Australia currently lacks a mainstream debate about feminism, says Ann Mossop, curator of the forthcoming All About Women festival at Sydney Opera House.
Six months after the Daily Telegraph columnist Tim Blair polled his readers to name Australia’s “craziest left-wing frightbat” from a shortlist of 10 women journalists, Mossop said she hoped the programme of talks and lectures on International Women’s Day would open up the conversation.
“Australia has figures like Germaine Greer and Anne Summers, a generation who have been influential across the world, and there are some really interesting young voices talking about feminism in Australia, people like Clementine Ford,” said Mossop as she announced the full line-up.
“But I feel, in some ways, there is not actually a mainstream conversation about this – something the frightbats brou-ha-ha illustrated. Writing from a mainstream position, somebody like Tim Blair was able to dismiss a whole group of female journalists and commentators in a way that was only remarked on in that community.”
Mossop hopes the 2015 programme for All About Women, now in its third year, will present a range of feminist voices from different generations, nationalities and perspectives. The opening session sees Ford discussing “how to be a feminist” with a panel that also features Germaine Greer, author of The Female Eunuch, and Guardian US columnist and essayist Roxane Gay.
“That title is a slightly tongue in cheek nod to the fact that there are so many different ways to do that,” said Mossop of the session. “In her book Bad Feminist, Roxane Gay says she loves wearing pink and listening to misogynistic rap music but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t value equal opportunity and fair treatment of all women.”
Greer will also be sharing the stage with theatre director John Bell to discuss Shakespeare’s Women, while international speakers range from American cultural commentators Kate Bolick and Brigid Schulte to the British novelist Esther Freud.
Sydney Opera House has collaborated with Adelaide writers festival to co-host Elizabeth Gilbert, who will revisit her Ted talks on creativity that have been watched by almost 10 million people. Gilbert will also present a session with her friend and hairdresser, the Syrian-born Rayya Elias, whose memoir Harley Loco tells a very different story to her famous client’s book, Eat Pray Love.
Asked which sessions were likely to make the biggest impact, Mossop singled out talks by Helen Garner, author of This House of Grief, and Rosie Batty, whose son Luke Batty was murdered by her ex-partner in February 2014.
“Both of these people are talking about these terrible things that happen to women and families but in a way that’s motivating. People don’t want to talk about the very dark side of life. But Helen and Rosie approach it in such way that it’s possible to have that conversation.”
The past three decades have seen huge social change in Australia, said Mossop, “things as basic as women no longer having to resign from public service when they got married and the anti-discrimination legislation of the 1970s and 80s.” But she added: “there are still things that need to change.”
• All About Women is at Sydney Opera House on 8 March 2015
