This week on the podcast, we discuss men talking about domestic violence, Annastacia Palaszczuk retiring from politics, and later, Pamela Anderson making headlines again for her “pro-ageing” movement. Plus, Angela Priestley sits down with human rights lawyer Prabha Nandagopal from Elevate Consulting Partners to talk more on the positive duty changes that came into effect this week.

But first – why was Taylor Swift was announced Time Person of the Year?

Stories discussed in this week’s podcast:

• A man has told the truth about how women are affected by violence. Finally.
• ‘It’s harder to hit a moving target’: The remarkable evolution of Taylor Swift laid bare in Time’s Person of the Year Interview
• Annastacia Palaszczuk took a decimated party to victory to become the longest-serving female premier
• Pamela Anderson’s bare-faced “rebellion” is a small step for our right as women to age on our own terms
• Please stop asking me when I’m going to retire
• Party season comes just as employers required to proactively eliminate sexual harassment
• What is ‘positive duty’ and how will it work?

The Crux is produced by Agenda Media, the 100% women founded and owned media business, publishing the daily news publication Women’s Agenda.

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It’s clear after the 2023 Startup Muster report’s first version of the top eight mentors in the sector that we must find a better action plan to have more diversity and inclusion in Australia’s startups.

This week, we also take a look at a staggering report that shows three in five employers in Australia are failing to take sexual harassment and discrimination complaints seriously.

But we also have a few wins to recognise, including the Matildas’ pay boost, a positive update on US reproductive rights and a woman on live TV in Australia leading the way in normalising conversations of menopause and perimenopause. 

Stories included this week:

• Matildas to receive pay boost and equal treatment under new CBA
• How US voters turned out to support abortion rights
• The all-male mentor list is a symptom of a sick startup ecosystem
• Three in five employers fail to take sexual harassment and discrimination complaints seriously
• ‘I don’t think hormones respect national television’: Guest host praised for normalising perimenopause symptoms on live TV
• Senator Larissa Waters to motion inquiry into the impact of menopause and perimenopause on women
• Reserve Bank issues first cash rate rise under Michele Bullock

The Crux is produced by Agenda Media, the 100% women founded and owned media business, publishing the daily news publication Women’s Agenda.

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A proud Noongar-Yamatji woman, a youth work and mental health advocate, Blurton is also co-host of the podcast Not So PG and author of the memoir titled, Big Love: Reclaiming Myself, My People, My Country. 

A media personality as well, Blurton made giant waves in for representation in Australian media by being both the first Indigenous and openly queer lead in The Bachelorette franchise. 

In our latest podcast episode of The Crux, Blurton chats with Women’s Agenda about using her advantage of being in the public eye to amplify positive social change following a live coaching session she undertook to unpack what responsibility looked like for herself on an episode of Kemi Nekvapil’s new Audible original podcast, Power Talks.

“I think, with social media and being part of the media, and being part of television, it’s really easy to get so wrapped up in it and, I guess, sort of forget and move away from what you wanted to achieve in this world,” says Blurton.

“I’m really lucky, in a more cultural sense, that my culture is a gift and I have been gifted it and I feel so beautiful and blessed to share my culture around. It always sort of comes to a full front and leads charge with anything that I do. Naturally in life, I feel like we should live in alignment,” she says, adding that it’s important to reflect on what our purpose is.

“I think I always sort of revert back to why I would be doing something and does it bring me joy? Does it share or educate people on something? Is it something that I feel passionate about? I always sort of ask myself a few other questions of why I do some things. I think that kind of helps with reflecting and then going back and being like, ‘Yes, this is a part of me and who I am.’” 

While being in the public eye and having such a large social media following has meant Blurton can advocate for causes she’s passionate about, the spotlight unfortunately isn’t without online trolls.

Blurton says that while the trolls can “cut deep at different times”, she is also constantly reminding herself to ask, “Is there a learning here? Is there an educated response here? Or is it a matter of just realising that these people who want to write these comments, they’re just hiding behind the keyboard at the end of the day?”

“It’s definitely a muscle that I’ve worked on for a very long time to build myself up to be able to pull away and lean in when I need that support,” she says.

“I’ve always just been very transparent with my mental health because I think that there’s an urgency with it, there’s an importance to it, and there’s a priority to it.”

When it comes to social media, Blurton says it’s important we ask ourselves how we would live our lives if it was to disappear because at the end of the day, “it’s just an app”.

“If it was to go tomorrow, how would we actually live our life and would we be living in abundance? Would we be living a wholesome enjoyable life? Could we do that without it? I think that’s more important.”

“Yes, it’s part of my job and I do enjoy it. I do love it most times, but at the times when my mental health and my self-esteem are being impacted, I do an elimination process. That elimination is eliminating what’s bringing me distress or what’s bringing me stress and discouragement. I think social media is one of them, and that’s probably the first to go.”

“I’m not superhuman. I’m actually just a real human that navigates emotions, feelings, and situations. I’m navigating my lived experience as well. I think it’s a nice reminder to people that not everyone is just living a highlight reel.”

For any young people struggling with the pressures of social media, Blurton’s message is to “try to live in the present moment and try to live out all types of experiences”.

“I think we’re just so stuck and drawn to our phones these days, and when it comes to self-esteem and building yourself up, try not to be anything that you’re not and always stick and stay in alignment with who you want to be and who you are. I think that will drive your life to where you’re going, whatever your purpose is really.”

Listen to our latest podcast episode featuring an interview with Brooke Blurton.

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Completing the challenge didn’t change the person she was, but she says it enabled her to overcome her lack of confidence. She still continues to meet with strangers every week.

“I used to hide myself behind a mask, and really worry about what people thought of me and not do the things that I wanted. But now, I’m stepping into the real me,” she recently told Women’s Agenda.

Making more connections is just like anything you want in life, she says: “You just need to put conscious effort in to work for it.”

“If you want a good body then you go workout and if you want good connections, good friends then you go out and meet more people. That’s why I really really love this idea about lunch with strangers because it is something so simple, everybody can do it.”

Now Chu is an author and motivational speaker. She’s come a long way since the bubble she lived in for 12 years, which she says she entered 16 years ago when she first came to Australia.

“I couldn’t talk to people, I was extremely lacking in confidence, super shy. Life was okay, but then I thought there’s more out there and I want to achieve more and I want to meet more people instead of just hanging out with the [same] three friends.”

So Chu thought through ways that she could meet more people.

While evenings and weekends were needed for family time, as a mother of two kids, Chu says lunchtime was the only time she had for herself. Rather than eating alone, she decided to invite strangers to join her, and use it as an opportunity to expand her connections and grow.

“In the beginning, it was really terrifying for me because I was so scared about meeting people and not knowing what to talk about,” says Chu. “But after a while, that’s actually the time that I’d look forward to. I’d be like, ‘Who am I gonna meet today?’ and ‘What story am I going to hear?’.”

Chu used LinkedIn as a platform to connect and invite people to lunch, and says the rejection rate was around 90 per cent. Determined to meet as many people as possible from different background, industries and across different ages, she kept inviting people.

“I’d send them a message and go, ‘Hey, this is Kaley Chu here, I’ve got this New Year’s resolution to have lunch with 100 strangers and these are the photos and posts from my previous lunches and this is a little bit of information about me and I like what you’re doing and let’s catch up for lunch’.

“Some people say ‘yes’, other people say ‘no’, it doesn’t matter. I just keep meeting people from there.”

The lunch itself is also “super flexible” and Chu says it can end in half an hour or continue on for dessert and coffee if they both find a genuine connection and have interesting stories to share. 

“The idea is not having 100 best friends,” says Chu.

“It’s to see if you can connect with ten out of those hundred people. That’s a big win for me.”

Quality of the connection takes precedence over quantity for Chu. While her initial goal was to meet 100 strangers in a year, she continues to average “one to two, face-to-face lunches with strangers a week, while using her other lunchtimes to catch up with friends or existing connections.”

One of her biggest takeaways from her lunch experiment has been learning the importance of being herself instead of trying to act a particular way.

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The science of climate change can be overwhelming, upsetting, and leave us tempted to turn away. Dr Joëlle Gergis is a leading climate scientist and lead author on the UN’s IPCC. She’s determined to make climate science accessible to everyone, and demonstrate the case for hope along with the tipping point within reach that could see us getting close to the response the planet needs. She asks: Do you want to be part of the legacy that restores our faith in humanity?

As one of only a dozen Australian scientists on the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment report, and working in a male dominated field, she saw the opportunity to bring emotion into the conversation and to connect the head with the heart.

Joëlle’s book Humanity’s Moment: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope is published just this week, by Black Inc. Books.

It is the call to action we need, right now.

Stories discussed this week:

Australia’s top 10 most ‘in demand’ professions tell story of care work being undervalued

You can’t talk about gender equality without talking about climate change

Listen to The Women’s Agenda Podcast on iTunes or Spotify.

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With just 30 female prime ministers and presidents globally, it’s a question that human rights lawyer and activist Ramona Vijeyarasa has been seeking to answer: through research, as an author, and as the creator of the Gender Legislative Index, a tool she hopes will help push governments and parliaments to enact better laws for women

Vijeyarasa is a senior lecturer at the University of Technology Sydney, an advocate for gender justice, and author of the recently published book, “The Woman President: Leadership, Law and Legacy for Women Based on Experience from South and Southeast Asia,” presenting her fascinating research into the difference that women make when it power.

The index is an AI and human evaluation into whether a particular law will advance or hinder women’s rights. The evaluation is based on criteria from International Women’s Rights Law Standards and features prominently in her new book, where Vijeyarasa shares a unique comparative study of women’s leadership and the law that offers new ways of understanding the impact of female presidential leadership on women’s everyday lives.

The book analyses the legal legacies of four women presidents: Corazon Aquino (1986-1992), Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (2001-2010), Megawati Sukarnoputri (2001-2004) and Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga (1994-2005). 

Through concrete examples and research, Vijeyarasa shows that strong evidence is necessary for the nuanced and careful conversation that this topic calls for. 

Having contributed to Women’s Agenda in the past, including share three reasons on the difference to women that female leaders make, Vijeyarasa joined Women’s Agenda podcast host, Angela Priestley, as a special guest host for the latest episode of The Women’s Agenda Podcast. (On iTunes and Spotify)

Vijeyarasa’s initial motivation to begin engaging in critical gender justice work came from seeing a lack of women in leadership and she notes the unsettling statistic that there are currently just 30 female presidents and prime ministers worldwide. 

To put that 30 women presidents and prime ministers into context, Vijeyarasa says this means there are only 30 women leaders from around 200 countries– some of which hold both the position of president and prime minister.

“We’ve got Beyonce singing, ‘girls run the world’ but girls don’t rule the world and I think we need to talk about why we’re not seeing more women getting to those leadership roles and how significant that is.”

Vijeyarasa has lived and traveled all over the world– fighting against domestic violence in Brazil, meeting with women in the floating villages of Cambodia and standing aside women farmers in Liberia. 

She’s witnessed these countries evolve and says, “It may not be at the pace we want, but I’ve seen a change. When you think about how few women have made it to the level of the president or prime minister in a country, it’s remarkable how slow progress has been.”

Referencing the disappointing G7 summit photo this year where mostly male leaders from the group of seven countries sat on the hills of Germany with only one female in the midst, Vijeyarasa says, “Women can’t be at these global decision-making tables if they’re not the head of their nations.”

Oftentimes, it’s easy to become solely focused on this dismal lack of female representation in world politics but when it comes to her book, Vijeyarasa is trying to flip this narrative by shifting the focus away from the absence of women and placing it onto what actually happens when women are present. 

“I do think there’s a different kind of leadership model when women are present,” says Vijeyarasa.

“I’ve seen women’s groups mobilise more resources when there’s a window of opportunity because a woman is a leader. I’ve seen women-friendly outcomes. I’ve seen more cabinet appointments. So, let’s start talking about what happens when women finally do get to that highly coveted top job.”

To determine what happens when women get those high-ranking roles, Vijeyarasa did diligent research, travelling to the Philippines, Indonesia and Sri Lanka to interview former women MP’s, cabinet members, women and men activists and scholars from the region.

As detailed in her book, she used these conversations as an opportunity to do a comparative study of four women leaders from each country, reflecting on their pathways to politics and how they changed laws while they were in power.  

Even with a limited pool of choice for countries with female leadership, Vijeyarasa says she chose these three South and Southeast Asian countries for a variety of reasons.

For one, in South and Southeast Asia, a relatively high number of women have made it into president and prime minister roles, and there was an opportunity to develop a theory with an Asian Global-South perspective amongst the dense study of North America and Europe in academia. 

Vijeyarasa also says these three countries have highly patriarchal political systems, making it all the more interesting to examine how women are able to break into political power in these regions. 

And while an increase in women leaders is something to be applauded, Vijeyarasa’s Gender Legislative Index also points to the importance of examining the impact these leaders have on the progression of women’s rights. 

Looking at the current global political landscape where two conservative candidates– Georgie Maloney in Italy and Liz Truss in the UK– could push the number of women in global political leadership from 30 up to 32 if elected, Vijeyarasa finds it necessary to question whether their stances, such as on a reduction in public services, will actually be a positive for women. 

Here in Australia, it was significant to see the many woman independents successfully running in the past election and Vijeyarasa thinks it’s just the beginning of more vocal voices from women in parliament who are willing to push for a more progressive agenda.

On female leadership overall, she says, “The ideal package would be a woman leader who really wants to advance women’s rights and is vocal and articulate in doing that.”

See Ramona’s book The Woman President, Leadership Law & Legacy Women’s Lives Based on Experiences from South & SE Asia on Booktopia here.

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Plus, we look at the ‘mean girls’ opportunism that has come into Australian politics and media.

And what are young women concerned about when it comes to choosing a career? It seems the opinions of others and desires to pick something with a linear career path continue.

Plus: do emojis make you look unprofessional? We debate the issue.

The Women’s Agenda Podcast is produced by Agenda Media, publisher of Women’s Agenda.

Stories discussed this week include:

Ash Barty announces retirement from professional tennis

Flexible uniform policies are key to keeping girls and women in sport

‘You are killing women’: Senator Karen Berg slams Kentucky’s restrictive abortion bill

Honouring Kimberley Kitching’s life & legacy? Let’s drop the political “mean girls” opportunism

‘Penny Wong is not a nice person’ says Mark Latham, the poster child for kindness & empathy

Young women more anxious than ever about future career prospects, new research suggests

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