Feminism

Pro Choice QLD released this statement on May 5. * * * Pro Choice QLD is today launching the“It's not 1899/Abortion should not be a crime” campaign against laws from 1899 criminalising abortion in this state.

King Street, Newtown ground to a halt on April 23 as some 500 locals took to the street in protest at the rise in homophobic and transphobic violence in the area since the introduction of the lockout laws.

The struggles of Kurdish women in Rojava Kurdistan (Northern Syria) became known to many people in the world during the brutal attacks of ISIS against the city of Kobanê in September 2014.

Sarah Eleazar is a Pakistani journalist and member of the socialist Awami Workers Party (AWP). She co-edits Tajdeed, a left research journal in Urdu. Eleazar will be a featured guest at the Socialist for the 21st Century conference in Sydney on May 13-15. She spoke with Green Left Radio on Melbourne community station 3CR in March about the fight for women’s liberation and socialism in Pakistan. The first part of an abridged transcript is below. ***

A Facebook page that rated the appearance of students at Melbourne University has been taken down, four days after the launch of a petition calling for its removal. The 'Hotties of Melbourne Uni' page had been active on Facebook for years. It featured photos of Melbourne University students posted without their consent. Law student Laura Blandthorn launched a change.org petition claiming that: "The Hotties of Melbourne University" Facebook page perpetuates rape culture, sexism and disrespect." The petition received more than 23,000 signatures.

The first screening of the cinematic tale of women fighting for jobs at Port Kembla steelworks screened to 250 people at the Gala Cinema in Warrawong on April 17. Set in 1973, The Women Who Were Never There tells a dramatic story, based on real events, of women who chained themselves to the front gates of BHP to protest the lack of jobs for women. The film brings to life the drama of the women who took on Australia's biggest corporation in their fight for equality.

“Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.” That quote is often attributed to Marilyn Monroe, but was more likely said by psychologist and LSD guru Timothy Leary.

In the lead-up to the federal election, talk of balancing the budget, jobs and growth are centre. Amid rising unemployment and job insecurity, single parents continue to face both a job market unforgiving of parenting responsibilities and parenting payments that have been consistently attacked and eroded — framed by the false narrative of providing incentives to return to work and finding necessary budget savings.

Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine and the Foundations of a Movement By Angela Davis Haymarket Books, 2016 180 pages, $15.95. In the summer of 2014, images spread across the world of protesters in Ferguson, Missouri, facing off against police in riot gear, driving tanks and hurling tear gas grenades in the wake of the police shooting of Black teenager Michael Brown.

On March 17, after a two-day meeting held in the town of Girkê Legê (Al-Muabbada) in Rojava (Syrian Kurdistan), a Constituent Assembly established a “Rojava-Northern Syria Democratic Federal System”. The Constituent Assembly was attended by 31 parties and 200 delegates representing Rojava's Kobanê, Efrîn and Cizîrê cantons and the Kurdish, Arab, Assyrian, Syriac, Armenian, Turkmen and Chechen peoples of Girê Spî (Tal Abyad), Shaddadi, Aleppo and Shehba regions.

Childcare workers chained themselves to the entrance doors of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's Melbourne office on International Women's Day, March 8 to demand better pay for the mainly women who work in the industry.

Hundreds of people marched for International Women's Day in Melbourne on March 8.