday evening, asylum seekers attempted to shatter windows and created weapons out of their beds and fencing, before fleeing the compound. The asylum seekers had been told by immigration officials that if they…
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In my previous article ‘The Power of Pin-up’ I wrote of how pin-up girls have inspired me since I was a teenager and my dream of one day becoming a pin-up. That dream came to fruition late last year. While scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed I noticed an advert for a pin-up photo-shoot hosted by…
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Kim Fu’s debut novel, For Today I am a Boy, is an elegant and often heart-wrenching story of an individual’s struggle for identity and belonging. The protagonist is Peter, a long-awaited son, born into a first-generation Chinese family in Ontario. He is given the middle-name Juan Chaun – ‘Powerful King’ – a moniker that reveals…
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A study published in medical journal, The Lancet earlier last week has revealed that incidents of sexual violence against women, specifically involving perpetrators who are not partners, is more than double the global average in Australia and New Zealand. The numbers read that 16.4 per cent of women 15 years or older in Australia and…
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Presented by Darebin Arts’ Speakeasy, More Female Parts is a suite of three monologues written by Sara Hardy specifically to be performed and directed by Evelyn Krape and Lois Ellis, respectively. Inspired by the original Female Parts, a series of monologues written in 1977 by Italian duo Dario Fo and Franca Rame, Hardy’s new work…
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