As the Australian Law Reform Commission prepares to provide its report on surrogacy laws, Megan and Amber read the Melbourne Declaration to Abolish Surrogacy in full. The Declaration emerged from the National Conference on Surrogacy, ‘In the Name of the Child’, held in Melbourne in August 2026. It calls on Australian governments to abolish all forms of surrogacy and to protect the rights of those already affected without using those protections to justify future arrangements.

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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.

Amber speaks with Ms Reem Alsalem, the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, about her mandate, CEDAW and sex in international law, women’s sex-based protections and rights, pornography, surrogacy, violence against girls, and the changing forms of violence against women and girls.

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 to examine how the exemption process under the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 is coming to function as the default pathway for female-only services, rather than the narrow, temporary safeguard it was designed to be.

They discuss the Lesbian Action Group's three-year dispute with the Australian Human Rights Commission, the practical cost of an exemption-dependent framework for refuges, sporting bodies and small volunteer-run women's groups, and the options available to Parliament for restoring clear, workable protection for female-only provision.

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 of The Women's Advocate, Emma and Meg discuss the keynote address delivered by Reem Alsalem, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, at the ARMS national conference on surrogacy in Melbourne. They walk through the claims she examined, from consent and payment to bodily autonomy and the best interests of the child, and the international developments she referred to, including a push for a global moratorium on surrogacy.

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.

Dr Megan Blake is co-counsel for the Lesbian Action Group in its case against the Australian Human Rights Commission, and a member of Sall Grover's legal team in the High Court application in Giggle v Tickle. In this interview with The Women's Advocate, she sets out what each case says about the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 and what, in her assessment, Parliament would need to consider in any reform. 

Dr Blake explains why the Act has never defined 'sex', how that gap underlies both the Giggle case and the Lesbian Action Group's application for an exemption, and why she considers the exemption process an insufficient basis for female-only provision such as refuges and women's sport. She also addresses the interaction between federal and state law on identity documents, and discusses the extent to which courts will continue to interpret the Act regardless of what Parliament does.

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

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 of The Unmoved Feminist, Martine and Liv tackle the uncomfortable question of why some women side with male power, police other women, and direct hostility sideways instead of at the structures that harm us. Drawing on second‑wave, materialist feminist analysis, they unpack calculated safety strategies, male identification, reform complicity, and horizontal hostility as part of a wider survival economy under patriarchy. The discussion holds survival and responsibility together, asking how women’s choices are shaped by male violence and control of resources without erasing the real costs to other women.

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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.

The Australian Law Reform Commission told stakeholders its surrogacy review was nearly complete. Days earlier, it had quietly been given six more weeks — and nobody will say why. In this episode, Amber and Emma trace two episodes eight months apart: a roundtable where governance concerns were redirected to private correspondence, and a deadline extension the ALRC's own newsletter never mentioned. They discuss what the Advisory Committee's composition tells us about access and influence, why "workload" isn't an explanation, and why AAWAA keeps asking questions institutions would rather answer privately, or not at all. Full correspondence discussed in this episode is published at womensadvocacy.net.

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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 Megan discuss the Tasmanian Greens’ draft conversion bill and AAWAA’s submission, using it as a springboard into the “guilt trade” and “forced teaming” of LGB with TQI+. They explore how collective cultural guilt about gay conversion therapy is being leveraged to silence scrutiny of gender‑identity law, what this means for lesbian and gay young people, and why sex and gender must be disentangled in conversion‑practice legislation.

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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 Megan look at what is really at stake when Parliament considers surrogacy law reform. Instead of starting with “access” and “barriers”, they focus on the threshold question: should the State construct and normalise a market that uses women’s reproductive capacity for the planned relinquishment of children? Drawing on AAWAA’s recent evidence and broader governance and UN work, they explain why sex-based women’s organisations must be consulted seriously if that question is to be answered honestly.

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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 examine Australia's draft seventh periodic report under the ICCPR — the international treaty that binds Australia to protect civil and political rights. They look at what the report says, what it leaves out, and why that matters. They discuss ABS data showing male sexual violence against women has increased over the last decade, an unresolved conflict at the heart of Australia's discrimination law, and FOI material showing that Australia declined to respond to the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls. AAWAA has lodged a submission calling on the Government to give the UN Human Rights Committee an honest account before the report is finalised.

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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 cover AAWAA's follow-up communication to the UN Commission on the Status of Women, ahead of the 1 August deadline for submissions to CSW71. They discuss the continued silence from Australia's CSW70 delegation since AAWAA first wrote to them in March, and what the new submission documents — Federal Court findings on the Sex Discrimination Act, the AHRC's refusal to act on them, self-ID data from New South Wales, and Western Australia's surrogacy law passed with no genuine parliamentary scrutiny.

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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.

When a regulatory document governing pregnancy, birth and postnatal care can't say clearly what 'woman' means, that's not a drafting oversight — it's a clinical and legal problem. Emma talks to Suzi about AAWAA's submission to the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia, the internal contradictions in the proposed revised guidelines, and why getting this right matters for midwives, for women, and for maternal health data.

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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 episode of The Unmoved Feminist, Martine and Liv unpack a word used everywhere and explained almost nowhere: patriarchy. Drawing on Wollstonecraft, Gilman, Frye's birdcage image, Mitchell's four structures of oppression, and Pateman's sexual contract, they trace why the analysis has never been superseded — and why its latest adaptations, from neoliberal feminism to the displacement of sex‑class analysis by self‑declared identity, make the word more indispensable than ever.

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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 Sue walk through forty years of Australia’s Sex Discrimination Act, from its CEDAW roots and the creation of our sex‑based protections and rights, through to the AHRC’s growing role and the 2013 gender identity amendments, to Giggle v Tickle, the Lesbian Action Group case, and Julia Gillard’s comments on how those changes were made without women’s concerns ever being squarely put to Parliament.

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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.

Former prime minister Julia Gillard has finally broken her silence on the 2013 Sex Discrimination Act amendments, telling an audience at Manchester University that “it was a different time”. In this special edition of The Women's Advocate, Emma explains why that answer is not good enough – and why women are now living with the consequences.

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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 episode, Emma and Lucy discuss the AHRC's 'The Answer is Human Rights' seminar in Adelaide, where women affected by the Commission's decisions — including members of the Lesbian Action Group — put their questions directly to AHRC Chief Executive Leanne Smith and Age Discrimination Commissioner Robert Fitzgerald. The exchange laid bare a critical unresolved question: how does the AHRC understand the costs matter in relation to the successful Lesbian Action Group appeal? They also discuss the needs of older women and how their sex-based protections cannot be ignored.

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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

• 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.

In this episode of The Unmoved Feminist, Liv and Martine ask why female‑only spaces still matter for women’s safety, dignity and participation in public life, tracing how refuges, hospital wards, toilets and change rooms were won through decades of organising against male violence and how recent shifts to “all‑gender” facilities, sex self‑identification and vague equality laws are quietly eroding those protections in practice.

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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.

At the AHRC's Sydney 'The Answer Is Human Rights' seminar, women asked one governance question: the Federal Court has found your exemption guidelines deficient — when will you fix them? No officer offered a date, a commitment, or even an acknowledgement of the finding. Emma and Lucy unpack what was said, what wasn't, and what it means for women who depend on female-only spaces and services. 

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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

• 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.

At the Perth stop of the Australian Human Rights Commission's national seminar series, AAWAA Director Amber Rossi asked President Hugh de Kretser a direct question: will the Commission use its section 11 inquiry powers to recommend that Parliament restore clear sex‑based protections and rights for women and girls following the Full Federal Court's judgment in Giggle v Tickle? The answer was no: no plans, no inquiry, no recommendation to Parliament. Instead, the Commission pointed women back to exemptions and special measures under the existing Sex Discrimination Act. Emma and Amber unpack what that answer means in practice, and what women attending the Commission's remaining seminars should expect.

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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 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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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.