NOWSA WORKSHOP: Engaging in Online Activism to make changes in the area of Reproductive Rights

As presented by Casey Burchell. Casey Burchell has been volunteering with Reproductive Choice Australia (RCA) and in 2012 was involved in redeveloping RCA’s social media presence and planning the Let’s End the Stigma campaign. 

**TRIGGER WARNING** Discussion of abortion 

The internet has now provided us with one of the most effective mediums for activism yet. Today petitions can be passed around simply by sending out a link, sharing articles online spark debates within a matter of minutes and social media means that important ideas are easily shared through a short, snappy status in an instant. It has therefore never been more important than now for women to use this online world to fight for their issues. While there are a number of issues women need to campaign for online, this write up will focus on the fight for reproductive rights in Australia.
Prior to attending Casey Burchell’s workshop on online activism, key note speaker Leslie Cannold, founder of RCA, informed us of why we should be angry about the system which women currently have to navigate through in order to choose whether they have a child or not. In Australia there is a large silence around what the law actually says because generally practitioners will refer a woman to have an abortion if she wishes to have one. So, we may know friends, mothers or sisters who have had an abortion and therefore believe if we wanted to have one, we could. However, due to this silence we tend to forget, or not know at all, that in NSW and Queensland, and in Victoria up until quite recently, abortion is in the criminal code. Women in our very own state of NSW do not have the right to choose, the choice is in the hands of their doctors. These vague laws also make it difficult for doctors to be able to determine whether they are within the rights of the law to advise an abortion, meaning some may avoid doing so, to the detriment of the woman’s choice. So, you can see why it is important that we campaign for law reform and an end to the silence around the laws which govern the administration of surgical abortions.

The first thing to think about when starting an online campaign, is what direction do we want the campaign to go in? What do we want to address? When dealing with the issue of reproductive choice there are a number of different angles one could take it. One of the most recent campaigns by RCA has been the End the Stigma campaign. This campaign was a focus on ending the cultural shame that is so often surrounded by abortion. This is quite an effective direction because if can we break down these cultural stigmas, normalising abortion would mean that legislators would be less inclined to put up these barriers which claim to be designed for something that is a ‘sensitive issue’. While of course, the procedure can be quite upsetting for some women who have had to make such a choice, it is important to keep in mind that a surgical abortion is actually one of the safest and most common medical procedures. However, due to this cultural stigma, abortion is treated like no other medical procedure. This sort of direction for a campaign is incredibly powerful as it can gain a mass of support in the community in order to reform laws, rather than just having a few passionate activists lobbying for legislative change. It speaks to the wider audience rather than just to legislators.
Once a direction has been thought of, it is important to think of whom to aim the campaign at. For a campaign that seeks to end the cultural shaming of abortion, initially it would perhaps be important
to aim it at women who have had abortions to be able to speak out about their experience. Due to the very real stigma though, RCA has found this to be a challenge in the past. Therefore, it is important to aim campaigns at people who have the potential to make women feel less ashamed of getting an abortion. One option would perhaps be partners, to encourage them to be more supportive of a woman’s choice to get an abortion, and inform them of how they can be supportive in ways that does not put some kind of pressure on their partner choosing this option. Another group of people are medical practitioners. Too often medical practitioners are left out of the abortion debate, and yet they are the people who essentially decide if one is to get an abortion. It is important to include them in this conversation, so that they will also begin to treat this like another medical procedure that sometimes has to be performed. Lastly, it is of course important to aim online campaigns at legislators, as they will be the ones who can eventually reform these laws. This is easily done through tagging them in Twitter posts, to let them know how the general population are feeling, what needs changing and put pressure on them to support law reform in this area.

Lastly it is important to decide ways in which to carry out an online campaign. Often straight to the point is the best for online campaigns, particularly if accompanied by a clever, informative picture. Videos are also a useful tool, as they can be simple to make (with the right tech-savvy friends), get across a point easily and can go completely viral if they are particularly good. A great idea which came up when brain storming in our workshop, was using two pictures of two different people. One picture might say, “Had my appendix out” or some other common medical procedure with very little risk associated with it and an image next to it would have a person saying, “Had an abortion”, to show that abortions are actually just like any other medical procedure, it is the stigma that makes it so difficult for some people to accept. We felt that whatever method we used, it would have to challenge thoughts and be informative. Too much of the time live protests that we see are often violent and do not achieve much in the long run because the message gets lost in this violence, no one receives any information and no one wants to take these protests seriously. Online activism therefore offers an avenue for information to be spread and to actually be absorbed.

I learned from this NOWSA workshop that there is a certain way to engage in online activism in a way that gets a point across. Online activism is particularly important in order to dismantle cultural norms which see abortion as some sort of taboo procedure, because it is easy to reach out to the general population and show them how in actual fact, abortion is a safe and common procedure. Without this kind of activism, there will be no law reform, and without law reform women who find themselves with an unexpected, unwanted pregnancy will continue to be left with limited options. With the expansion of social media technologies, now has never been a better time to use them to get our points across and win the battle against those who seek to control the lives and bodies of women in Australia.

If you are keen to learn more about online campaigns by RCA and how you can get involved visit their website http://www.reproductivechoiceaustralia.org.au/ or contact them on Twitter

What Leaning-In really means

“It’s time to cheer on girls and women who want to sit at the table,” writes Sheryl Sandberg; former McKinsey Consultant, Chief of Staff to U.S. Treasure, Vice President of Global Online Sales and Operations at Google, and now as the Chief Operating Officer at Facebook; in her book Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead.

Sandberg’s book pushes buttons and reignites debate borne out of the feminist movement in the 70s and 80s. Her book is about gender equality, but it is not a Feminine Mystique because back then, women were non-existent in the boardroom. Today, gender equality in developed nations faces new challenges: a woman’s right to work, but more importantly, a woman’s access to work.

Sandberg dares to talk about the unspoken conversations that men and women have in their professional lives, the challenges that come with shattering the glass ceiling, and the cost of embracing ambition.

Much of the criticism fired at Sandberg is that she is in a position to be able to make these choices, and too far removed from the issues facing women struggling to make ends meet because they are from low socio-economic backgrounds or lacking support at work or home. It’s easy to tell someone to “lean in” when they have a degree and are already in the workforce, it’s harder when they can’t find a job or afford childcare facilities because their choices are limited.

My first job was at Kentucky Fried Chicken, and some of the women I worked with back when I was 15, are still there. These women are not able to have same work-life discussion that someone like me will have in a few years time, or someone like Sandberg has working for Facebook.

Whilst Sandberg’s book doesn’t cater to these problems specifically, it still has merit. Because whether one calls it a non-ideological boardroom approach, a “fourth wave” of feminism, or the privileged leveraging of women who already have power and success, Sandberg’s approach brings something new and different to the table.

Why? Because it is important to recognise that Sandberg didn’t write this book for every woman. We live in a world where discrimination and disparity is nuanced, complex and difficult to read. Real challenges still exist for women whether they are at home, in the workforce, from low socio-economic backgrounds, or of colour.

But for the women who are in a position to get the skills, the education and the access to lean in, it means that there is a conversation happening where women can have a say in creating and forming a variety of support systems, such as education, health care, and affordable housing, in order to change the status quo. This is where women can change the whole dialogue when it comes to choice, feminism and work-life balance.

Choice is something critical in this new movement of gender equality in the workforce. We have the freedom to make choices – to get higher education, to work, to have a family. But sometimes one choice means sacrificing another, at other times it's a struggle to balance both. It is not as simple as just saying yes or no, it’s about doing more.

It’s been less than a century since women were given a right to vote, and since The Feminine Mystique created a buzz in the lives of women who didn’t have access to education, and beyond marriage, motherhood and jobs beyond nursing and teaching. It has taken legislation, but more the voices of women in the workplace to break through barriers and fight for inclusion.

If feminism’s goal is to give all women an equal shot based on their abilities regardless of their gender, then maybe the Lean-In movement does exactly that – it challenges young women by reviving a debate that affects us in our everyday lives, where we ask questions such as why Australia ranks first in terms of women’s educational attainment, but 45th for their labour-force participation.

Astha Rajvanshi

The Choice to be Childless

I don’t hate children, at all. Babies are adorable once you get over the fact that they poo and have oversized heads that look kind of extraterrestrial. Toddlers provide hilarious entertainment by trying to walk and continue the general trend of adorableness. New mothers might not have realized, but you can now get all these kicks from watching cute animal videos on YouTube rather than having to go through the inconvenience of pushing a baby out of your vagina.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistic’s 2000 estimates, a quarter of Australian women in their reproductive years will never have children, which is slightly higher than estimates of 20% and 22% in the United Kingdom and United States respectively. These are sizeable portions of the population, yet there is still cultural hang up over childless women. If you have trouble conceiving and IVF doesn’t work then we pity your plight. Though if you choose to not have children, you’re either a lonely spinster or oddball. Looking at cultural messages around children, it is clear that our society just cannot accept the reality of women not wanting to be mothers.

Rejection of motherhood goes against everything that we’re traditionally taught to think about children. Firstly, that women are naturally maternal and nurturing. Females of the human species are fair and delicate, said the patriarchy last century. These gender norms are still reflected by the fact that women dominate in professions of teaching, child care, nursing, and hospitality. Secondly, unless you have aggressively feminist (or just sane) parents, most girls grow up with something akin to a ‘Baby Born’ or Barbie Doll with Kelly in a pram which instills these ideas of motherhood being their destiny from a young age. Alongside the overwhelming number of female characters in popular culture who are desperate to have a baby. What to Expect When You’re Expecting stands out among the other shitty blockbusters as a whole movie dedicated to showing us that even though life is tumultuous, women will always be comforted by the joys of motherhood. According to media buzz, Jennifer Aniston and John Mayer’s split was apparently because Aniston was too desperate to have a child. This leads to thirdly, the imposition of a timeline onto when you fulfill your destiny and have that child. Among my twenty-something tertiary educated friendship circle (who are statistically speaking far less like to have children, and will do so later on average) I still hear “I want to have kids by the time I’m 35”, “No way, 35 is too late! If you’re not dating the father by the time you’re 27 you’re in trouble town”. Apparently these self imposed reproductive time limits are such a problem that men need to be warned of these ‘undateable women’ flooding the dating market, according to Australian website ‘Ask Men’, which published an article on how to identify and avoid these female desperados. Quick tangent: it is a truly humorous, if not scarily stupid, piece. Apparently having pets can be a sign of desperation, and men are advised to leave the room immediately if she refers to her pets as children. I don’t care what you call your budgerigar. Instead, I want to know why we are always told women are desperate to have kids when the truth is that the majority of women expend a lot of time and effort trying not to fall pregnant.

The problem is also obvious when you evaluate prominent women who have chosen not to have children. Julia Gillard was called “deliberately barren” by Liberal Senator Bill Heffernan, who claimed that she therefore “had no idea what life’s about”. Whilst his comments were widely criticised, they have also been echoed by the likes of Tony Abbott and Mark Latham. More recently, the labelling of Gillard as a ‘witch’ plays into these notions that she is not a good and proper woman; that she has done something evil by not being maternal. Gillard chose not to have children to pursue her career as a politician, because having a child impedes career progression. Sheryl Sandberg questions the motivations of women who lock themselves out of certain career paths if they want to have kids, years before its even a reasonable prospect. If a man prioritises his career over children, that’s perfectly normal, but if women do so that decision comes under extensive scrutiny. It’s often described as a selfish choice, ignoring the fact that people choose to have kids for selfish reasons too, and moreover the planet simply doen’s need more gluttenous and resource-draining first world babies. In contrast to the selfish career driven likes of Gillard, politicians like Sarah Palin play the mother card to garner popular support. Palin brought out her line up of children for each photo, and marketed herself as the hockey mum that other women could identify with.

It seems that a key issue is the fact that women are taught to connect with other women through the common fact of being a parent, in ways that men generally are not. Baby showers are normally for female friends only, and mothers groups meet up to share the joys of breastfeeding and compare the best brands for prams. The fact that men now take on greater parenting responsibilities is great, but only a very recent development. Newsagents are full of magazines on motherhood, but I’ve never seen a magazine on fatherhood.

This message that the female destiny is motherhood implies that there is something wrong with those women who choose not to have children. All the discussion around the need to have children as a biological issue (because your body clock is ticking, and its chemicals in your body that make you maternal) makes it seem that there is something biologically deficient with those who don’t want kids. This harms women in general because it encourages the idea that women should be defined by their role as a mother. Many women enjoy motherhood, but Betty Draper from Mad Men is a great example of an intelligent woman driven to unhappiness by feeling trapped in a role she did not choose. Not matter how great it might be, someone’s identity as a person should never be subsumed by another (as a mother, or wife or carer for that matter). Rather than accepting the early stages of motherhood are difficult, there is a huge stigma attached to women with post-natal depression. New mothers are expected to be glowing and overjoyed with their newborn, despite its drastic discord with most women’s real life experience.

This isn’t just a historical problem stuck in the 60s before the Women’s Liberation took off. The ongoing obsession with parenting ‘correctly’ and staying up to date on the proper method of parenting can be a powerful regressive force if it is so systematic as to take over your life. Mothers are made to feel guilty if they don’t breastfeed for long enough, because studies claim extensive health benefits from natural milk. Only dreadful mothers would cause their baby to have a lower IQ, asthma and other ailments by lazily supplying them with synthetic supplements.

I’m not trying to discourage anyone from having children, or begrudge the great work most people do raising children – but we need to stop thinking that there is something wrong with women who choose not to have children. If men are able to choose a life of independence and solitude, women should not be damned for doing so as well.

Christina White

You go "Girls"

Season Two finale of HBO television show “Girls” received mixed reviews when it premiered on US televisions, (and laptops around the world), last month. Some say “Girls” has ushered a new age of feminist television whereby young women are fairly and reasonably represented, but others have lamented the egotistical, “first world problems” nature of the show. Others still, were more preoccupied with prophesizing how season three would begin. Reading through countless hipster blogs, feminist websites and seemingly endless alternative online publications, what began to interest me was debate regarding the former of the three topics; does “Girls” represent a shift in how young women are represented across entertainment media? Does the popularity and success of “Girls” herald a change in television, whereby the female characters we watch and enjoy are true to form and are women that we, women, can relate to?  

For those of you who have yet to be hooked, “Girls” follows the trials, tribulations and occasional triumphs of four single young women living in New York City. Sound familiar? Many have compared the show to cult television series “Sex and the City,” but really they couldn’t be more different. Described by the New York Times as “raw, nuanced and audacious,” “Girls” features painfully awkward sex scenes, financial woes, drunken debauchery, and testing female friendships. There isn’t a single pair of Manolo Blahniks in sight. But despite their differences, the hype and critique around “Girls” has echoed much of the feminist rhetoric surrounding “Sex and the City” (SATC).  

Both shows, for instance, have been grouped amongst a minority of television programs which pass the Bechdel Test. Originating from a comic strip published by Alison Bechdel in 1985, the test provides a means to measure feminism, or at least the female presence, on-screen. Bechdel dictates that in order for a film or television program to pass the test, two or more female characters have to talk to each other about something other than men.

It may seem like a relatively simple test, but up until the 1998 premiere of SATC, very few television shows, or films, (with a few exceptions) managed to score a pass. Not only does SATC pass the test, it also presents the right ‘ingredients’ for feminist television; the main characters are aggressive, sexually empowered, self-aware, sisterly and possessing power and choice. That’s not to say that there aren’t limits to the show, only that it has brought something new to mainstream television viewing. Similarly “Girls” could be read as indicative of a new wave of ‘varied’ feminism, whereby it’s alright to be feminine, vulnerable, romantic and reliant – because you can also be strong, intelligent, independent and ambitious.

Perhaps the most telling symbol of this progression in contemporary feminism is not the contents of “Girls”, but the creator of the program. It is a show written, produced and directed by its lead actress, twenty six year old Lena Dunham. In a world where women comprise of only 11% of directors, 15% of writers, and 22% of producers and 18% of creators, (according to the quarterly publication “Media Report to Women”), Dunham has overcome a considerable hurdle. Dunham’s female characters represent a similar milestone on our television screens; they are not all size six, beautiful, career successful, nurturing, compassionate nor sexy. But neither are they backstabbing, conniving, sexually promiscus, nor aggressive. Hannah, Marni, Jessa and Shoshanna, the “Girls”, are self-indulgent, selfish, awkward, hyper educated and privileged products of the baby boom and economic bust. Their problems include balancing a life of unpaid internships, unsatisfying sex, chauvinistic male bosses, experimentation with illegal substances, ill-chosen partners, house sharing, STI’s, and overly protective parents. Many of us will have experienced some of the above, and if we haven’t, then we probably know someone who has.  

… At the end of the day it’s still only TV. But at least it’s a brand of television which offers a somewhat more diverse image of young women, and I can’t help but admire Dunham for risking her career, putting herself on the line and ultimately for producing (what I believe to be) a hilariously well written script.

Borrowing from the words of “Girls” lead star Hannah, the show may not be a “the voice of a generation”, nor a catalyst for feminist revolution, but at least it’s “a voice of a generation.”

Siobhan Rooney

To power citizens! Lessons to be learnt from the French parity scheme

In the 1990s in France several parity laws were passed which set up practices to increase the numbers of female political representatives. Parity sets up quotas of 50% male and 50% female candidates on electoral lists. In 1999 Article 3 of the constitution was changed to state that the law favours equal representation between women and men in the sphere of political representation. This was elaborated in 2000 by change to Article 4 which outlined the methods to achieving this: positive discrimination in the form of quotas of women on electoral lists of municipal, regional, senate and legislative elections. Why is it then that in Australia almost two decades later we still have not reached a stage where we can have intelligent, meaningful discussion about the few female representatives that we have?

I want to make it very clear that Australia has a problem regardless of the fact that our head of state is a female.  Just because our Prime Minister Julia Gillard is a woman does not mean that women have achieved equality with men in the realm of political representation. Pakistan and India have both had female leaders and no one is suggesting that the position of women in India and Pakistan is equal to that of men so it is simplistic and incorrect to do so in the Australian context.

In the debates surrounding the adoption of parity in France, the pro-parity movement demonstrated how parity exhibited the perfection of democracy. I want to pre-emptively address the view that affirmative action opens a Pandora’s Box to all sorts of movements for particular claims to schemes allowing their representation. This is false, because women who make up just over half of the population are not a minority requiring a quota of representatives. The relative position of women as compared to that of ethnic minorities is unique in this way. That humanity is firstly divided by sex was strongly argued by the parity movement in France. Gisèle Halimi, a French pro-parity militant and leader has stated on this issue that "women are neither a race, nor a class, nor an ethnicity, nor a category. They are found in different groups which they represent and traverse. The difference of sex thus constitutes the initial category.” Éliane Vogel-Polsky, a French jurist supports this view, stating that since humanity is dual it “cannot be legitimately represented other than under a double form: masculine and feminine”. These arguments legitimising parity schemes have been raised in were at the heart of the adoption of parity in France.

The International Context

France is not alone in having legal mechanisms in place to combat inequality between the sexes in politics, and by all accounts France came to the parity party later than other European countries. The first measure of positive discrimination in the sphere of employment in the European community came 37 years ago in 1976 with a directive sanctioning intentional discrimination in the case where it sought to promote the equality of chances between men and women in employment. The translation of this into French law came in 1983 with the Roudy Law which sought to financially encourage businesses to put in place, professional equality plans to allow women to progress of their professional careers.

In 1996 the Council of Ministers of the Union took the official position in favour of a policy to promote women, recommending that member states adopt a strategy “aimed at promoting the balanced participation of men and women in the processes of decision and of developing or implementing appropriate legislative or regulated measures to achieve this balance”.

Parity schemes are not always demanded by transnational authorities, and in the case of Scandinavian countries the promotion of women in both business and politics has been domestically developed. The Finnish example of the Equality Act 1995 imposed a quota of 40% women on municipal commissions and in Sweden, since the 1980s the majority of political parties have voluntarily put in place quotas of women on electoral lists. The result has been a huge increase of elected female representatives in Sweden, reaching 45% of their legislative council in 2002.

Australia: The Lucky Country?

In the wake of these international examples, is it that Australia is one of the last bastions of institutionalised inequality which does not acknowledge its obvious flaws? I recently took a class on the history of feminism movements whilst I was studying in France and not one of the men in the class argued against positive discrimination upon the basis of any male go-to argument such as meritocracy that is evoked when the issue of positive discrimination arises in a class at Sydney University. In a first year Law subject I argued that we should have positive discrimination in the appointment of judges to ensure that more women become judges in our legal system, and the outcome was 5 of my male classmates verbally criticizing my perceived attack on meritocracy.

Here there are 2 problems, the first being, what is merit? This ambiguous term is flexible and often becomes redefined to include certain male values. On a practical level, Margaret Thornton in her book Dissonance and Distrust, Women in the Legal Profession states that, ‘merit has a mystique, malleability and subjectivity that can be used to justify, criticise or constrain any policy’. As a result, because merit is not a neutral term that can be easily understood and applied merit becomes redefined in male terms by those who wish to critique positive discrimination.

More importantly, we do not live in a meritocracy and continuing to fall back on that argument is detrimental to discussion. Various socio-economic factors operate to exclude meritorious people from achieving their full potential. Why else is Sydney University full of middle class students? It is not because we are smarter than students from less privileged backgrounds, but that we went to high schools that helped us succeed in our final examinations and to gain entry into university. The opportunities available to us determined whether we achieved at high school and got into university rather than being solely based on a perceived ‘level of intelligence’.

In a similar way, factors also operate to prevent women from reaching the same positions of power as men which are not limited to the fact that women who choose to have children are required to take time off work. And in my experience, students at Sydney University feel uncomfortable recognising institutional inequality as a real problem. Male outrage at any female claims for equality may stem from the fact that men do not wish to lose their position of domination that they have occupied for too long and have come to enjoy. The opinion that positions are earned, and if a woman can’t get there on her own, it is because she didn’t earn the position are not limited to male students. Tony Abbott, the leader of the opposition and possibly our next Prime Minister stated when he was “and what if men are, by physiology more adapted to exercising power?”  

I acknowledge that the use of quotas on electoral lists does not translate to parity in our elected representatives, because after all it is the public who votes and parity schemes do not ensure equality in the outcome of elections. However, the statistics from French elections show that after the adoption of the parity laws, there has been a progression towards parity. This may suggest that because there are more opportunities for women to be elected, a shift in attitudes towards elected female representatives has taken place in France and also in other countries such as Sweden.

Even though France has not achieved parity in practice and there are undoubtedly problems that need to be addressed, there are many things that Australia can learn from the French example.  Firstly, in light of the inequality between men and women in political positions, something needs to be done. We are in a crisis situation in the way we describe and critique the few female representatives that we have. Furthermore, arguing that reforms such as parity laws do not achieve wholly their aims and so should be abandoned is like saying that since we can’t catch all criminals, we should let everyone go free.  Finally, fears that parity will undermine the values of our system are premised on incorrect assumptions about our society. Parity schemes have led to improvements in other jurisdictions so it is worth asking whether Australia could also benefit.

Phoebe  Miley-Dyer

Lessons from NOWSA: 10 tips for engaging with the media

As presented by Jade Tyrrell: National President of the National Union of Students. Read more about Jade here- http://www.2dayfm.com.au/newsfeed/2013/4/woman-in-the-spotlight-jade-tyrell/

1. Build a media list: Make sure you have an accessible list of people to contact in a range of publications and genres who will publish your story.

2. Make sure you observe deadlines:

    Print-before 4pm the day before

    Online- before midday

    Radio- Before 9am- never on the hour

    TV- before 3pm

3. Radio is easiest to access when trying to get publicity for your story. There are a number of programs dedicated exclusively to youth issues and they are always looking for a story. Local newspapers are also always keen for a story.

4. Think about your story- it is going need to be a different angle depending on whether you are speaking to public or commercial outlets

5. Don’t practice too much for interviews- especially live ones- people can tell!

6. If you are in a niche field (ie women’s activism) you may need to provide a journalist with a background on your issue

7. When you send out a media release, you need to chase it up.Call through relevant people on your contact list and ask them if they received it

8. Media releases should be no more than one page in total

9. In a media release, the first paragraph should be the issue in a nutshell, the second should be facts on the issue and the third should be a quote. Each paragraph should only be a sentence

10. Check back on the article/broadcast. Critically analyse your performance and work on your weaknesses for next time.

Hannah Smith