Women’s Forum Great Ocean Road Challenge Help get us all some Work Life Balance... Many women report tension in achieving balance and harmony between their various goals for their paid work and other aspects of their lives. Women’s Forum Australia is producing ground-breaking research into the area of work life balance – conducting a literature review in relation to these issues and undertaking primary research through a solution-focused survey. The Board and staff from Women’s Forum Australia will join with other passionate women to walk 55 km of the stunning Great Ocean Road and in doing so raise money and awareness about work life balance. It's a great opportunity to take some time out for exercise and leisure, and talking to others about their experiences and ideas. Please support this effort to raise awareness of the importance of work life balance and support the research into an issue that is so critical to the health and well-being of women across Australia. All monies raised go towards Women’s Forum’s Charitable Foundation. Donations over $2 are tax deductible. Media Release: Women's Forum Australia supports Opposition Leader's Call for fewer abortionsJanuary 28, 2010 Independent think tank Women’s Forum Australia today welcomed Opposition Leader Tony Abbott’s comments on abortion in the controversial Australian Women’s Weekly interview. “I would like to see fewer abortions,” Mr Abbott said in the interview published yesterday. Women’s Forum Australia Chairperson Katrina George said: “An estimated 1 in 4 pregnancies ends in abortion. Tony Abbott’s view about abortion is in line with most of the Australian community. Research shows that between 64 %-73% of Australians believe that the rate of abortion is too high. Tony Abbott is simply stating publicly what most Australians believe privately.” Read the full media release here 
Spinning AroundJane Cadzow | Good Weekend, December 12 2009 ...Whether it’s art or a flimsy excuse for scantily clad women to writhe around phallic symbols, pole dancing is a booming business. Five years ago, fewer than 10 dance studios around the country offered pole classes. Now the number is reported to be closer to 100... “’Raunchy’ and ‘liberated’ are not synonyms,” wrote Ariel Levy in Female Chavaunist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture, a book that examined the apparent widespread belief amoung young women that dressing and haveing as sex objects is an expression of freedom. “Why is labouring to look like Pamela Anderson empowering?...And how is imitating a stripper or a porn star – a woman whose job it is to imitate arouns in the frist place – going to render us sexually liberated?”... Katrina George, chair of Women’s Forum Australia, doesn’t get it, either. “The definition of empowered sexuality represented by pole dancing is a sexuality that imitates red-light entertainment..This is a caricature of female of empowerment.” From her point of view,”the popularity of pole dancing is just one example of the mainstreaming of porn...” “Pole dancing is essentially different to athletics or acrobatics. When an audience is watching an athlete or an acrobat, they are primarily focused on the skill and athleticism, not the sexual value of the sportsperson. But that is the whole point of pole dancing.”... Read the full Good Weekend article here Women don't need to risk their health with egg donationKatrina George | The Age, November 18, 2009 Three years after embryonic stem cell cloning was legalised in Australia, advocates are finally facing up to the critical issue: where will all the eggs come from? Cloning or somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) is impossible without a continuous – and large - supply of women's ova. In South Korea, the now discredited Dr Hwang used 2061 eggs taken from 169 women and failed to produce a single cloned embryo. Loane Skene from the Melbourne Law School at Melbourne University has suggested we should open debate on whether women should be paid for their eggs. This is somewhat surprising given that she was the deputy chairwoman of the 2005 Lockhart committee review into stem cell research that advised against payment for eggs. The committee argued that "the healthiest eggs would be those from young women . . . the potential exists for coercion of young women to donate eggs", pointing to social disadvantage, family or workplace pressures. So what's changed since then that's put egg payment back on the agenda? Certainly not the health risks of egg extraction. Research shows that up to 10 per cent of women who undergo this process experience ovarian hyper stimulation syndrome (OHSS). More serious symptoms of OHSS include renal failure, intrauterine polyps, ovarian cysts, thromboembolism, adult respiratory distress and haemorrhage from ovarian rupture and infertility... What possible justification could there be to ask Australian women to take on the serious health burdens of egg extraction, the risk of cancer later in life, and the commodification of their bodies? Once upon a time scientists might have believed in good faith that this was necessary because embryonic cloning was the only way to obtain pluripotent stem cells. Women's eggs, they thought, were needed for therapies and cures. But that was before November 2007. That's when what one analyst called the "earthquake for both the science and ethics of stem cells" rocked the world. Two teams of scientists published a new technique of reprogramming adult cells like skin cells to an embryonic state without using a single egg or a single embryo... Read the full article here National Strategy on Body Image doesn't go far enoughThe Age| October 29, 2009  We didn’t need Karl Lagerfeld’s recent ‘‘nobody wants to see curvy women’’ clanger to highlight the urgent need for action on body image dissatisfaction. About one in 100 adolescent girls develops anorexia, the third most common chronic illness within that group in Australia. About one in five students suffer bulimia nervosa and up to 19 per cent of these young Australians will die from the condition. The proposed National Strategy on Body Image released this week is a welcome step forward. But it doesn’t go nearly far enough.
The strategy adopts a broad approach that recognises the important role of schools, tertiary institutions, families and community organisations in addressing body image dissatisfaction. But from the outset, the advisory group’s terms of reference were focused on government working in partnership with the media, fashion and advertising industries. The chairwoman of the National Body Image Advisory Group, Mia Freedman, has called on the industries to use their ‘‘power for good’’ and ‘‘portray a more realistic, attainable and diverse image of women and men’’. Noble aspirations. But how realistic are they?... Read the full article here National Strategy on Body Image - More ResourcesRead the National Advisory Group's Proposed National Strategy
Read the National Advisory Group's Information Paper
Read the the Consultation on Body Image Findings
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