In this episode, Martine and Liv look at prostitution through a second-wave, materialist feminist lens — and at why the shift to "sex work" language matters more than it might first appear. Drawing on Kathleen Barry, Carole Pateman and Andrea Dworkin, they trace the argument that prostitution is not a marginal issue but part of the basic infrastructure of patriarchy: a system through which men, as a class, buy sexual access to women and girls, as a class. They also ask the question that gets lost when the debate narrows to working conditions: should there be a market in women's bodies at all?

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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.

In this bonus episode, we share some of the audio of our appearance before the NSW Legislative Council’s inquiry into fertility support and assisted reproductive treatment. Presented under public interest, this recording lets you hear directly how we argued that surrogacy cannot be treated as routine ‘fertility support’, why Parliament’s first duty is to protect women from exploitation, and how MLCs engaged with our call for prohibition rather than expansion of surrogacy in New South Wales. Audio taken from NSW Parliamentary webcast, 21 April 2026, Select Committee on Fertility Support and Assisted Reproductive Treatment, shared in the public interest.

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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.

Last week the President of the Australian Human Rights Commission addressed the National Press Club. We were there — and we asked him why Parliament should extend the Commission's enforcement powers over women's organisations in the contested space of sex and gender, given that a Federal Court judgment just found legal error in how the Commission exercised its existing powers against the Lesbian Action Group. We asked about costs. We asked about proportionality. In this episode, we go through what he said, what he didn't say, and what Parliament should be asking.

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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.

Before the NSW Legislative Council even asked its first question, we made a deliberate choice: to shift the entire frame of the hearing. In this short episode, Emma and Megan discuss the opening statement we delivered to the inquiry, and the political philosophy driving it.

They explore what it means to say that parliamentarians hold power but not rights against the citizens they represent; why guardianship and paternalism are fundamentally different ideas, and why that distinction matters enormously in the surrogacy debate; and how accepting the framing of 'fertility support' stewardship quietly forecloses the most important question of all — whether this market should exist at all.

If you have ever wondered why the opening move in an inquiry matters as much as the evidence that follows, this conversation explains it.

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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.

Emma and Megan unpack their recent evidence to the NSW Legislative Council inquiry on ‘fertility support’ and surrogacy. Drawing on AAWAA’s anchoring arguments, they explain why Parliament’s role is to guard women and children, not steward a fertility market; why surrogacy is structurally exploitative even when framed as ‘helping families’; and why lived experience alone cannot decide questions of law and policy. They explore the dangers of an arms race of competing stories, the state’s duties under international law, and what it really means to say that some markets – including surrogacy – should not exist at all.

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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.

When a woman dies, her superannuation doesn't automatically go to her estate — it goes to whoever her super fund trustee decides, within rules that can force payment to a violent or controlling man. Emma and Lucy walk through AAWAA's submission to Treasury's consultation on stopping male perpetrators from inheriting women's super death benefits, and what reform actually needs to look like.

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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 and Luci unpack AAWAA’s new submission to the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, focusing on how violence against older women is made invisible in Australia. They explore economic and administrative violence in the age pension and homelessness systems, abuse and sexual assault in residential aged care, the erasure of male perpetrators in language and data, and why sex-based protections and rights for older women must be explicitly recognised in law and policy.

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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 first episode of The Unmoved Feminist, Martine and Liv dig into one of the most consequential shifts of the past two decades: the gradual displacement of sex by gender identity in law, policy and public debate. Drawing on the foundational work of Kate Millett, Shulamith Firestone and Christine Delphy, they trace the second-wave concept of women as a sex class — where it came from, what it explains, and why abandoning it doesn't advance equality for women but obscures the conditions that make struggle necessary. A grounding episode for listeners who can see something has gone wrong but haven't always had a framework to name it.

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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.

Repeat episode for the Easter holiday. Emma and Liv push back against the mischaracterisation of women's rights organisations advocating for sex-based protections as 'right-wing', 'reactionary', or 'extremist'. They trace the feminist lineage of our advocacy through second-wave traditions, materialist analysis, and campaigns against prostitution, surrogacy, pornography, and male violence. From 'forced alignment' tactics that delegitimise our positions, to the conflation of sex with gender identity in law and policy, Emma and Liv explain why defending female-only spaces, critiquing gender as hierarchy, and opposing exploitation of women's bodies remain core feminist concerns—and why reclaiming our political tradition is essential to protecting women's rights today.

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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 and Sue spotlight Local action with Dr Megan Blake, barrister for the Lesbian Action Group and president of the new YAEL Women’s Defence Guild. They discuss Megan’s commitment to material reality and accuracy over labels, her experience weathering public hostility while defending women’s sex-based protections and rights, and why YAEL was created to fund key legal cases so women are not bankrupted for defending female-only protections. Listeners hear how one woman’s principled legal work connects directly to local action and how we can support YAEL as it begins its work.

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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.