Women’s safety needs consistency across portfolios. Minister Anika Wells argued for protection online, but left a practical question about female-only sport unanswered. At the National Press Club on 15 October, The Hon Anika Wells MP argued that institutions must take responsibility for the environments they create. Online safety should be built into systems before harm … Continue reading Different standards in sport and online: Protecting women and girls
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Surrogacy laws and parliamentary process: An interview with The Hon Michelle Hofmann MLC (WA)
Parliament pushed through sweeping changes to Western Australia's surrogacy laws with almost no public scrutiny. The Hon Michelle Hofmann MLC explains what was lost in the process, from the minimum age for a surrogate mother to the independence of the professionals meant to protect her. Ms Michelle Hofmann is a member of the Legislative Council … Continue reading Surrogacy laws and parliamentary process: An interview with The Hon Michelle Hofmann MLC (WA)
Female association depends on naming sex: The question now before the UN
Sex is not an identity claim: it's the material, unchangeable condition, shared by all women as a class, most obviously vulnerable to male violence, that makes women's associations necessary and distinct from most other groups claiming the same right. Women's associations exist because women are a sex class, sharing a material condition that produces common … Continue reading Female association depends on naming sex: The question now before the UN
Why sex-neutral language fails family violence policy
Naming men matters in law. Sex-neutral language lets policy obscure who is harmed and who does the harm. Family and sexual violence in Australia follows a sexed pattern. Women are disproportionately its victims, men predominate among its perpetrators. This is what the data shows, consistently, across state and national sources, provided that data is properly … Continue reading Why sex-neutral language fails family violence policy
TUF. Be kind, part I: An instruction, not a virtue (The Unmoved Feminist)
No one wants to argue against kindness in the abstract, which is exactly why 'be kind' gets away with the job of work it does for patriarchy. It looks harmless, but it isn't, and it isn't distributed evenly across the population, either. It does not function as a neutral moral instruction. Instead, it trains us … Continue reading TUF. Be kind, part I: An instruction, not a virtue (The Unmoved Feminist)
aawaa newsletter
September 2026 Key organisational developments AAWAA’s work continues in its organised, patient and institutional form. Across the organisation, women are contributing to submissions, meetings, FOI work, public analysis and international engagement, while strengthening our capacity to respond to law and policy processes affecting women’s sex-based protections and rights. This period included direct engagement with the … Continue reading aawaa newsletter
Digital duty of care: Harms to women missing from the Bill
The Digital Duty of Care Bill 2026 names pornography, and material that promotes hostile attitudes towards women, as harms to children. It does not name either as a harm to adult women. The Online Safety Amendment (Digital Duty of Care) Bill 2026 names pornography, and material that promotes hostile attitudes towards women, as harms to … Continue reading Digital duty of care: Harms to women missing from the Bill
Redacted terms: What an FOI release does and doesn’t tell us about the ALRC’s surrogacy laws review
The national surrogacy review's terms of reference went through several rounds of negotiation between the ALRC and the Attorney-General's Department in 2024, according to a newly released FOI document. A Freedom of Information release from the Attorney-General's Department, FOI26/279, gives a partial record of how the Australian Law Reform Commission's terms of reference for its … Continue reading Redacted terms: What an FOI release does and doesn’t tell us about the ALRC’s surrogacy laws review
A national declaration to abolish surrogacy as Australia awaits law reform report
A review of surrogacy laws is due to be handed to the Attorney-Generral today. A national conference on surrogacy says the practice must be abolished. You can sign the Declaration, below. The Australian Law Reform Commission's report on its review of surrogacy laws is due to be handed today to the Attorney-General. The Commission sought, … Continue reading A national declaration to abolish surrogacy as Australia awaits law reform report
The convoluted ways of patriarchy: An interview with Reem Alsalem, UNSRVAWG
“The ordinary meaning of sex is biological sex,” says Reem Alsalem, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls. In an interview with The Women’s Advocate during her visit to Australia, Ms Alsalem discussed CEDAW, the relationship between sex and gender, and what she regards as emerging or underexplored forms of violence … Continue reading The convoluted ways of patriarchy: An interview with Reem Alsalem, UNSRVAWG
The exemption problem: How a practical default is becoming a developing expectation
Ordinary female-only provision of services and spaces was never meant to require government permission. We examine how a temporary, discretionary exemption process is coming to function as the default pathway women's organisations are expected to rely on — and what that costs organisations already stretched thin. Under the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (SDA), provision of … Continue reading The exemption problem: How a practical default is becoming a developing expectation
UN Special Rapporteur sets out concerns at national surrogacy conference
Ms Reem Alsalem has used her first visit to Australia to deliver the keynote address at a national conference on surrogacy in Melbourne, where she examined what she described as the "myths" that allow the surrogacy industry to "flourish." View the full address, below. Melbourne was host to 'In the Name of the Child' on … Continue reading UN Special Rapporteur sets out concerns at national surrogacy conference
Reforming the Sex Discrimination Act: An interview with Dr Megan Blake
Parliament, not the courts, holds the key to fixing the Sex Discrimination Act. Dr Megan Blake explains what workable reform would need to address, from the meaning of 'sex' to the limits of the exemption process. Dr Megan Blake is co-counsel for the Lesbian Action Group in its case against the Australian Human Rights Commission … Continue reading Reforming the Sex Discrimination Act: An interview with Dr Megan Blake
TUF. Female alignment with male power: What feminist theory says
Second-wave and radical feminist theorists never treated women's resistance to our own sex's collective interests as an inconvenience or mystery to be explained away; instead, they built a body of analysis specifically to account for it, and that analysis remains sharper and more precise than anything the term 'misogyny' alone can capture. Misogyny, properly defined, … Continue reading TUF. Female alignment with male power: What feminist theory says
Moving the surrogacy review deadline: The ALRC’s silence
The Australian Law Reform Commission told stakeholders in late July that its review of surrogacy laws was nearly complete. But only a few days earlier, the Attorney-General had agreed to give it six more weeks, and neither will say why. This is not the first time direct questions to the ALRC about how this review … Continue reading Moving the surrogacy review deadline: The ALRC’s silence
The guilt trade: Conversion therapy shame and the sex and gender debate
The Tasmanian Greens are aiming to ban practices that seek to change or suppress sexual orientation or gender identity. In a move to follow other states, the draft bill raises deeper questions about how Australia has conflated sexual orientation with gender identity, and how our collective cultural shame about past gay conversion therapy is being … Continue reading The guilt trade: Conversion therapy shame and the sex and gender debate
Women’s rights bodies must come first in surrogacy law reform
AAWAA will be presenting at a major national conference on surrogacy, speaking on a panel that includes Ms Reem Alsalem, UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls. Ahead of the Melbourne event, to be held on Friday 21 and Saturday 22 August, we are publishing our responses to supplementary questions asked of us … Continue reading Women’s rights bodies must come first in surrogacy law reform
AAWAA Women’s Summit 2026
Fri 2 - Sat 3 October 2026, Canberra. This October, AAWAA is holding a women’s advocacy summit focused on strengthening our analysis, improving our practice, and building the capacity we need for serious, sustained work for women and girls. Across two days, we will work on practical advocacy skills – from writing and media to … Continue reading AAWAA Women’s Summit 2026
A decade of failure on women, absent from Australia’s draft UN report
Australia will soon report to the UN on how it has upheld women's rights over the past decade. We tested that account as it currently stands against the data, the courts and the FOI record. Over the ten years since Australia's last periodic report to the UN on its compliance with the International Covenant on … Continue reading A decade of failure on women, absent from Australia’s draft UN report
Silence from the top: What Australia’s CSW delegation still hasn’t addressed
Women are the key stakeholders in the issues Australia's CSW delegates represent — yet AAWAA, writing on women's behalf, has received no response to the concerns we raised with those delegates in March. Since then, the pattern we warned about has only deepened, as our latest communication to the CSW, ahead of CSW71, now sets … Continue reading Silence from the top: What Australia’s CSW delegation still hasn’t addressed
Is ‘woman’ now a historical relic in Australian midwifery regulation?
Australia's midwifery regulator – administered by Ahpra – has proposed reframing 'woman', 'mother', 'she' and 'maternity' as terms kept in its guidelines only for "historical and professional context", while offering no definition of biological sex anywhere in the document. AAWAA made a submission to the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia (NMBA) in early June, … Continue reading Is ‘woman’ now a historical relic in Australian midwifery regulation?
TUF. Patriarchy: The structure we are not supposed to name (The Unmoved Feminist)
The term 'patriarchy' appears constantly — in social media captions, corporate diversity statements, and the language of political parties across the spectrum — yet it is almost never explained. Most often it functions as a synonym for 'bad attitudes towards women', as though the problem were a cultural mood that better education and more enlightened … Continue reading TUF. Patriarchy: The structure we are not supposed to name (The Unmoved Feminist)
A timeline of women’s rights: CEDAW, the 2013 amendments, and the loss of sex‑based protections
The Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (Cth) (the SDA) was enacted to give effect to Australia’s obligations under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), and to protect women as a sex class from discrimination in public and political life.This timeline tracks changes to the SDA from its foundations in … Continue reading A timeline of women’s rights: CEDAW, the 2013 amendments, and the loss of sex‑based protections
What did Gillard know? Reckoning with the 2013 SDA amendments
In the current debate over the 2013 Sex Discrimination Act amendments, former prime minister Julia Gillard has now made her first public comments about claims that her government “destroyed” women’s protections. Speaking at Manchester University, she told the audience that concerns about the issues now being raised “were not raised by anyone” when the changes … Continue reading What did Gillard know? Reckoning with the 2013 SDA amendments
Women affected by AHRC decisions get answers in Adelaide – but key questions remain
In April 2026, the Federal Court found legal error in the Australian Human Rights Commission's approach to the Lesbian Action Group's exemption application and held that the Commission's own guidelines were deficient. In June, the Commission went to Adelaide to talk about human rights. Some of the women most affected by its decisions went too. … Continue reading Women affected by AHRC decisions get answers in Adelaide – but key questions remain
TUF. Female‑only spaces and the politics of women’s safety (The Unmoved Feminist)
The current debate about female‑only spaces can make it sound as if they are an eccentric preference or an unfortunate relic from a less “inclusive” time. In policy documents and media commentary, refuges, rape crisis centres, women’s prisons and female sports categories are increasingly described as exclusionary or old‑fashioned. Proposals for “gender‑neutral” services present themselves … Continue reading TUF. Female‑only spaces and the politics of women’s safety (The Unmoved Feminist)
‘We have guidelines’: AHRC tells women to rely on deficient rules for exemptions
At the AHRC's national 'The Answer Is Human Rights' seminar series, women's advocates have now twice put direct governance questions to Commission officers and twice received responses that acknowledge that questions exist — but without answering them. In Sydney on 17 June, the question was specific: the Federal Court, in the Lesbian Action Group vs … Continue reading ‘We have guidelines’: AHRC tells women to rely on deficient rules for exemptions
A “narrow area of intersection”: AHRC tells women to seek exemptions, not reform
At the Perth stop of the Australian Human Rights Commission's national 'The Answer Is Human Rights' seminar series, held on 11 June, an audience member put a direct and carefully prepared question to AHRC President Hugh de Kretser. The question came from Ms Amber Rossi, a director of the Affiliation of Australian Women's Advocacy Alliances. … Continue reading A “narrow area of intersection”: AHRC tells women to seek exemptions, not reform
TUF. Counting women: Why sex‑based data still matters (The Unmoved Feminist)
At first glance, “sex‑disaggregated data” sounds like a technical matter best left to statisticians. It is easy to assume that debates about whether forms record “sex” or “gender identity”, or whether reports talk about “women” or “people who experience violence”, are just questions of wording. From a second‑wave, materialist feminist perspective, they are nothing of … Continue reading TUF. Counting women: Why sex‑based data still matters (The Unmoved Feminist)
TUF. The feminist waves and why sex‑based feminism still matters (The Unmoved Feminist)
The language of feminist 'waves' is a retrospective way of organising more than two centuries of women's resistance to male domination, not a label that women necessarily used for themselves at the time. The metaphor can be useful, but it can also hide how continuous the struggle has been, and how much of that struggle … Continue reading TUF. The feminist waves and why sex‑based feminism still matters (The Unmoved Feminist)