The AAWAA Women’s Advocate

How do the categories used in health data affect what governments know about women’s needs and outcomes? Emma speaks with Megan about biological sex, legal classification and gender identity in research, administration and policy. Following AAWAA’s meeting with the Department of Health, they discuss the limitations of current guidance, accurate descriptions of research, and the evidence needed to...

Emma is joined by Suzi, AAWAA’s guidelines specialist, to discuss our submission to the Senate Select Committee on Women’s Health. They examine how apparently administrative decisions shape women’s access to care, whose evidence is heard and who takes responsibility when services fail. From continuing care and regulatory oversight to accurate sex-specific data, the conversation considers what wome...

In Part II of ‘Be kind’, Martine and Liv examine the pressure on women to move from softening how we speak to saying things we don’t believe. Through pronouns, courtroom guidance, feminist criticism of drag and girls’ boundaries, we consider how disagreement is recast as unkindness or prejudice — and what that means for our judgement and our right to dissent. __ Donate If you wish to donate to AAW...

Emma and Nerissa examine the 2019 sports inclusion guidelines that clubs running female-only competition still rely on, and the questions put to the Minister for Sport at the National Press Club on 15 October. They look at how the guidelines place participation based on affirmed gender identity first and treat female-only categories under section 42 of the Sex Discrimination Act as an exception fr...

Women’s protection should survive a portfolio change. At the National Press Club, Anika Wells argued that institutions must take responsibility for preventing online harm and recognised that online environments are particularly unsafe for women. But how did that principle carry across when she was questioned as Minister for Sport? Emma and Megan examine the Minister’s response to concerns about Au...

The Hon Michelle Hofmann MLC, member of the Legislative Council of the Parliament of Western Australia, speaks to Amber from The Women's Advocate about Ms Hofmann's fight against the Assisted Reproductive Technology and Surrogacy Bill. Ms Hofmann reflects on her first major battle as a newly elected MLC, her concerns about provisions lowering the minimum surrogate age from 25 to 18 and scr...

In this episode, Emma and Lucy discuss AAWAA's submission to the UN Human Rights Committee on its draft General Comment on freedom of association. They cover why women's associations depend on organising around biological sex rather than a generic identity category, the gap in the draft's membership test that leaves sex-based criteria exposed to being labelled discriminatory, and the r...

In this episode, Emma and Lucy discuss two recent submissions on family violence, one to the Tasmanian Government, one to the federal Second Action Plan consultation, both built on the same argument: sex-neutral language like "people who use violence" obscures who is harmed and who does the harm. They cover misidentification of women as perpetrators, the case for female-only refuges and cr...

In this episode of The Unmoved Feminist, Martine and Liv take apart the idea that 'be kind' is a harmless, universal instruction. Drawing on Robin Lakoff, Dale Spender and Sandra Lee Bartky, they trace how women and girls are trained from childhood into a softened, hedging register, and how 'be kind' is used to police tone rather than engage with substance whenever women raise male...

Emma and Lucy unpack a gap in the Digital Duty of Care Bill: harms from pornography and misogynist material are fixed directly into law for children, but for adult women, the same harms are left to a minister's discretion, with no requirement they're ever addressed. They discuss what that gap reveals about how Parliament treats women as a class, and why structural harm can't be judged...

Emma and Amber unpack a newly released Freedom of Information document showing how the Attorney-General's Department and the Australian Law Reform Commission negotiated the terms of reference for the ALRC's surrogacy law review, before those terms were ever made public. They cover what the correspondence confirms, what's been withheld under the FOI Act's deliberative process exempt...

As the Australian Law Reform Commission prepares to provide its report on surrogacy laws, Megan and Amber read the Melbourne Declaration to Abolish Surrogacy in full. The Declaration emerged from the National Conference on Surrogacy, ‘In the Name of the Child’ , held in Melbourne in August 2026. It calls on Australian governments to abolish all forms of surrogacy and to protect the rights of those...

Amber speaks with Ms Reem Alsalem, the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, about her mandate, CEDAW and sex in international law, women’s sex-based protections and rights, pornography, surrogacy, violence against girls, and the changing forms of violence against women and girls. This podcast provides general information and opinion only and does not constitute legal advice....

Emma is joined by Suzi to examine how the exemption process under the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 is coming to function as the default pathway for female-only services, rather than the narrow, temporary safeguard it was designed to be. They discuss the Lesbian Action Group's three-year dispute with the Australian Human Rights Commission, the practical cost of an exemption-dependent framework f...

In this episode of The Women's Advocate, Emma and Meg discuss the keynote address delivered by Reem Alsalem, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, at the ARMS national conference on surrogacy in Melbourne. They walk through the claims she examined, from consent and payment to bodily autonomy and the best interests of the child, and the international develop...

Dr Megan Blake is co-counsel for the Lesbian Action Group in its case against the Australian Human Rights Commission, and a member of Sall Grover's legal team in the High Court application in Giggle v Tickle. In this interview with The Women's Advocate, she sets out what each case says about the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 and what, in her assessment, Parliament would need to consider in a...

In this episode of The Unmoved Feminist, Martine and Liv tackle the uncomfortable question of why some women side with male power, police other women, and direct hostility sideways instead of at the structures that harm us. Drawing on second‑wave, materialist feminist analysis, they unpack calculated safety strategies, male identification, reform complicity, and horizontal hostility as part of a w...

The Australian Law Reform Commission told stakeholders its surrogacy review was nearly complete. Days earlier, it had quietly been given six more weeks — and nobody will say why. In this episode, Amber and Emma trace two episodes eight months apart: a roundtable where governance concerns were redirected to private correspondence, and a deadline extension the ALRC's own newsletter never mention...

Emma and Megan discuss the Tasmanian Greens’ draft conversion bill and AAWAA’s submission, using it as a springboard into the “guilt trade” and “forced teaming” of LGB with TQI+. They explore how collective cultural guilt about gay conversion therapy is being leveraged to silence scrutiny of gender‑identity law, what this means for lesbian and gay young people, and why sex and gender must be disen...

Emma and Megan look at what is really at stake when Parliament considers surrogacy law reform. Instead of starting with “access” and “barriers”, they focus on the threshold question: should the State construct and normalise a market that uses women’s reproductive capacity for the planned relinquishment of children? Drawing on AAWAA’s recent evidence and broader governance and UN work, they explain...

Emma and Amber examine Australia's draft seventh periodic report under the ICCPR — the international treaty that binds Australia to protect civil and political rights. They look at what the report says, what it leaves out, and why that matters. They discuss ABS data showing male sexual violence against women has increased over the last decade, an unresolved conflict at the heart of Australia&#...

Emma and Luci cover AAWAA's follow-up communication to the UN Commission on the Status of Women, ahead of the 1 August deadline for submissions to CSW71. They discuss the continued silence from Australia's CSW70 delegation since AAWAA first wrote to them in March, and what the new submission documents — Federal Court findings on the Sex Discrimination Act, the AHRC's refusal to act on...

When a regulatory document governing pregnancy, birth and postnatal care can't say clearly what 'woman' means, that's not a drafting oversight — it's a clinical and legal problem. Emma talks to Suzi about AAWAA's submission to the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia, the internal contradictions in the proposed revised guidelines, and why getting this right matters for...

In this episode of The Unmoved Feminist , Martine and Liv unpack a word used everywhere and explained almost nowhere: patriarchy. Drawing on Wollstonecraft, Gilman, Frye's birdcage image, Mitchell's four structures of oppression, and Pateman's sexual contract, they trace why the analysis has never been superseded — and why its latest adaptations, from neoliberal feminism to the displac...

Emma and Sue walk through forty years of Australia’s Sex Discrimination Act, from its CEDAW roots and the creation of our sex‑based protections and rights, through to the AHRC’s growing role and the 2013 gender identity amendments, to Giggle v Tickle, the Lesbian Action Group case, and Julia Gillard’s comments on how those changes were made without women’s concerns ever being squarely put to Parli...