The International Women’s Day website has a feature where you can search events that celebrate women, by country. The UK has 130, the US has 63 and Australia is advertising 108 events. Here are just five:

Time: 07:00am – 09:00am
Event: Brisbane IWD UNIFEM Breakfast
About: Our Guest Speaker is Malalai Joya, a 28 year old Parliamentarian from Afghanistan. This event will support violence against women projects in the Pacific Region. Cost: $45, concession $35.
Venue: Brisbane Convention Exhibition Centre, South Brisbane, 4101
Organisation: UNIFEM: The women’s fund at the United Nations. It provides financial and technical assistance to innovative programs and strategies to foster women’s empowerment and gender equality. Placing the advancement of women’s human rights at the centre of all of its efforts, UNIFEM focuses its activities on four strategic areas: (1) reducing feminised poverty, (2) ending violence against women, (3) reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS among women and girls, and (4) achieving gender equality in democratic governance in times of peace as well as war.

Time: 09:00am – 15:30pm
Event: Women’s Business – It’s our Business
About: A celebration of International Women’s Day within an Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander perspective. Working towards healthier women in our Indigenous community which acknowledges mind, body and spirit.
Venue: Millwell Road, Maroochydore
Organisation: Indigenous Health Program: Aims to increase the number of research projects developed in partnership with the aboriginal and Torres Strait islander people and to increase the number of aboriginal and Torres Strait islander postgraduate students and researchers working on these projects.

Time: 20:00 – 22:00, 8 & 9 March production
Event: The Vagina Monologues
About: Bathurst Action Against Sexual Assault, Bathurst Theatre Company and Central West Women’s Health Centre present Eve Ensler’s award winning play, The Vagina Monologues. For tickets and information call 6333 6161.
Venue: Bathurst Memorial Entertainement Centre, William Street, Bathurst, NSW, 2795
Organisation: BAASA, Bathurst Theatre Company and CWWHC: All proceeds to local services to help end violence against women and girls.

Time: 10:00am
Event: WWILDS IWD 2007 Picnic Brunch
About: A Picnic to celebrate IWD, meet at Roma Street parklands by the lake near the Allee Bridge Lookout
Venue: Roma Street Parklands, 1 Parkland Boulevard, Brisbane, Queensland, 4000
Organisation: WWild: A Sexual Violence Prevention Service is a feminist organisation which recognises women’s position in society. We are a service that works alongside Women with Intellectual and Learning Disabilities in the area of Sexual Violence Prevention.

Time: 10:00am – 18:00pm
Event: International Women’s Day
About: The microphone is open to all women all day. At Ceremony of water & flowers for the women who have died. Including victims of war. Federal politics. The effect of being abused by clergy. State & Religion effect on women, the challenge today. Financial security for older women etc.,
Venue: 3 Lyons Street., Rye, Victoria, 3941
Organisation: Women’s Resource Centre: Celebrating our 25th anniversary. Feminist organisation. Financially independent.

Now perhaps Australian women do organise more events that every other country other than the UK,
OR, Australian women enjoy greater computer and internet access and skill,
OR, Australian women naturally gather and celebrate and this is one of the many ways they do it,
OR, Australian women are financially more independent and have more disposable income,
OR, Australian women are surrounded by more sympathetic and supportive men,
OR, Australian women think and act more globally,

OR,
We are just feisty, formidable, phabulous, feminists, and women such as us, occupy a greater proportion of the Australian population.

Today we celebrate.
Tomorrow we will continue to change the world!

Update: Still such a long way to go, when a girl can’t speak of her own body parts without punishment.

Image from here

There was no doubting that on a good day, the former leader of the ALP, Kim Beazley, could produce a stirring speech.

Kevin Rudd has recycled one of Kim’s gems regarding the WorkChoices legislation announcing that he will,

“Consign these laws to the dustbin of history. If you vote for a Labor government, we will get rid of them (the new workplace laws) forever and for good,” – Kevin Rudd

Kevin’s previously ‘soft’ stance on WorkChoices legislation is believed to have been changed by recent studies reporting that,

“Women and casual and part-time workers on AWAs get, on average, up to $4 an hour less than workers on collective agreements.” – Source.

A Queensland study of 300 upper to middle managers, 88% felt there should be protection against unfair dismissal. It is interesting to consider whether these managers are protecting their own jobs or those of their subordinates. I would suggest it’s a bit of both.

Professor David Peetz is an academic, whose industrial relations research is certainly worth considering, except of course unless you are everybody’s simple uncle J Ho. Thankfully, Kevin Rudd is a considerably more astute politician than the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations.

I am not convinced that two dustbins are enough to contain the refuse that is WorkChoices legislation. I could certainly hear the phrase “consign these (WorkChoices) laws to the dustbin of history” again and again before this year’s election.

Last year I bought a house in the Blue Mountains of NSW.

When I catch up with people and tell them where I now live they say “Oh, so you’ve made a treechange.” I never used to say much, but lately, having been to a handful of community events and sampled my local shopping areas I flatly say “No it’s not a treechange.”

See, I have come to understand that ‘seachange’ and ‘treechange’ have within them the notion of deconstruction. The simplification of a hectic, out-of-control urban experience and the longing for the simple life. Frankly, my motivation is a lot less Jacques Derrida than that. I was, and am, motivated by the beauty of the landscape and in particular the beauty of my home.

At first I thought that I was all citified and I had to learn to slow down, but then I remembered that I am the same person I was when I lived in Darwin for 15 years. It really doesn’t get much slower and laid back than the top end of Australia.

I have come to the realisation that I am blunt and impatient in either hot or cold climates.

The final example of who I am and what I need, came last week when I attended a community forum organised by the local progress association where candidates for the upcoming state election spoke to we concerned voters residents.

We gathered, sat down and listened. Each candidate was given 15 minutes to talk, with extra time allocated for questions afterwards if needed. The independent candidate- Robert Stock, got bogged down in the minutiae of micro policies and seemed to lose himself, let alone his audience. Robert Stock was followed by the Liberal candidate Michael Paag who was big on macro, expensive rhetoric, but completely fell down when asked specific questions relating to his sweeping statements, such as “Which sectors of the state public service will the 20,000 ‘back-room bureaucrat’ jobs be cut from?”

Michael Paag was followed by the ALP candidate Phil Koperberg. Thankfully, and cheekily he said words to the effect

Having heard the Liberal candidate speak I am so impressed by what he and his government will do on March 25, 2007, that I am going to change my vote to Liberal, but I am a realist and l live in a real world…

By the time Phil Koperberg was done and the Greens candidate Pippa MacInnes stood up, I was barely able to pay attention.

To be fair, the throng and thrust that is my natural style as I push for clarity and logic in the answers to questions clearly irritated most of the polite members of my ‘new’ neighbourhood. I was reminded of a ‘girlchild saying’ where she would whisper in my ear “You can stop helping me now Mama.”

I am thankfully, SO not suited to joining my very sweet, polite, civil, but misguided local community. I am so pleased that this venture into community development is out of the way and I can now get back to the real world of broadband and blogging.

So, out of self preservation- theirs and mine, I will happily limit forays into my community to weddings and funerals.

L-R Robert Stock (IND), Michael Paag (LIB), Phil Koperberg (ALP), Pippa MacInnes (GRN). Many thanks to Matt for generously sharing this image.

As news of the ABC’s former journalist Maxine McKew running against HoWARd in his seat of Bennelong filtered through the media I became very excited. At the very least, I thought that this should help to make the time between now and the federal election very interesting.

Upon further reflection, I realised what was invigorating to me. It is what Maxine represents. She’s an intelligent, powerful and formidable woman. I am hopeful that it is this woman who unnerves and perhaps finally unseats, the equally intelligent, powerful and formidable John HoWARd.

It’s a delight for me to see the PM visibly rattled. That it has been done by a presence of a powerful woman is just so delicious. It is so satisfying as HoWARd is as dismissive of women and their potential as he is of all minority groups and a minority group is how he sees women.

In responding to questions about Maxine’s new career, the PM did not display his usual dismissive, paternalistic tone and looked genuinely uncomfortable in discussing future campaigning against Ms Maxine McKew.

I’m sure HoWARd’s advisers have already abandoned a ‘dirtytricks’ campaign against what the ABC has dubbed the Max Factor, as she will have more than enough dirt on this current lot of dirty politicians to provide her with immunity.

This should be interesting and will keep me grinning during the times that HoWARd is particularly insufferable.

Image from here

Today, in a speech to the Australian-American leadership dialogue in Sydney, Dick Cheney spoke in glowing terms of Australian military support in Iraq and the strong alliance that AU and the US have formed through the commitment to the war on terror. Vice President Cheney highlighted the respect that the world has for our PM for not withdrawing from Iraq before the job is done.

“He stuck to those words one day later and he has stuck to them every day since. Prime Minister Howard and the nation that he serves have never wavered in the war on terror. The United States appreciates it and the whole world respects him for it.” -Dick Cheney.

In every classroom, workplace, and family, in every city around this country, people are practicing and valuing being flexible.

In the workplace or government, when a new policy is decided, there is a pilot project (or two) which has at its core a review mechanism. This acts as a feedback loop for customers, staff, management, stakeholders and funding bodies to have input into the way that policy impacts on the way that business is done. It provides new information, highlights unintended consequences and serves to alter the policy so that it does what it is supposed to do. It is not a deficit model, it is a celebration of fluid and dynamic decision making. In healthy organisations this feedback loop is continuous and fluidity is valued.

What do we then have to celebrate in our respected by the world PM who has stated that no new information will be considered in deciding Australia’s commitment to the ‘war on terror-ism’? Sadly, we have very little to celebrate in our PM’s decision-making behaviour. It is very clear that our PM has reached his potential capacity.

It is not a strength of character to be inflexible and rigid when new information enters into a system. The new information can be minimal or profound. The point is that a system must be flexible enough to consider all new information for it to remain dynamic, and therefore valid.

John HoWARd- inflexible, rigid and ‘stuck.’ With fans like Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, it’s clear our PM occupies a redundant time line with a redundant personality type.

Image from here