In this episode of The Unmoved Feminist, Liv and Martine go back to basics on something that shapes what governments see and what they ignore: sex‑disaggregated data. They trace how second‑wave feminists fought to get women counted separately in crime figures, labour force surveys and time‑use data, so we could prove what women already knew from our lives: that men overwhelmingly commit the violence, and that women carry the costs in unpaid care, low pay and poverty in older age.

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If you wish to donate to AAWAA you can do so by making a direct deposit or bank transfer to:

• Account name: Affiliation of Australian Women’s Advocacy Alliances
• Account number: 04201471
• BSB: 325-185

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Disclosure statement

• Voices in this podcast are AI-generated clones of real, named AAWAA members, created and used with their informed consent to help amplify women's words and stories. All scripts and spoken content are written by AAWAA women, and all editorial judgement, fact-checking, and production decisions remain entirely human. AI is used only to voice this content: never to generate, alter, or invent what is said. Learn more at womensadvocacy.net.

This podcast provides general information and opinion only and does not constitute legal advice. Listeners should seek independent, professional legal advice before acting on any matters discussed. The hosts and AAWAA accept no liability for decisions made based on this content.

In this episode, Martine and Liv step back to map the bigger picture — tracing the feminist "waves" from Mary Wollstonecraft's demand for women's rational equality in 1792, through the suffrage campaigns, into the women's liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s, and on to the third, fourth and liberal feminist strands that followed. The episode is particularly interested in the continuous thread that runs underneath all of it: the insistence, found first in early writers like Wollstonecraft and Astell, that women's subordination is a political arrangement, not a natural one. For listeners coming to feminist theory for the first time, or trying to locate where second-wave, materialist feminism sits in the wider story, this is the grounding episode.

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Donate

If you wish to donate to AAWAA you can do so by making a direct deposit or bank transfer to:

• Account name: Affiliation of Australian Women’s Advocacy Alliances
• Account number: 04201471
• BSB: 325-185

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Disclosure statement

Voices in this podcast are AI-generated clones of real, named AAWAA members, created and used with their informed consent to help amplify women's words and stories. All scripts and spoken content are written by AAWAA women, and all editorial judgement, fact-checking, and production decisions remain entirely human. AI is used only to voice this content: never to generate, alter, or invent what is said. Learn more at womensadvocacy.net.

This podcast provides general information and opinion only and does not constitute legal advice. Listeners should seek independent, professional legal advice before acting on any matters discussed. The hosts and AAWAA accept no liability for decisions made based on this content.

Emma and Amber look at how the Australian Government has chosen to ‘manage the mandate’ of the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, rather than engage squarely with her warnings about Tickle v Giggle, CEDAW, sex‑based protections and rights, and female‑only spaces. Drawing on FOI documents and internal briefings, they trace the pattern from ‘courtesy letters’ that never get answered, to decisions not to submit evidence, to closed‑door efforts to neutralise a UN expert whose work does not ‘conform with our views’ – and ask what this means for women who rely on robust international mechanisms when domestic systems fail us.

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Donate

If you wish to donate to AAWAA you can do so by making a direct deposit or bank transfer to:

• Account name: Affiliation of Australian Women’s Advocacy Alliances
• Account number: 04201471
• BSB: 325-185

__

Disclosure statement

Voices in this podcast are AI-generated clones of real, named AAWAA members, created and used with their informed consent to help amplify women's words and stories. All scripts and spoken content are written by AAWAA women, and all editorial judgement, fact-checking, and production decisions remain entirely human. AI is used only to voice this content: never to generate, alter, or invent what is said. Learn more at womensadvocacy.net.

This podcast provides general information and opinion only and does not constitute legal advice. Listeners should seek independent, professional legal advice before acting on any matters discussed. The hosts and AAWAA accept no liability for decisions made based on this content.

When governments design mental health strategies, they focus on systems: beds, referral pathways, integration models. But what about the structural conditions actually driving women's mental distress? In this episode, Emma and Amber discuss AAWAA's five submissions to Tasmania's 'Rethink and Beyond' mental health strategy, examining the evidence on male violence, perinatal mental health gaps, the mental health crisis facing girls and young women, the invisibility of women in prison and older women, and the erosion of female-only services. Mental health policy can't fix what it won't name — and the structural drivers of women's distress are policy failures with policy solutions.

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Donate

If you wish to donate to AAWAA you can do so by making a direct deposit or bank transfer to:

• Account name: Affiliation of Australian Women’s Advocacy Alliances
• Account number: 04201471
• BSB: 325-185

__

Disclosure statement

• Voices in this podcast are AI-generated clones of real, named AAWAA members, created and used with their informed consent to help amplify women's words and stories. All scripts and spoken content are written by AAWAA women, and all editorial judgement, fact-checking, and production decisions remain entirely human. AI is used only to voice this content: never to generate, alter, or invent what is said. Learn more at womensadvocacy.net.

This podcast provides general information and opinion only and does not constitute legal advice. Listeners should seek independent, professional legal advice before acting on any matters discussed. The hosts and AAWAA accept no liability for decisions made based on this content.

Tasmania's Department of Health is developing its next mental health strategy, 'Rethink and Beyond'. AAWAA and our state member organisations – WAAT, QWAA, NSWWAA and WAWAA – lodged five coordinated submissions arguing that women and girls must be named as a priority population, that male violence and the erosion of female-only services must be addressed, and that sex-based women's organisations must have seats at the decision-making table. Emma and Amber discuss the strategy behind our response.

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Donate

If you wish to donate to AAWAA you can do so by making a direct deposit or bank transfer to:

• Account name: Affiliation of Australian Women’s Advocacy Alliances
• Account number: 04201471
• BSB: 325-185

__

Disclosure statement

Voices in this podcast are AI-generated clones of real, named AAWAA members, created and used with their informed consent to help amplify women's words and stories. All scripts and spoken content are written by AAWAA women, and all editorial judgement, fact-checking, and production decisions remain entirely human. AI is used only to voice this content: never to generate, alter, or invent what is said. Learn more at womensadvocacy.net.

This podcast provides general information and opinion only and does not constitute legal advice. Listeners should seek independent, professional legal advice before acting on any matters discussed. The hosts and AAWAA accept no liability for decisions made based on this content.

On 26 May 2026, at Senate Estimates, Senator Henderson asked the Australian Human Rights Commission whether it had sought costs against the Lesbian Action Group. This episode sets out the documentary record, from the LAG's exemption application in August 2023 to the Federal Court judgment of 15 April 2026, and the events that followed.

Senate Estimates audio is used in accordance with the conditions of access of the Parliament of Australia. It is used for the purposes of a fair and accurate report of proceedings and is not used for political party advertising, election campaigns, or commercial sponsorship.

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Donate

If you wish to donate to AAWAA you can do so by making a direct deposit or bank transfer to:

• Account name: Affiliation of Australian Women’s Advocacy Alliances
• Account number: 04201471
• BSB: 325-185

__

Disclosure statement

Some voices in this podcast are AI-generated clones of real, named AAWAA members, created and used with their informed consent to help amplify women's words and stories. All scripts and spoken content are written by AAWAA women, and all editorial judgement, fact-checking, and production decisions remain entirely human. AI is used only to voice this content: never to generate, alter, or invent what is said. Learn more at womensadvocacy.net.

This podcast provides general information and opinion only and does not constitute legal advice. Listeners should seek independent, professional legal advice before acting on any matters discussed. The hosts and AAWAA accept no liability for decisions made based on this content.

No country in the world has a dedicated national plan on violence against older women. Not one. In this episode, Emma and Megan unpack why, covering the way older women get absorbed into sex-neutral policy categories, who is actually perpetrating violence against them (husbands, partners, and adult sons), the critical gaps in Australia's evidence base, and what a real national plan would need to contain. This conversation draws on AAWAA's written submission and participation in an expert consultation convened by UN Special Rapporteur Reem Alsalem, who is currently preparing a report on violence against older women to the UN General Assembly.

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Donate

If you wish to donate to AAWAA you can do so by making a direct deposit or bank transfer to:

• Account name: Affiliation of Australian Women’s Advocacy Alliances
• Account number: 04201471
• BSB: 325-185

__

Disclosure statement

Voices in this podcast are AI-generated clones of real, named AAWAA members, created and used with their informed consent to help amplify women's words and stories. All scripts and spoken content are written by AAWAA women, and all editorial judgement, fact-checking, and production decisions remain entirely human. AI is used only to voice this content: never to generate, alter, or invent what is said. Learn more at womensadvocacy.net.

This podcast provides general information and opinion only and does not constitute legal advice. Listeners should seek independent, professional legal advice before acting on any matters discussed. The hosts and AAWAA accept no liability for decisions made based on this content.

In this episode, Emma talks with Lucy about what NSWWAA saw inside DCJ’s stakeholder roundtable on the sexual consent reforms review. They walk through the structural gap between the domestic‑abuse laws and the consent provisions, why the current ‘reasonable steps’ test lets men wear women down, and how the fraud provision is at risk of being narrowed in ways that ignore serious deception about who has access to women’s bodies.

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Donate

If you wish to donate to AAWAA you can do so by making a direct deposit or bank transfer to:

• Account name: Affiliation of Australian Women’s Advocacy Alliances
• Account number: 04201471
• BSB: 325-185

__

Disclosure statement

Voices in this podcast are AI-generated clones of real, named AAWAA members, created and used with their informed consent to help amplify women's words and stories. All scripts and spoken content are written by AAWAA women, and all editorial judgement, fact-checking, and production decisions remain entirely human. AI is used only to voice this content: never to generate, alter, or invent what is said. Learn more at womensadvocacy.net.

This podcast provides general information and opinion only and does not constitute legal advice. Listeners should seek independent, professional legal advice before acting on any matters discussed. The hosts and AAWAA accept no liability for decisions made based on this content.

On 15 May 2026, the Full Federal Court handed down its decision in Giggle for Girls Pty Ltd v Tickle — and buried inside the legal reasoning is an acknowledgment that women's advocates have been waiting years to see in writing. The Court found that the Sex Discrimination Act no longer gives pre-eminence to the rights of women, and that its current form may actually limit the pursuit of women's rights. The judges made clear: that's not their problem to fix. It's Parliament's. In this episode, we unpack what the Court said, why it validates concerns AAWAA has been raising since at least 2023, and what it means for women-only spaces, single-sex services, and the future of sex-based protections in Australia. We also have a message for every woman who has ever been told her concerns were alarmist, misconceived, or not worth taking seriously. They were wrong. And now we have the receipts.

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Donate

If you wish to donate to AAWAA you can do so by making a direct deposit or bank transfer to:

• Account name: Affiliation of Australian Women’s Advocacy Alliances
• Account number: 04201471
• BSB: 325-185

__

Disclosure statement

Voices in this podcast are AI-generated clones of real, named AAWAA members, created and used with their informed consent to help amplify women's words and stories. All scripts and spoken content are written by AAWAA women, and all editorial judgement, fact-checking, and production decisions remain entirely human. AI is used only to voice this content: never to generate, alter, or invent what is said. Learn more at womensadvocacy.net.

This podcast provides general information and opinion only and does not constitute legal advice. Listeners should seek independent, professional legal advice before acting on any matters discussed. The hosts and AAWAA accept no liability for decisions made based on this content.

Emma is joined by Suzi and Luci to unpack CEDAW’s Draft General Recommendation 41 on ‘gender stereotypes’ and why AAWAA decided to intervene. They walk through how the draft quietly shifts from sex to gender identity, how this risks reinforcing the very stereotypes it claims to dismantle, and what that means for female‑only spaces, sex‑based data, and surrogacy. The episode also explains AAWAA’s key recommendations to the UN and why getting this language right now will matter for women’s protections in Australia for years to come.

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Donate

If you wish to donate to AAWAA you can do so by making a direct deposit or bank transfer to:

• Account name: Affiliation of Australian Women’s Advocacy Alliances
• Account number: 04201471
• BSB: 325-185

__

Disclosure statement

Voices in this podcast are AI-generated clones of real, named AAWAA members, created and used with their informed consent to help amplify women's words and stories. All scripts and spoken content are written by AAWAA women, and all editorial judgement, fact-checking, and production decisions remain entirely human. AI is used only to voice this content: never to generate, alter, or invent what is said. Learn more at womensadvocacy.net.

This podcast provides general information and opinion only and does not constitute legal advice. Listeners should seek independent, professional legal advice before acting on any matters discussed. The hosts and AAWAA accept no liability for decisions made based on this content.