Susan Hawthorne – political scientist, author, poet and Spinifex director – has written a blog post for the Women's Media Centre about Julia Gillard and her own 'cautious optimism' about our new PM:

Julia Gillard is shaking some long-held norms however, since not only is she female, she’s also single... She is also not religious, a distinct difference from former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. One doesn’t hear her speak of herself as a feminist, but many of her assumptions and actions are clearly based on an underlying feminist worldview.

Click here to read the whole article.

"Phantoms in the machine", an edited extract from The World According to Monsanto, about the introduction of GM crops in Mexico, appeared in print and online in The Age.

Melinda Tankard Reist, editor of Getting Real, appeared on the Gruen Transfer's Gruen Sessions, talking about the portrayal of women in advertising. You can watch the video on the Gruen Transfer's website.

Feminist, author and psychotherapist Betty McLellan discovers that free speech is not always fair in her new book Unspeakable. Read her blog here.

A few news clippings on Australia's first female PM:

Susan Hawthorne has been quoted in the Sunday Age article about the ascension of Julia Gillard, "The female factor: what difference will a woman make?"

The Scavenger also has an article on Gillard worth reading: "Glass ceiling remains intact in Australia". 

Germaine Greer's article "Pragmatism rules over principles for Julia Gillard" is another feminist take on our new PM.

Check out Susan Hawthorne's new blog post about Julia Gillard's ascension to prime ministership here.

Zillah Eisenstein (Sexual Decoys, Against Empire) is a keynote speaker at the Australian Women's and Gender Studies Conference, "Emerging Spaces: New Possibilities in Critical Times". The conference calls for consideration of the meaning and possibilities of change for gender in Australia and internationally in our time of rapid social, economic and political transition.

The conference runs from 30th June to 2nd July at the University of South Australia, Adelaide. Post grad day is 29 June.

Munya Andrews, author of Seven Sisters of the Pleiades, is speaking at the University of Notre Dame in Broome on 23rd June. Munya's talk will be part of their Barrgana Lecture Series – each year the university does a series of lectures on various topics around the subject of the Kimberley and Kimberley life.

Contact the Broome campus on 08 9192 0600 for further information.

Spinifex director Susan Hawthorne reflects on the damaging effects and pervasiveness of porn in contemporary society after attending the Stop Porn Conference in Boston.

Hijabs and motherhood seem to be high on the news agendas this week.
Last week The Australian columnist Janet Albrechtsen questioned Western women's concerns with dating, marriage and motherhood over supporting the struggle of Muslim women, writing on two very different films: Sex and the City 2 and The Stoning of Soraya. Seemingly the only thing they have in common is that hijabs are seen in both - used to very different effect, as you can imagine.
In suburban Melbourne, sisters Seyman and Ebru Yagci are doing their bit to bring a bit of glamour to Muslim dress, with their store, Sorayya Designs, as featured by Dewi Cooke in Saturday's Age A2: 'Putting the hip into hjiab'.
Over in France meanwhile, "latter-day Simone de Beauvoir" Elisabeth Badinter is offending and delighting in equal measure with her book Conflict: The Woman and the Mother. Due out in English next year, the book questions the return to "naturalism" and idealised concepts of motherhood. Her advice: "...to listen to your own desires and know that no one knows the secret of good motherhood" sounds pretty sensible to us. Read Emma-Kate Symons' article.