• 01 Mar 2020 5:54 PM | Jean Murray (Administrator)

    2019 was extraordinary. It was devastating, frightening and overwhelming. But it has been something else too: hopeful. 2019 was absolutely the year of the girl.

    We saw extraordinary girls and young women everywhere rising up and taking charge. Greta urged world leaders take urgent action on climate change. Malala is inspiring girls everywhere that an educated girl can make a difference.  For every Greta and every Malala, there are hundreds of brave girl activists in the developing world doing extraordinary work every day to combat child marriage, child trafficking, teen pregnancy, harassment and violence. We see these girls. We support them. We applaud them.

    Plan International Australia developed a questionnaire for girls and young women between 12 and 25 about girls’ empowerment, leadership and role models. And they found girls have a plan.  Read this inspiring report.


  • 20 Feb 2020 9:18 AM | Jacqueline Graham (Administrator)

    An event which may be of interest to West Australian members has been shared by our friends in 100 Women.

    Health, your superpower; a panel discussion with some of Perth's leading experts on women's health


  • 18 Feb 2020 9:23 PM | Angela Tomazos (Administrator)

    The Newstart allowance, which has not increased in real terms in 25 years, is indexed to inflation, while other payments are tied to wages. This means the unemployment benefit continues to fall further behind living costs. Concerning research showing more than 80% of Newstart recipients are skipping meals to make ends meet.

    https://www.newsmaker.com.au/news/376466/the-urgency-grows-for-raising-newstart#.XkvH9SgzbIU

  • 16 Feb 2020 10:39 AM | Jean Murray (Administrator)

    Across the world, a new generation of women and men, and girls and boys, are speaking up for themselves and others, seizing the moment to reimagine economies, societies, and political systems so that they uphold human rights and achieve gender equality, leaving no one behind.

    UN Women is bringing together the next generations of women’s rights activists with the gender equality advocates and visionaries who created the Beijing Platform for Action more than 2 decades ago. Collectively, these change agents can tackle the unfinished business of empowering women through a new multigenerational campaign: Generation Equality: Realising women’s rights for an equal future.

    The Generation Equality Forum is a global gathering of civil society, convened by UN Women, as a global public conversation for urgent action and accountability for gender equality. It will be connected in real time through interactive satellite sessions to maximise participation. It will take stock of progress and set an agenda of concrete action to realise gender equality before 2030.

    The Forum will kick off in Mexico City in May and culminate in Paris in July, and be informed by CSW session in New York in March. It will feed into the UN General Assembly in September when the United Nations will officially commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action.

  • 09 Feb 2020 2:16 PM | Jean Murray (Administrator)

    BPW International has a Women, Peace and Security Taskforce led by Dr Anne Hilty, BPW Hong Kong.  BPW affiliates worldwide are encouraged to develop their own WPS project at club or federation level.

    The Taskforce was established as BPW International’s response to the Landmark Resolution 1325 (2000) of the UN Security Council on the relationship between gender, peace and security.  There have been 6 additional resolutions since then.

    The 4 pillars of R1325 are Prevention, Participation, Protection, and Relief and Recovery:

    • 1.    Prevention of conflict and violence against women and girls in conflict and post-conflict situations.
    • 2.    Equal participation of women and men in peace and security decision-making processes.
    • 3.    Protection and promotion of the rights of women and girls rights in conflict situations.
    • 4.    Reinforcement of women’s capacities to act as agents in relief and recovery.

    The video Introduction to the BPW WPS project can be accessed by clubs interested in engaging with the international Taskforce and the WPS Taskforce Guidelines provide suggestions for advocacy and action with resources for our worldwide BPW affiliates to adopt and adapt according to their local needs.


  • 02 Feb 2020 9:10 AM | Jean Murray (Administrator)

    We are in a time where more women are taking action by marching and sharing their stories. The media is amplifying our voices and asking hard questions of the institutions that continue to lock women out. Business leaders are under new pressure to demonstrate their companies are committed to being part of the gender equality solution.

    BPW Australia is a founding member of the AGEC.  

    The AGEC’s Manifesto for Gender Equality provides the framework for future campaigns, initiatives and priorities. It is a comprehensive statement of what true gender equality looks like and what is required to achieve it. Covering 12 dimensions of work and life, it identifies the causes of inequality, not just the symptoms. It will ensure we won’t stop this important work until we achieve equality for women across all dimensions of work, life and community.


  • 19 Jan 2020 11:04 AM | Jean Murray (Administrator)

    2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the League of Nations — the intergovernmental organisation, headquartered in Geneva, that emerged from the ashes of WW1.  Although the League was branded a failure due to its inability to prevent WW2, its legacies continued long after 1939 when it folded. As the template for modern global governance, and direct precursor to the United Nations which was established in 1945, the League profoundly shaped the world we live in today.

    This history parallels that of BPW.

    BPW USA was formed in 1919 by our Founder, lawyer Lena Madesin Phillips and she worked to spread the organisation internationally, with BPW International established in 1930 in Geneva.  BPW International was one the international women's organisations that lobbied and influenced the League of Nations to include and involve more women, and subsequently the United Nations where BPW advocated strongly for the establishment of the Commission on the Status of Women.

    This article in The Conversation charts the influence of Australian women and women's organisations on the work and focus of the League of Nations and the United Nations.


  • 03 Jan 2020 3:25 PM | Jean Murray (Administrator)

    KPMG’s newest proposal, Unleashing Our Potential — The Case for Further Investment in the Child Care Subsidy, prepared in collaboration with Chief Executive Women, pushes for workforce disincentives for secondary earners to be reduced. The aim is to reduce Australia’s workforce participation gap between men and women, especially parents.

    The current government child care subsidy is based on family, rather than individual income, and it creates very high work disincentives for secondary earners – most commonly mothers. KPMG calculated the income from an extra day’s work that is lost to income tax and Medicare levy, withdrawn family tax benefit, reduced childcare subsidy and increased out-of-pocket childcare costs – and found the current system has an unacceptably high Workforce Disincentive Rate which impacts mostly mothers as second earners.   Working 4 days instead of 3 days can mean only 12% of pay earned on the 4th day adds to the family coffers.   

    But under KPMG’s proposal, she would keep almost 50% of the money earned by that 4th day’s work by capping the WDR at the second earner’s marginal income tax rate plus 20% and providing a top-up payment through the CCS system. This would benefit households across the income scale, but especially those on modest incomes who are most affected.  The plan also calls for the withdrawal of the CCS ‘cliffs’ that a family can fall off when just $1 extra earned could lose $5,000 of subsidy.

BPW Australia Newsletter Archive

Past editions of BPW Australia's electronic newsletters can be viewed as a PDF - see below.

Current editions of the quarterly e-magazine Madesin can be accessed here.


2015

2015 March
2015 February
2015 January

2014

2014 December
2014 November
2014 October
2014 September
2014 August
2014 July
2014 June
2014 May
2014 April
2014 March
2014 February
2014 January

2013

2013 December
2013 November
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