The Sydney Opera House announced the first line-up for its seventh annual All About Women festival on Sunday 10 March.
This year’s boundary-pushing program features new and emerging voices from around the world speaking to future directions in feminism, plus a unique opportunity for attendees to participate in imagining a collective feminist future. At this watershed moment in the global feminist movement, Australia’s pre-eminent festival on gender provides a platform for a wide range of resonant topics, including: the achievements and disillusionments of an increasingly factional #MeToo movement; female anger and desire; consent and sexual assault; toxic masculinity; feminism outside the Western world; problems with ‘wokeness’; ‘hip hop feminism’; class; and gender politics in the home and workplace.
In a Sydney Opera House first, four female senior Federal Members of Parliament will appear together on a panel titled Leading While Female moderated by Jacqueline Maley (Sydney Morning Herald journalist). Julie Bishop, Linda, Sarah Hanson-Young, and Julia Banks will discuss what life is like for women in Australian Parliament and how we can encourage greater female representation in political life. Additional speakers, workshop presenters and artists announced join a strong and diverse line-up, including Clementine Ford, Osher Günsberg, Joan Morgan, Gemma Hartley, Carolin Emcke, Leta Hong Fincher, Soraya Chemaly, Sarah Smarsh and many more, who will give voice to a range of issues impacting women in 2019.
Alongside female carpentry and flower arranging, new workshops have been added featuring traditional TeKopere Maori healers. #Thisis18, an outdoor photographic exhibition celebrating girlhood around the world will be displayed along the Opera House Western Broadwalk offering a look at girls’ lives through girls’ eyes. This series of portraits by young women photographers originally commissioned by The New York Times captures what life was like for girls turning 18 in 2018 across 12 time zones and 15 languages around the globe.
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