This week one of my favourite YouTubers, Dr. Lindsay Doe, made it to the front page of Upworthy with her video ‘Dear Boy Who Likes My Daughter’. Dr. Doe usually fronts the channel Sexplanations, where she provides accurate sexual education, and often vents her frustration at the lack of education in the United States and…
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‘I was taken to hospital to prove my virginity, and then to a hotel.’ Cambodian teenager Kimsey sold her virginity at 12 because her family needed money to eat. She lives in slum-like conditions with an abusive boyfriend and a mother who takes care of her daughter while she works. Kimsey is acquainted only with…
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Reproductive health care provider, Planned Parenthood has taken to social media to assert women’s rights to safe and adequate sexual healthcare to US Secretary of State John Kerry this International Women’s Day. Using the hashtag #WorldWeWant, the organisation is calling on Kerry to work towards a world where access to good reproductive and sexual healthcare…
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Because today is my own very special day, where I get to celebrate what its like to be a woman in my own very special way I choose to pretend that I live in the society of my dreams and I will: Walk down the street in a skirt above my knee and not be…
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My niece, Ella, turns two on March 8 this year. I’m undeniably jealous that she gets to be born on International Women’s Day; but on the other hand, I get to share my birthday with the late Jeff Buckley, Isaac Hanson, RuPaul and Rachel McAdams, so I guess that can be my consolation prize. Still,…
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Despite 102 International Women’s Days, the sexual revolution, and countless contraceptives in a girl’s favour, heterosexual women are still vilified for their sexuality. On this year’s International Women’s Day, Julia Gillard addressed what she no doubt thought were the big issues in women’s rights today: violence, education, gender pay gaps and human trafficking. While the…
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The theme for International Women’s Day earlier this month was ‘The Gender Agenda: Gaining Momentum’ and it could not be more apt given the recent horrific attacks on women in India and South Africa – attacks that are not unprecedented and are prevalent in too many countries around the world. These acts of violence against…
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Today is International Women’s Day, an occasion to peer back through history and say, ‘Gosh, we’ve come a long way!’ I guess it’s a day to say thanks, fellas, for letting us vote, wear trousers and earn a decent wage. You’re so good to us (sorry, I couldn’t resist). But it’s also worth considering what…
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‘A woman’s opinions are useless to her, she may suffer unjustly, she may be wronged, but she has no power to weightily petitions against man’s laws, no representatives to urge her views, her only method to produce release, redress, or change, is to ceaselessly agitate.’ – Louisa Lawson, speech to the inaugural meeting of the…
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Happy International Women’s Day everyone! Having my column fall on this day sounds like a golden opportunity for a womanly theme, which almost makes it a shame that almost every column has some kind of womanly theme. I feel like I shot myself in the foot there. So, instead of a column listing achievements, I…
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A recent photography competition casts a spotlight on the role of women in revolutionary Egypt — but women’s rights are under threat under Egypt’s new leaders, writes Farz Edraki. A woman in red hijab. She stands in a crowd of helmet-clad police officers, protesters, and cameramen. Her gaze is steadfast; resolute. The caption on the…
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A Right to Kill Newborns? Late last week, Australian philosophers Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva argued in the British Medical Journal that killing a newborn is of no moral difference to aborting a foetus. This is justified on the basis that a newborn and a foetus have the same lack of a sense of their own life and aspiration. As long…
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