The Abbott government has possibly sent its first unaccompanied asylum seeking minor directly to Nauru under its new offshore processing policy. The girl, believed to be between 15 and 16 years old arrived at the island’s detention centre yesterday the Asylum Seekers Resource Centre reported. The ethnicity of the girl is yet to be identified…
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Good things come to those who wait. For intersex Australians, the months and months it has taken the Federal Senate to compile a report into the involuntary or coerced sterilisation of intersex people has come to fruition. The senate was compelled to investigate the issue following a report into the forced sterilisation of girls and…
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Workplace discrimination on the basis of pregnancy is now the most common complaint to the Fair Work Ombudsman. Of the 235 complaints to Fair Work over the last financial year, 28% were from pregnant women experiencing issues with their employer, with a further 11% of complaints from employees claiming unfair outcomes at work due to…
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Legislation has come into effect in Germany allowing intersex individuals to not be identified as male or female on their birth certificates. Intersex describes a range of anatomical variations of the reproductive organs and genitals which results in people having both male and female characteristics, with approximately one in 2,000 people born intersex. Germany joins…
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A pro-life Victorian doctor has been cited by fellow professionals as enacting a personal campaign contradicting the state’s abortion laws. Dr Mark Hobart has refused to refer patients for an abortion based on his religious beliefs, construing his involvement as ‘accomplice to murder’. Victoria is the only state in Australia to allow abortion in the…
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The Australia Jockeys Association is lobbying for changes to rules governing parental leave after it was revealed female jockeys are missing out due to indirect discrimination in federal policy. To be eligible for paid parental leave under the still incumbent Labor scheme, applicants must have worked 10 months out of 13 before the child was…
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It’s a tough go for women in science, but there’s a sigh of relief for three Aussie ladies in lab coats who have been awarded the 2013 L’Oréal for Women in Science Fellowship. This year’s honours went to Dr Kathryn Holt (who is studying the genome of deadly bacteria in epidemics), Dr Misty Jenkins (who’s…
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Behold, Lipsters, a new study pronouncing which body shapes are in and which are out has been published online. The survey conducted by online women’s mag SoFeminine found ‘fit’ and ‘soft’ looks are coming into fashion in the UK, despite fashion itself most often ignoring these bodies. To give you visuals, the Daily Mail describes…
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Dating website OKCupid has begun charging users $4.95 per month to filter fellow matchmaking hopefuls based on their physique. The choice to charge for the filter reportedly comes down to allowing fairer interactions on the site. ‘If everyone could sort through attractiveness – which is crowdsourced by users on the site – only very attractive…
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Young girls in the West feel pressure to have large breasts, but in the West African nation of Cameroon, girls on the cusp of puberty are having their breasts ironed by family members to stop them developing. Breast ironing has emerged as a result of victim blaming and poor sex education in the country. Unlike…
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Italian gay rights activists are calling for a boycott of pasta company Barilla’s products after its chairman made comments about homosexual families. Chairman of the family-owned business, Guido Barilla, says Barilla advertisements will continue to depict traditional nuclear families enjoying its pasta. ‘For us the concept of the sacred family remains one of the basic…
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In high school, we’re taught all about different methods of birth control. There’s the oral contraceptive pill (a winner for women since the 1960s), condoms, Implanon, diaphragms, IUDs, and many more options that I can barely remember because we’re so spoilt for choice. Oh, and sterilisation! In the US, heterosexual Generation Y women are reportedly…
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Former Women’s Weekly editor Ita Buttrose has called out our new government on its apparent gender problem. ‘The glass ceiling still does exist in Australia,’ Ms Buttrose told ABC radio on September 17. ‘We’re told it doesn’t, but that’s just a nonsense – it does exist.’ Buttrose is not the only one to reflect on…
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This week, news came from the US of a bizarre product which has become available online. Entrepreneurial pregnant women have been selling their positive pregnancy tests to people online via the Craigslist website – on which you can find just about anything.* Even more interestingly, women have been posting ads wanting to buy tests with…
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