The excitement for this first FIFA Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand has been accompanied by frustration expressed about the pace of change toward gender equality in sport. Major sport events, such as the FIFA Women’s World Cup, the Olympic and Paralympic Games shine an important spotlight on the problematic values that continue to marginalise women’s voices in the governance and representation of sport.

It is four years since I participated in a WOW Festival in London, missing out in 2019 due to an accident and then of course the last three years of COVID cancellations and travel restrictions. So it was extra special this year to be able to travel to the UK with WOW Australia Senior Producer Jo Pratt and in partnership with the WOW Foundation, to support the participation of our Co Patron Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner June Oscar AO in this year’s WOW London at the Royal Festival Hall.

The inability to tackle some of the wicked problems of the day (ongoing gender injustice included) is often a cultural issue. The way we think about issues, the way we’ve always done things as a community, results in particular approaches to problem solving. If we want real social change, we have to start with cultural change – and what better tool for that than the creative outpourings of culture itself?

On Friday 2nd September we were delighted to welcome our esteemed guests, the Hon. Quentin Bryce and the Hon. Julia Gillard for our twice postponed and much anticipated conversation Once Upon a Time in Australia! It was a delight and privilege to hear the stories and reminiscences of these two leaders who have broken new ground for so many women in Australia.

The Global Institute for Women’s Leadership, or GIWL (pronounced ‘jewel’) was first established at King’s College London by Australia’s first and only female Prime Minister, the Honourable Julia Gillard AC in 2018. In 2020, the Australian National University became the first international base for GIWL, working in partnership with GIWL at King's College London with a focus on the Asia-Pacific region.

Early next morning I read the statement from the dissenting judges, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Justice Stephen Breyer, saying that the court decision means that “young women today will come of age with fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers. And that from the very moment of fertilization, a woman has no rights to speak of. A state can force her to bring a pregnancy to term even at the steepest personal and familial costs…With sorrow for this Court, but more, for the many millions of American women who have today lost a fundamental constitutional protection - we dissent,” they wrote.

Women in Australia have made significant economic progress since I was a kid, and especially since I began my career in the 1980s. As quite a young girl, I can clearly remember my grandmother saying that children were the only way a woman could be fulfilled. Even as a young girl this idea seemed not right to me.

Flying to Dili the day after hosting a WOW festival in Cairns is not something I would recommend for your body regardless of your age! But as an experience for the mind and soul, the insight I have just had into the history, politics and work of women leaders of our closest neighbour has been second to none.

It was organised and hosted by former first lady Kirsty Sword Gusmão, who many will remember for her own incredible story as told in A Woman of Independence.

 On the 27 April June Oscar was one of three women change makers who joined in conversation to discuss Women and Power. In discussion with Julia Banks and Julianne Schultz, and facilitated by Professor Anne Tiernan, the conversation was lively, enlightening and motivating. We are pleased to present June’s opening address here in full.

Women, children, young people and those in insecure work have borne the brunt of COVID-19’s economic effects and its opportunity costs, both now and into the future. Moreover, as women know from lived experience, the pandemic exposed the entrenched and gendered gaps of income, wealth, safety, opportunity and justice that persist despite decades of activism.

WOW Australia is delighted to present the forward from Jackie Huggin’s seminal work Sister Girl: Reflections on Tiddaism, Identity and Reconciliation. A reflection on many important and timely topics, including identity, activism, leadership and reconciliation.

Violence against women doesn’t happen in a bubble. No one wakes up one day and decides to murder a woman, rape a woman, abuse a woman, or harass a woman.  Men who perpetrate violence against women live, work, and socialise in our violent culture.  It’s an uncomfortable truth; one we don’t like to acknowledge, or address.