LRC 90.5
1. What do you think about Auspol federal elections 2022’s latest politicisation on the participation of trans women in sports? 2. Has female empowerment or liberation been achieved or propelled forward by any female South Aussie politician? If not, can you provide another example?
3. Does the university’s campaign of management cuts to the arts faculty mean an incentivisation of women in stem? What does that mean for women’s academic contribution for both science and arts?
Socialist Alternative | ANNA NGUYEN, KALESH GOVENDER 1. Katherine Deves’ transphobia is appalling. In February, Deves helped develop a bill to exclude trans athletes from women’s sports. She has claimed that young girls would face sexual predation if sports admitted trans players. Deves’ comments are outrageous and aim to normalise the discrimination experienced by transgender people. Trans women have every right to participate in women’s sport. The Liberals’ latest bigoted campaign is unsurprising. Capitalism relies on these oppressions to keep us divided and underconfident. Like the Religious Discrimination Bill, this is part and parcel of a broader attempt to wind back progressive sentiment that exists around LGBTI+ reforms and marriage equality. It’s important that the left cede no ground to 2. Women’s liberation has always been propelled forward outside of parliament. Mary Lee (1821-1909) was a suffragist and trade unionist who helped establish the influential Women’s Suffrage League. The suffrage movement fought relentlessly and made South Australian women some of the first in the world to gain the vote. Lee also advocated for the formation of female trades unions as many women worked in unregulated sweatshop conditions. She established SA’s first Working Women’s Trades Union to fight for better conditions for working women. Lee linked the political demands for women’s suffrage with the economic fight of working women in factories. Lee was asked to stand for parliament but declined. She saw the importance of workplaces as institutions of collective political struggle one that extended far beyond parliament.
3. Cuts to the Arts will not ‘incentivise’ women to enter STEM. They merely limit options for choosing to study something we enjoy. We are against management’s cuts because they are unnecessary austerity measures carried out by corporate-minded executives on exorbitant salaries. Their restructures and cuts will exacerbate the already-rampant casualisation and precarious employment for a predominantly female workforce. The livelihoods of staff across faculties are at constant risk because the university wants to increase its profits. There has been no transfer of resources from Arts to ECMS. In reality, there have been cutbacks across the board, including at least 28 job losses in ECMS and Sciences.
Greens Club | BUSBY CAVANAGH,
CAITLIN BATTYE, ANNIKA STEWART (in order of response)
1. The decision of both major parties to use transgender people as a political football to score cheap second preferences off One Nation voters was as regrettable as it was abominable. We should be completely frank on this topic: the argument was never about transgender participation in sports, but about transgender identities and their place in the fabric of Australian society. It’s gladdening to know that the Coalition’s attempts to use transgender identities as a wedge to retain government failed as spectacularly as it did. However, we cannot give our incoming prime minister a free pass for his transphobic comments in the ‘No Woking Class Hero’ News Corp article published before the election. 14
