In 2021 I was mid-way through my PhD program and three months pregnant. Until that point, I hadn’t thought much about parental leave—it’s the law in Australia, right? So it was a shock to discover...
Category: Family
Innovative scholarship for researchers helps alleviate unpaid caring
Grassroots social enterprise, Franklin Women has awarded six health researchers funding to alleviate barriers associated with unpaid caring responsibilities so they can take advantage of career...
“It illuminated the experience of psychosis for me”
And Then She Fell, by US author Alicia Elliott, is a mind-bending and slinking novel unpacking themes of motherhood, mental health, Indigeneity, dispossession and connection to land and culture –...
DV literacy: a necessary tool in combatting coercive control
The following article is a condensed version of a research paper delivered at the ANU Gender Institute symposium on ‘Understanding Coercive Control’ that explored coercive control from multiple...
Womanhood, immigration, and finding freedom
In her new novel, Untethered, debut author Ayesha Inoon, who is now based in Canberra, shares with readers an incredibly intimate portrait of a young Sri Lankan woman who immigrates with her husband...
Carer Spotlight: Linda’s story of dementia and devotion
When my mum, Linda, began caring for my grandma, Helen, due to advancing dementia, she was unaware of the enormity of the task at hand. “I didn’t know it would be like this,” she used to say to me. ...
Carer spotlight: Alice’s story of duty, isolation, identity
70.1% of primary caregivers cite “a sense of family responsibility” as the main reason that they became a carer. But what does that actually mean? Alice (a pseudonym) cared for her mum for over 30...
Carer spotlight: Erin’s story of being a young carer
10.8% of all Australians identified as carers in the 2018 Australian Census. That is approximately 2.65 million people! And yet, Erin–who was a Disability Support Worker for five years and is a...
Death and dying: A profound experience for prize winner
Sarah Holland-Batt’s poetry collection The Jaguar won the 2023 Stella Prize for Australian women’s and non-binary writers' work. It's an extraordinary and unexpected collection of poems, which...