Mem’s a Boomer. Why her generation drove social change and isn’t just about house prices | SBS Insight

Younger generations often vocalise their resentment towards Baby Boomers and their inaction on climate policy, their hold on property and economic prosperity, but the work that Boomers have done to create positive changes in society is often overlooked.

By rejecting the conservative attitudes of their parents’ generation, Boomers transformed society by pushing back against social attitudes and norms and breaking taboos.

How Boomers fought against the stigma of single motherhood

When Tricia Harper returned to Australia from London in 1969 as a single mother with her baby daughter, she opened Melbourne’s The Age newspaper and read an article that stated the bottom groups on the social ladder, which included derelict men and unmarried mothers.
Harper had been living independently and working as a teacher when she decided to resist the intense societal pressure at the time to give her baby up for adoption. She kept her daughter Ruth despite family and friends voicing their disapproval.

This disapproval motivated Harper to group together with other unmarried mothers to form a group, The Council for Single Mothers and her Child, that would advocate for change.

“We wanted to abolish the illegitimacy … we wanted to change the Family Law Act, and get better child support payments. They were some of our key goals, as well as moving to eliminate stigma, get rid of labels,” Tricia said.

Source: Mem’s a Boomer. Why her generation drove social change and isn’t just about house prices | SBS Insight

Trailblazing Women Lawyers | National Library of Australia

This module is aligned to the Australian Curriculum (v9): History 7–10 and includes material to support the teaching of the Knowledge and Understand areas Building Modern Australia and The Globalising World.

Source: Trailblazing Women Lawyers | National Library of Australia

Abortions were illegal in Australia in the 1930s, and many women like Isabel Pepper died getting them – ABC News

Until the late 1960s, abortion was illegal in Australia. With limited access to contraception, many women, like my great-grandmother, unlawfully attempted to terminate unwanted pregnancies.

According to The Royal Women’s Hospital records from the 1930s, about 250 women each year presented with a septic abortion. This equates to five admissions each week to that one hospital.

“It’s a situation for the desperate,” registered nurse, midwife and historian, Madonna Grehan says.

According to the inquest, Isabel had repeatedly attempted to abort the pregnancy herself. When these home methods were unsuccessful, she sought the assistance of a backyard abortionist.

But there were clearly complications.

Once at the hospital, Isabel was quickly admitted to ward one, the septic ward.

“Ward one was a ward that collected women with lots of problems,” Ms Mabbitt explains.

Now in her 90s, the former midwife still has vivid memories of caring for women with septic abortions on ward one.

“It’s the distinctive smell, it’s all-encompassing. And the screaming. They were in so much pain from everything shutting down,” she says.

Despite the pain Isabel would undoubtedly have been suffering, she was interviewed by police within hours of her admission to hospital because of the illegality of abortion.

She told police that she had miscarried.

“She really didn’t give any indication of the truth, and that was normal,” Ms Mabbitt says.

Just 24 hours after she was admitted to hospital, Isabel died at 5.15am on August 21, 1937.

For decades, thousands of Australian women found themselves in equally desperate situations and they died as a result.

“What really irritates me, most of the people who are against abortion are men, and they really have no idea what they’re talking about, no idea how women died.”

Source: Abortions were illegal in Australia in the 1930s, and many women like Isabel Pepper died getting them – ABC News

Hidden women of history: Olympias, who took on an emperor, dodged a second marriage and fought for her faith

A formidable woman born in the second half of the fourth century and widowed at around 17, Olympias was not afraid to advocate for herself – or her friends.

A sad fact about the early Christian period is that very few texts written by women survive. Olympias was well educated and acquainted with bishops and even the emperor. We know she wrote letters to some of these men, but only the men’s letters to her remain.

There are stories about her life as well, and some about her monastery and her bodily remains after her death, but most of these were also written by men. Nevertheless, these sources can give us insight into the life of a formidable woman who opposed the emperor and fought for her way of life and her faith.

When she was widowed, according to an anonymous Life of Olympias, the emperor Theodosius tried to marry her off to a relative of his named Elpidius. Her extensive wealth – she owned property all over the empire including palaces in Constantinople – made her quite a catch.

But Olympias refused, apparently declaring

if the Lord Jesus Christ had wanted me to live with a man, he would not have taken away my first husband.

She told the emperor she wanted to live a celibate life as a monastic rather than marry again.

When Olympias refused to marry Elpidius, the emperor Theodosius commanded the prefect of the city, Clementius, be guardian of all her possessions until Olympias turned 30.

The Life gives Olympias a pithy reply in which she says she is glad to be relieved from the burden of her wealth and begs Clementius to distribute her wealth to the poor and the churches.

A few years later, Theodosius relented when he saw how dedicated Olympias was to the ascetic life, restoring her fortune. This enabled Olympias to establish a monastery or holy house for women in Constantinople.

Although she died in exile, Olympias was a significant figure who fought against the mould women were supposed to fit into, supporting a lot of people along the way.

Source: Hidden women of history: Olympias, who took on an emperor, dodged a second marriage and fought for her faith

The AI industry is on the verge of becoming another boys’ club. We’re all going to lose out if it does

A recent New York Times article released a list of people “behind the dawn of the modern artificial intelligence movement” – and not a single woman was named. It came less than a week after news of a fake auto-generated woman being listed as a speaker on the agenda for a software conference.

Unfortunately, the omission of women from the history of STEM isn’t a new phenomenon. Women have been missing from these narratives for centuries.

In the wake of recent AI developments, we now have a choice: are we going to leave women out of these conversations as well – even as they continue to make massive contributions to the AI industry?

Prior to computers as we know them, “computer” was the title given to people who performed complex mathematical calculations. These people were commonly women.

One 2018 study of 4,000 researchers who had been published in leading AI conferences found women made up just 12% of this group.

The omission of women isn’t limited to the AI industry, or even to STEM. As historian Bettany Hughes notes, women occupy a meagre 0.5% of recorded history.

A lack of gender diversity in AI has a demonstrated ability to harm and disadvantage women and, by extension, all of us. While many argue that improving AI training datasets could address the gender gap, others rightly point out that women should also be included in data-collection processes

Source: The AI industry is on the verge of becoming another boys’ club. We’re all going to lose out if it does

Supreme Court strikes down NSW’s tough anti-protest laws

The NSW Supreme Court has struck down part of a suite of tough anti-protest laws rushed through state parliament last year, ruling that criminalising activities that cause partial closures or redirections around ports and train stations was constitutionally invalid.

Climate change protesters Dominique Jacobs and Helen Kvelde, represented by the Environmental Defenders Office, launched a constitutional challenge last year to the new laws, which imposed a maximum penalty of a $22,000 fine, imprisonment for two years, or both.

Lawyers for the protesters argued in court this year that the laws, introduced last year by the former NSW Coalition government with the support of the then Labor opposition, fell foul of the implied freedom of political communication in the Commonwealth Constitution.

The judge said that “protests over environmental issues … do, as a general proposition, constitute political communication”.

He noted the provision criminalising a range of conduct near major facilities “reaches its zenith in prohibiting conduct which is not prohibited by existing criminal statute law such as … remaining near any part of a major facility which causes people to be redirected”.

David Morris, chief executive of the Environmental Defenders Office, said Australian democracy owed a debt to the two Knitting Nannas, Dom and Helen, who took this challenge.

Source: Supreme Court strikes down NSW’s tough anti-protest laws

Kathleen Folbigg has convictions for killing her four children overturned, live updates – ABC News

Kathleen Folbigg, once labelled as the nation’s worst female serial killer, has had her convictions for killing her four children quashed by the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal.

Now 56, Ms Folbigg spent 20 years in prison after being found guilty of killing her four young children. They were just babies or toddlers when they died between the years of 1989 and 1999 in the Hunter region.

She has always maintained her innocence but was convicted at trial of three counts of murder and one of manslaughter.

Source: Kathleen Folbigg has convictions for killing her four children overturned, live updates – ABC News

Women’s inventions and discoveries that were credited to men

Throughout history, women have made breakthroughs in technology and science, but they haven’t always been recognized for them. Due to sexism, many women went totally unrecognized or had men take credit for their work. It turns out that we can thank women for many inventions and major discoveries that are still relevant today! Curious? Click through the gallery and get to know the women who didn’t get the credit they deserved. Intrigued? Click through this gallery to find out who these pioneers were.

Source: Women’s inventions and discoveries that were credited to men

‘Brilliantly controversial’: Vale Dr Dale Spender AM

World-acclaimed feminist, beloved educator and widely published author who was nothing short of brilliant, Dr Dale Spender AM has passed away aged 80.

A true pioneer for women’s equality who elevated her fellow writers and educators and cheekily encouraged women to be bold and change the world, Dr Dale Spender AM has sadly passed away, aged 80.

Recalling his favourite memory of his sister, Mr Spender recited one of her famous quotes that encapsulated her spirit.

It reads: “Feminism has fought no wars. It has killed no opponents. It has set up no concentration camps, starved no enemies, practised no cruelties. Its battles have been for education, for the vote, for better working conditions, for safety on the streets, for childcare, for social welfare, for rape crisis centres, women’s refugees, reforms in the law. If someone says, ‘oh I’m not a feminist,’ I ask, ‘why? What’s your problem?”

At heart a teacher and a writer and always a feminist, Dale Spender lived a life driven by passion for women’s equality and for education.
She published and edited over 30 books and many more articles, book chapters and blog entries on feminism, women’s history and literature, education and new technologies.
In 1980, Dale published Man Made Language – originally her PhD thesis.
The work established her as a feminist academic and remains influential in contemporary analysis of sexism in language and in the social and political reality it creates.
Reclaiming women’s intellectual heritage, she said, was a deeply feminist act: “Unless we can reconstruct our past, draw on it and transmit it to the next generation, our oppression persists.” (Women of Ideas, 1982).
On returning to Australia, Dale was criticised by those working in the same intellectual fields as not being scholarly, as too prolific, as a populist and tall poppy.
She applied for several academic positions in Australia but was not successful, perhaps on the grounds that are familiar to other intellectuals who made their name and fame outside of Australia.
Or perhaps it was because she cheekily advised women that to change the world, they should be rude to men, three times a day.

Source: ‘Brilliantly controversial’: Vale Dr Dale Spender AM

A new book about George Orwell and his wife Eileen O’Shaughnessy lays out patriarchal truths – ABC News

Funder’s book excoriates a fundamental truth unchanged from both before and after Orwell’s time: that what women do in a marriage, in a family, creates more time for the other members of that family than they would ever have if they had to manage their lives without her.

The wife is an enabler, and a bearer of the mental and even physical load in ways that make her work both crucial and unvalued, all while it is also completely invisible. It’s a story as old as time and as powerfully present, to greater and lesser degrees, in all our relationships. And it’s driving many of us crazy.

Funder’s demolition of the patriarchal structure that keeps many of us trapped in this place is something to behold, but her main quest in this book is to bring to light Eileen O’Shaughnessy: a brilliant writer erased by history, criticism and biography, and she wants to reveal her quite incredible contribution to the work Orwell produces. I don’t want to spoil all that Funder uncovers — but there’s a reason almost every critic notes that Animal Farm is unlike anything Orwell wrote, before or after.

Funder makes clear that she does not want to cancel Orwell, a writer she adores — but she doesn’t have to: the history she uncovers condemns a great deal around this man, most particularly his awful neglect of the woman who types, edits, counsels on and advocates for all his books; who kept his houses, got him out of war-torn Spain and tolerated unspeakable infidelities.

Source: A new book about George Orwell and his wife Eileen O’Shaughnessy lays out patriarchal truths – ABC News