Event and Ticketing Details
Dates & Times
Friday 14 October
6:15 PM - 7:15 PM
For feminist columnist Clementine Ford, the phrase ‘fight like a girl’ is one that girls should embrace. It means ‘to be strong’, Ford has declared, and ‘to know that you matter’. She’s even gone so far as to name her debut book – part memoir, part polemic – Fight Like a Girl. The book is about battlegrounds for girls and women in Australia in the 21st century. How have these battlegrounds shifted since second wave feminism?
There aren’t too many people in Australia more qualified to address that question than Anne Summers. The author of eight books, including the 1975 classic, Damned Whores and God’s Police, she’s a legend of Australian feminism. As a writer, activist and head of the Office of the Status of Women during the Hawke era – her influence through media and public policy is immeasurable.
Both Ford and Summers have been described as feminist voices of their respective generations. In this conversation – as part of our HEY GIRL series – the pair will focus on the notion of girlhood and discuss how experiences in their early lives shaped their ideas around feminism. How has the feminist fight changed? Has progress stagnated or are we in a moment of renewed feminist vigour and optimism? And what kind of future awaits Australian girls?
Featuring
Anne Summers
Dr Anne Summers AO is a journalist, researcher, commentator and best-selling author of nine books, including the classic Damned Whores and God’s Police, first published in 1975, and still in print. Her most recent book Unfettered and Alive, a memoir, was published in 2018.
In 2021 Anne was appointed a Paul Ramsay Foundation Fellow, located at UTS, and commissioned to undertake original data-based research that will throw new shocking light on the incidence and nature of domestic violence in Australia.
The result of that research is the report, The Choice: violence or poverty was published on 7 July 2022
Previously Anne has advised Prime Ministers Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, on women’s issues, run the Office of the Status of Women, been editor-in-chief of America’s leading feminist magazine Ms., editor of Good Weekend, chair of the Board of Greenpeace International and a Trustee of the Powerhouse Museum.
She has been an activist in the women’s movement since its inception and in 1974 was involved in establishing Elsie Women’s Refuge the first modern shelter for women and children escaping domestic violence.
She was appointed an officer of the Order of Australia for her services to journalism and to women in 1989; had her image on a postage stamp as an Australian Legend in 2011 and in 2017 was inducted into the Australian Media Hall of Fame
View ProfileClementine Ford
Clementine Ford is a Melbourne-based writer, speaker and feminist thinker. She is a columnist for Fairfax’s Daily Life and is a regular contributor to the Age and Sydney Morning Herald. Through her twice-weekly columns for Daily Life, Clementine explores issues of gender inequality and pop culture. Fight Like a Girl is her first book.
Her ability to use humour and distilled fury to lay bare ongoing issues affecting women has earned her a huge and loyal readership. Clementine’s work has radically challenged the issues of men’s violence against women, rape culture and gender warfare in Australia, while her comedic take on casual sexism and entertainment has earned her a reputation as an accomplished satirist.