Sports inclusion guidelines: No published assessment seven years on

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 Australian Sports Commission guidance on female-only competition. Featuring audio from the address and the exchange, this episode considers what clearer guidance could offer grassroots clubs — and why women’s protection deserves consistent consideration across ministerial portfolios. __ Donate If you wish to donate to AAWAA you can do so by making a direct deposit or bank transfer to: Account name: Affiliation of Australian Women’s Advocacy Alliances Account number: 04201471 BSB: 325-185 __ Disclosure statement Voices in this podcast are AI-generated clones of real, named AAWAA members, created and used with their informed consent to help amplify women's words and stories. All scripts and spoken content are written by AAWAA women, and all editorial judgement, fact-checking, and production decisions remain entirely human. AI is used only to voice this content: never to generate, alter, or invent what is said. Learn more at womensadvocacy.net.

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 scrapping the requirement that a surrogate have already given birth, and the failed push to send the Bill to committee. She also discusses the narrow, one-vote losses on cross-party amendments, her disappointment at the muted media and public response to legislation that will reshape surrogacy in Western Australia, and her advice for other parliamentarians in other jurisdictions holding strong concerns but lacking the numbers to stop a bill they believe fails to protect women. Donate If you wish to donate to AAWAA you can do so by making a direct deposit or bank transfer to: Account name: Affiliation of Australian Women’s Advocacy Alliances Account number: 04201471 BSB: 325-185

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 risk that ordinary advocacy for sex-based protections gets read as hostile discourse. They close with the Lesbian Action Group and Giggle v Tickle cases, two Australian rulings that show what happens when the law has no settled basis for recognising this right, and the narrow, specific fixes AAWAA has asked the Committee to make. __ Donate If you wish to donate to AAWAA you can do so by making a direct deposit or bank transfer to: Account name: Affiliation of Australian Women’s Advocacy Alliances Account number: 04201471 BSB: 325-185 __ Disclosure statement Voices in this podcast are AI-generated clones of real, named AAWAA members, created and used with their informed consent to help amplify women's words and stories. All scripts and spoken content are written by AAWAA women, and all editorial judgement, fact-checking, and production decisions remain entirely human. AI is used only to voice this content: never to generate, alter, or invent what is said. Learn more at womensadvocacy.net.

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 crisis services, and why official communications avoid naming men as responsible, before looking at the one place the submissions take different approaches, and why that reflects two levers of government rather than a real disagreement. __ Donate If you wish to donate to AAWAA you can do so by making a direct deposit or bank transfer to: Account name: Affiliation of Australian Women’s Advocacy Alliances Account number: 04201471 BSB: 325-185 __ Disclosure statement Voices in this podcast are AI-generated clones of real, named AAWAA members, created and used with their informed consent to help amplify women's words and stories. All scripts and spoken content are written by AAWAA women, and all editorial judgement, fact-checking, and production decisions remain entirely human. AI is used only to voice this content: never to generate, alter, or invent what is said. Learn more at womensadvocacy.net.

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 violence, discrimination or the erosion of sex-based protections. This is part one of two: a second episode will look at how the same instruction escalates from policing how women speak to compelling what we're required to say. __ Donate If you wish to donate to AAWAA you can do so by making a direct deposit or bank transfer to: Account name: Affiliation of Australian Women’s Advocacy Alliances Account number: 04201471 BSB: 325-185 __ Disclosure statement Voices in this podcast are AI-generated clones of real, named AAWAA members, created and used with their informed consent to help amplify women's words and stories. All scripts and spoken content are written by AAWAA women, and all editorial judgement, fact-checking, and production decisions remain entirely human. AI is used only to voice this content: never to generate, alter, or invent what is said. Learn more at womensadvocacy.net.