By Dr Emma Wood

A young Norma-Jean, early on in her career, poses for a family-friendly catalogue, wearing girlish, innocent-looking clothes, and sporting that post-war, picture-perfect, pearly-white smile. But the sultry soundtrack playing in the background – “Every baby needs a Da-Da-Daddy…” – tells us where this is going. As the montage of Norma Jean’s photoshoots progresses, each image becomes more sexualised, ending with an image of the young woman posing, bare-breasted, for a calendar.

By Dr Emma Wood

The Sydney Morning Herald recently published one of the saddest abortion stories I’ve ever read. It is the kind of story that unsettles you, whether you regard yourself as “pro-choice” or “pro-life”. If you are pro-choice, the story forces you to come to grips with the humanity of the foetus. If you are pro-life, the story might cause you to wonder, even if momentarily, whether the principles by which you stand are sufficiently nuanced or compassionate.

By Dr Emma Wood

In the last month, Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS) released a research report, titled: “A Life Course Approach to Determining the Prevalence and Impact of Sexual Violence in Australia.” The report summarised findings from the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health.

By Dr Emma Wood

I think I was standing in the kitchen in tracksuit pants, eating a bowl of ice cream when I said,

By Dr Emma Wood

When I was coming of age, “sexual liberalism” looked like it was here to stay. A generation on from the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, I grew up in a world where very few public figures were brave enough to question the supposed progress that the sexual revolution had brought.

By Emma Wood

Responding adequately to the sad news of the Kambala sexual assault petition — the latest spotlight on the sexual assault epidemic — is a sobering challenge for us all. Leading educators in our secondary schools, depressed by the recent revelations and struggling to find solutions, are themselves revisiting calls for better “consent training” for students. But, as others have argued, “consent training” is bound to be an inadequate response on its own.

By Dr Emma Wood

Like NSW, Queensland, and Victoria before them, South Australia is now considering a bill to allow abortion up to birth.  In statements from the politicians involved, one sees the familiar employment of pro-woman rhetoric in the name of the abortion cause.  Abortion is a “health issue”.  Abortion is necessary for women’s health, and so the ethics of abortion should no longer be a talking point.