May 2026
Key organisational developments
AAWAA has entered a more consolidated phase as a national peak advocacy body. Our new constitution has now been adopted for organisational and advocacy use and is published on our website, with legal review and ASIC lodgement to follow.
Our external work remains deliberately focused: in this period we have appeared before a NSW parliamentary select committee on fertility and surrogacy, joined a NSW government roundtable on sexual consent reforms, and continued to press the AHRC President at the National Press Club and in follow‑up correspondence.
At the same time, we have deepened our international engagement through our invitation to sit on an expert online consultation with UN Special Rapporteur Reem Alsalem on violence against older women. We have also added a new submission on CEDAW’s draft General Recommendation 41.
Submission‑writing workshops and internal skills sessions are helping more women share this workload and sustain AAWAA’s role as a serious, evidence‑based voice for women’s sex‑based protections and rights.
National Press Club: Questioning the AHRC President
On 29 April, The Women’s Advocate attended the National Press Club address by AHRC President Hugh de Kretser and asked whether a body that has already mishandled lesbians’ right to organise as female-only in the Lesbian Action Group case should be granted the broader enforcement powers proposed in its Equal Identities recommendations. A follow-up letter has been sent indicating our intention to seek a substantive meeting to discuss how current sex and gender frameworks are affecting women’s access to female-only spaces and services.
See “No great conflict”: The AHRC, the Lesbian Action Group, and the questions Parliament needs to ask
AAWAA attends UN expert consultation on violence against older women
AAWAA was invited to an expert online consultation with the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, Reem Alsalem, which focused on violence against older women. We argue for a functional, sex‑based definition of ‘older women’, introduce the concept of ‘administrative violence’ in pension and aged‑care systems, and call for dedicated national strategies, sex‑disaggregated data, and a statutory right to female‑only intimate care in publicly funded aged care.
We have lodged a follow-up submission. See Older women: Present in the data, absent from the response.
On the podcast
- The Court has spoken: Women are no longer pre-eminent in our own law
- Did the AHRC seek costs against the Lesbian Action Group? A timeline
- Dismantling stereotypes — or reinforcing them? The CEDAW Committee’s confused framework
- TUF: Prostitution and the sexual contract
- Surrogacy is not ‘fertility support’: Our evidence to the NSW inquiry
- Power, proportionality, and the Lesbian Action Group: When the AHRC stands in its own shoes
- Guardianship, not paternalism: a different way to think about surrogacy and the state
- Agency ends when the surrogacy contract begins: lived experience, power and law‑making
- Her super, his payday: closing the male violence loophole
NSW fertility inquiry: Women’s voices on surrogacy
In April, NSWWAA appeared before the NSW Parliament’s Select Committee on Fertility Support and Assisted Reproductive Treatment, giving oral evidence on surrogacy, women’s rights, and safeguarding. We answered detailed questions from committee members, drawing on our abolitionist work to insist that surrogacy is state‑sanctioned violence against women and girls rather than a neutral ‘family‑building’ option. We have provided written responses to supplementary questions, which will be published in The Women’s Advocate in due course.
Listen to NSWWAA’s opening statement to the NSW Parliament’s Select committee on fertility support and assisted reproductive treatment.
NSW sexual consent laws roundtable
Our submission to the statutory review of NSW’s sexual consent reforms led to an invitation to a government roundtable in Sydney on 23 April, where we pressed the case that ‘affirmative consent’ frameworks alone cannot resolve the structural power imbalances and coercive control that drive sexual violence. A key point of contention was the proposal to remove ‘fraudulent inducement’ from the Act’s provisions; we have followed up with a detailed letter to the Department of Communities and Justice arguing that removing this ground would further weaken women’s already fragile protections.
Read more: NSW consent law: Still asking why sex ‘shouldn’t have happened’
From the blog
- No more excuses: The SDA must be reformed
- Did the AHRC seek costs against the Lesbian Action Group? A timeline
- Protecting women’s super from violent male partners and sons: Treasury consults on reforms
- Lived experience is not enough: When ‘fertility support’ becomes a market in women and children
- Prostitution and the sexual contract — The Unmoved Feminist
- Women as a sex class in a world of ‘identity’ — The Unmoved Feminist
- Victoria’s Conversion Practices Act: What the review must address
- Equality Australia, the Governor-General, and the limits of accountability
The Unmoved Feminist: A new AAWAA podcast
On Easter Sunday we launched The Unmoved Feminist, a short‑form podcast and blog series that calmly restates second‑wave, materialist feminist analysis in today’s political environment — giving women a clear framework to understand issues such as gender identity policies, surrogacy, and male violence as structural problems facing women as a sex class, not isolated ‘choices’ or culture‑war talking points.
Listen on Spotify and Apple, as part of The Women’s Advocate podcast feed.
AAWAA
Summit 2026
We are planning an AAWAA summit for the weekend of Fri 2 – Sat 3 Oct to bring our members together for strategy, professional development (including submissions and media work), and mutual support. Members will be provided with opportunities to learn more about the organisation and contribute to our future directions and work, and to spend time together, enjoying each other’s company.
Email women@womensadvocacy.net if you are interested in taking part.
Looking ahead
Over the next quarter, our focus will be on completing the NSW fertility inquiry follow‑up work, securing a substantive meeting with the AHRC, progressing our constitution towards ASIC lodgement, and preparing for our appearance and attendance at a surrogacy conference in Melbourne, where AAWAA will again argue plainly for the abolition of surrogacy.
Across all of this, our guiding aim remains clear: to insist that law and policy take women’s sex‑based protections and rights seriously, and to ensure that feminist abolitionist voices cannot be excluded from the record.
Thank you to all members for your ongoing commitment, solidarity, and persistence in defending and advancing women’s sex‑based protections and rights across Australia.
womensadvocacy.net
women@womensadvocacy.net