Affiliation of Australian Women's Advocacy Alliances

07/05/2026

The language around prostitution has shifted markedly over the past two decades. In media commentary and policy documents we are now more likely to see ‘s*x work’, ‘clients’ and ‘services’ than ‘prostitution’ or ‘male buyers’. Online platforms present it as one more strand of the gig economy, organised through apps and personal branding. At the same time, governments and NGOs talk about decriminalisation or legalisation as progressive reforms, framing prostitution primarily as a matter of workplace conditions and individual choice.

WE NEED YOUR HELP because this fight is not cheap.
Please donate to AAWAA
Account name: Affiliation of Australian Women’s Advocacy Alliances
Account number: 04201471
BSB: 325-185

The language around prostitution has shifted markedly over the past two decades. In media commentary and policy documents we are now more likely to see ‘s*x work’, ‘clients’…

01/05/2026

On 29 April 2026, Mr Hugh de Kretser, President of the Australian Human Rights Commission, addressed the National Press Club in Canberra. The Women’s Advocate attended and asked questions that go to a matter that Parliament may need to consider: whether the AHRC should be given significantly expanded enforcement powers over organisations operating in the space where women’s s*x-based rights and gender identity intersect, and what the Commission’s existing record of exercising such powers tells us about how those expanded powers might be used.

WE ARE AN AUSTRALIAN WOMENS LIBERATION GROUP STAFFED BY VOLUNTEERS!
This amazing work is being done by ordinary women with full-time jobs and families and WE NEED YOUR HELP because this fight is not cheap.
Please donate to AAWAA
Account name: Affiliation of Australian Women’s Advocacy Alliances
Account number: 04201471
BSB: 325-185

01/05/2026

29 April 2026, Mr Hugh de Kretser, President of the Australian Human Rights Commission, addressed the National Press Club in Canberra. The Women’s Advocate attended and asked questions that go to a matter that Parliament may need to consider: whether the AHRC should be given significantly expanded enforcement powers over organisations operating in the space where women’s s*x-based rights and gender identity intersect, and what the Commission’s existing record of exercising such powers tells us about how those expanded powers might be used.
https://womensadvocacy.net/2026/05/01/the-ahrcs-enforcement-powers-the-lesbian-action-group-and-the-questions-parliament-needs-to-ask/
WE ARE VOLUNTEERS!
This amazing work is being done by ordinary women with full-time jobs and families and we need your help because this fight is not cheap.
Please donate to AAWAA
Account name: Affiliation of Australian Women’s Advocacy Alliances
Account number: 04201471
BSB: 325-185

The Australian Human Rights Commission wants Parliament to expand its enforcement powers in matters of s*x and gender. We asked the Commission’s President about it at the National Press Club.…

23/04/2026

On Tuesday 21 April we appeared before the NSW Legislative Council’s Select Committee on Fertility Support and Assisted Reproductive Treatment to give evidence on surrogacy. We went not as service providers or industry stakeholders but as women’s advocates, and we opened our evidence with a formal statement to the committee setting out the philosophical and political framework members are required to carry into the rest of their inquiry. Listen to our podcast episode for the opening statement as delivered, as well a discussion about what it was trying to do, why it started where it did, and what it says about how we think Parliament should understand its role in relation to women and surrogacy. You can read the statement below.

On Tuesday 21 April we appeared before the NSW Legislative Council’s Select Committee on Fertility Support and Assisted Reproductive Treatment to give evidence on surrogacy. We went not as se…

23/04/2026

Behind the neutral language of ‘fertility support’ sits a blunt question: Will New South Wales authorise a market in women’s pregnancies and the handover of children, or refuse to build that market at all? On Tuesday we appeared before the New South Wales Legislative Council inquiry into ‘fertility support’ and assisted reproductive technologies to give evidence on surrogacy. Our evidence to the Legislative Council this week argued for refusal — and for Parliament to act as guardian, not industry steward.

At the heart of our evidence was a simple question: What is Parliament’s role in this space? Is it to steward a fertility market, or to guard women and children from being turned into that market’s raw material for exploitation and commodification?

Behind the neutral language of ‘fertility support’ sits a blunt question: Will New South Wales authorise a market in women’s pregnancies and the handover of children, or refuse to build that market…

16/04/2026

The Federal Government is considering important changes to superannuation law that would stop men who use family and domestic violence from inheriting the superannuation of the women they have abused. AAWAA has just lodged a submission to Treasury’s consultation ‘Preventing perpetrators from accessing victims’ super death benefits’, setting out how this reform can and should work in practice.
https://womensadvocacy.net/2026/04/17/protecting-womens-super-from-violent-male-partners-and-sons-treasury-consults-on-reforms/

09/04/2026

Australia has a detailed framework for addressing violence against women, but older women are largely absent from it. AAWAA has just submitted to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls, documenting Australia’s failure to protect older women across five interconnected domains. The submission draws on CEDAW General Recommendation No. 27, which recognises that discrimination experienced across a woman’s lifetime has a severe and compounded impact in old age. What we found is that the conditions producing that impact are not incidental: they are structural, and they are largely invisible to the systems meant to address them.

Australia has a detailed framework for addressing violence against women, but older women are largely absent from it. AAWAA has just submitted to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence A…

05/04/2026

Today, we launch ‘The Unmoved Feminist’, a new podcast from the Affiliation of Australian Women’s Advocacy Alliances. Hosted by Liv and Martine, the series applies second-wave, materialist feminist analysis to the issues and debates women are navigating right now — because our analysis hasn’t shifted, even as the political and cultural landscape around us has.

Each episode is accompanied by a blog post, and both are designed to be short and focused, each taking ideas from the second-wave tradition and showing why they still matter today. Listen on Spotify, Apple, or via our podcast page.

Welcome to The Unmoved Feminist.

One of the most consequential intellectual shifts of the past two decades has been the gradual displacement of ‘s*x’ by ‘gender identity’ in law, policy, and public discourse. What was once a stable feminist distinction — s*x as biological reality, gender as the social hierarchy built upon it — has been inverted: gender identity is now treated as primary and self-defined, while s*x is increasingly described as ‘assigned at birth’, as though it were a bureaucratic act rather than a biological fact. For women’s organisations rooted in second-wave, materialist feminist analysis, this is not a minor semantic adjustment. It strikes at the foundation of how we understand women’s oppression and what we need to end it.

Today, we launch ‘The Unmoved Feminist’, a new podcast from the Affiliation of Australian Women’s Advocacy Alliances. Hosted by Liv and Martine, the series applies second-wave, ma…

31/03/2026

AAWAA brings to you ‘Local Action’, interviews with women getting it done across Australia. Today, Emma interviews Dr Megan Blake, barrister for the Le***an Action Group and President of the newly established charity YAEL Women’s Defence Guild about her views on the fight for women’s s*x-based protections and rights in Australia.

Throughout her career Megan has been involved in the application of human rights and international right standards. She has provided written submissions on various United Nations instruments, including for the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women committee, the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls, and the Office of the Prosecutor, and been part of consultative panels with the Special Rapporteur, as appointed by the United Nations. She is on the team of the Le***an Action Group in its intervention into the Giggle for Girls case before the Full Court of the Federal Court (judgment pending) and is junior counsel for the Le***an Action Group, which appeared before Justice Moshinsky in the Federal Court on the 23 and 24 of February this year. Megan is working ensure the S*x Discrimination Act, state laws and international agreements protect the s*x-based rights of women and girls.

Megan has been getting it done!

https://womensadvocacy.net/2026/04/01/local-action-accuracy-over-approval-dr-megan-blake-barrister/

27/03/2026

Victoria’s Change or Suppression (Conversion) Practices Prohibition Act 2021 is currently under review by the Victorian Law Reform Commission (VLRC). The Commission is conducting a focused review of how the ban is working in practice, and submissions closed this week.

AAWAA has been working in this area for some time. We have submitted to multiple Australian government consultations — in Tasmania, New South Wales, and Queensland — as well as to the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, raising concerns about the unintended consequences of conversion practices legislation as it applies to gender identity. Our Victorian submission draws on that body of work.

Victoria’s Change or Suppression (Conversion) Practices Prohibition Act 2021 is currently under review by the Victorian Law Reform Commission (VLRC). The Commission is conducting a focused re…

19/03/2026

Equality Australia sits at the centre of a growing tension between advocacy, public funding and accountability: while it campaigns on laws that cut directly across women’s s*x‑based protections and rights, including female‑only spaces, and supports access to contentious gender‑affirming treatments for children, key institutions have moved to endorse and protect its work from scrutiny

Equality Australia sits at the centre of a growing tension between advocacy, public funding and accountability: while it campaigns on laws that cut directly across women’s s*x‑based protections and…