Feminism

Twenty-five per cent of Australian Rules football players are now women and girls, a figure that has doubled in the past five years. From February next year, eight new women's teams will compete in a national, six-round, AFL competition. Announcing the women's league last month, AFL chairman Mike Fitzpatrick said it would “change the game forever, [… uneasy pause …] for the good”.

Young Queenslanders for the Right to Choose organised a public forum attended by up to 150 people in the Queensland Parliament House on July 12. A similar forum took place in Cairns the next night. Full audio of the forum can be found above.

Working women have lost their finest advocate. Lynn Beaton was one of the first of her generation to take up the fight for women's rights within the Australian trade union movement. Throughout her life Lynn was an active campaigner for the rights of women at work, as well as a researcher, strategist and historian of the labour movement. Lynn was born in Victoria, but in 1960 the family moved to London. Lynn spent her teenage years in swinging London, returning to Melbourne in 1966.

In the same way that women had to organise and struggle to win the vote, equal pay and access to higher education, women have also had to fight for their reproductive rights, including access to contraception and access to safe medical and surgical abortion. The impact of pregnancy and childbirth on a woman is so great that no matter what other political, social or economic rights women have, if they do not have control over whether or when to have children, it is meaningless to speak about women controlling their own lives.

Pauline Hanson is back in the Senate after 18 years, riding the wave of anti-Muslim hatred spawned by various confected Wars on Terror™. But liberal commentators are warning we should take her more seriously this time. She and her 10% are “not just racists” they say. And they're right. Since the election, Hanson has made it clear that she has two major priorities this time around: protecting Christian fish'n'chips from Middle Eastern halal fast food, and tender-hearted men from the feminist Family Court.

Speaking to his supporters in a live web video address on June 17, Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders insisted that despite his campaign failing to defeat Democrat establishment figure Hillary Clinton, the struggle for a political revolution must continue.

It is no exaggeration to say that a strip of land along Syria’s northern border with Turkey is home to the most radical experiment in democracy and gender equality, not just in the Middle East, but in the whole world.

In the week that brought to light television personality Eddie McGuire's “banter” about sports journalist Caroline Wilson, the voters of Leichhardt, covering an area stretching from Cairns to Cape York and the Torres Strait, have been treated to campaign signs depicting a witch.

Richmond Football Club will boycott Triple M Radio in the wake of Eddie McGuire, James Brayshaw and Danny Frawley joking about paying extra money to see Fairfax journalist Caroline Wilson put underwater during next year’s Big Freeze at the ‘G. Veteran Richmond forward Jack Riewoldt said the club's move had been driven by "a couple of senior players". He said no end date had been set for the ban, even though McGuire had apologised for his comments.

It took more than 100 years of struggle to ensure the poorest workers in Australia received reasonable wages and conditions. But today inequality and poverty are growing rapidly. The living standards of the majority continue to drop, while at the same time there is a huge expansion of the wealth of a tiny minority.

There's a “huge appetite” for abortion law reform, Greens MLC Dr Mehreen Faruqi told a 150-strong meeting at the Glebe Town Hall on June 6. “We've waited far too long already,” she said. The meeting was organised to launch Faruqi's decriminalisation of abortion bill, which is in its draft stage. The panelists included health professionals Philippa Ramsay and Juliet Richters, health laywer Julie Hamblin and Bethany Sheehan, a founder of My Body My Right, a group campaigning for a safe space outside abortion clinics.

US Women's soccer team after winning last year's World Cup. The United States women's soccer team does not have the right to strike for better conditions and wages this year, a US district court judge ruled on June 3, Reuters reported that day.