Australia and Oceania

The moment the tips of my fingers detected a lump in my breast, a white, cold fear flooded through me. It was a nondescript day during the usual end-of-year chaos, so…

Queensland’s first Pink Sleepbus will provide vulnerable women and children a safe place to rest on the Sunshine Coast next month. A specialised service providing “compassion and a hand up”,…

When two police officers arrived at Bianca’s* front door in the middle of a cold winter’s night last year, she assumed they were coming to tell her they’d taken out…

Queensland University of Technology’s vice-chancellor has defended the decision to remove all references to “merit” from its hiring policy. Staff were told about the move via an internal email, which…

Kirsten Drier is breaking barriers in more ways than one. Ten years ago, she was afraid her disability would be a barrier to getting a job. “People just don’t understand…

It wasn’t long after Rita submitted her migration application that the harassment began. “He started messaging me: ‘Can you take a picture of yourself?’ And then from morning to night…

Early in her career, Michelle Simmons AO was often asked a particular question. “Oh, you study physics,” someone would say. “Isn’t it all already worked out?” “I remember thinking, ‘We…

Lidia Thorpe has compared the Australian government to Israel as the ‘illegal occupier of these lands’ in an impassioned speech pledging support to Palestine. The firebrand Greens-turned-Independent senator arrived in the…

A few years after moving from South Africa to South Australia, Sunet Verwey and her husband came across an ad for the Country Fire Service at their local shopping centre. Grateful for…

We’d all like to assume if we went into cardiac arrest in the street, someone would come to our aid. But it turns out gender can affect your chances of…