International Day for Persons with a Disability was marked on 3 December, We hear some personal stories by and about women with a disability. Melbourne writer Rebecca Maxwell tells the history of Braille, and Patricia Woodcroft-Lee talks about her aid work in East Timor.

Today's program looks at homelessness in Australia. After decades of political neglect the Rudd Government has initiated a dialogue on homelessness. This time last year the government released their Homelessness White Paper - The Road Home, outlining their strategy for halving homelessness by 2020. What do people working in the homelessness sector think?

Julie Oberin (Homelessness Australia and WESNET) discusses the current governmental approach. Michelle Falzon & Monica Fuller talk about StreetSmart Australia’s current ‘Dine Out to Help Out’ campaign. Natalie Susman from The Big Issue shares with us the details of a new program to be launched next year which solely focuses on women and a new role they can play at The Big Issue.

For the first decade of this century, the world’s largest human rights organisation, Amnesty International, has been led by women. In 2001, Irene Khan became Amnesty’s first female Secretary General. In that same year her deputy, Kate Gilmore, joined Amnesty’s International Secretariat after heading the organisation in Australia. So what difference has a decade of female leadership at Amnesty International made to the gender blindness in human rights? Two examples stand out. In 2004 Amnesty launched a global campaign to stop violence against women, and in 2007 called for the decriminalisation of abortion worldwide. Irene Khan and Kate Gilmore recently visited Australia, and today we’ll hear them discussing these decisions, and the importance of having women’s rights at the centre of human rights advocacy.

This week the program falls within the 16 Days of Activism to End Violence Against Women, encompassing four significant dates: the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, World AIDS Day, the anniversary of the 1991 Montreal massacre where 14 women engineering students were gunned down for being feminists (which caused Canadian men to start a campaign to urge men to speak out against violence against women, symbolised by the White Ribbon), culminating on World Human Rights Day to highlight the connection between women, violence and human rights.
We’ll hear from Donna Carson, a survivor of domestic violence and outspoken advocate for victim rights and women who have experienced domestic violence. She spoke at one of the many White Ribbon breakfasts held around the country on 25 November. And author and feminist Emily Maguire discusses the collision of lived experiences with the myth of a post-feminist world.

Recently former Howard immigration minister Phillip Ruddock made claims that up to 10,000 asylum seekers were waiting to come to Australia by boat. The politics of fear is used often to justify tough border control policies, especially targeting those who arrive by boat. But it doesn’t address practical issues involved in managing the needs of those who arrive in Australia with a claim for asylum, and the available resources in the receiving communities. So how does the Australian experience compare with the rest of the world in its approach to new arrivals, and in the numbers of people involved? Caz Coleman is the director of the Hotham Mission Asylum Seekers Project. She recently led a research trip to Europe and Canada to see first hand the practical approaches to the reception of asylum seekers.
A new report from the House of Representatives Employment and Workplace Relations Committee has recommended changes to the Fair Work Act and Sex Discrimination Act to address the continuing gender pay gap in Australia. The report was recently tabled in Parliament and proposed 63 recommendations. 3CR’s Clemmie Wetherall discussed the report and gender pay issues with Dr Larissa Bambury from RMIT University.

There is little research on women’s experiences of abortion, despite considerable public debate on the topic and the fact that a substantial proportion of women have an abortion at some point in their lives. A research project based at Melbourne's Royal Women's Hospital spoke to women who sought health services because of unplanned pregnancy. We hear from two of the project's researchers, Dr Maggie Kirkman and Annarella Hardiman. Read the Understanding Women's Experiences of Unplanned Pregnancy and Abortion report.

The continued debate on asylum seekers has seen a re-emergence of fear tactics in relation to people seeking asylum in Australia arriving by boat. Today we’ll hear from Zhi Yan, the national coordinator of A Just Australia, about taking a humanitarian approach towards asylum seekers.
We also speak to Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick about the lack of gender equity on company boards. The recent Women Getting Into Boards Report findings indicate that professional women continue to face particular and additional obstacles in their careers, in their participation in their chosen professions and in gaining workplace equality.

Today, a young Indigenous woman's project to reverse hearing loss in remote Indigenous communities, and we hear from a conference on women in Victorian prisons.
Otitis media is a middle ear infection which can frequently lead to hearing loss. It is common in remote Indigenous communities in Australia, and can result in children falling behind at school, leading to behavioural problems and young people missing out on opportunities to learn. Erin Lowry is a fourth year occupational therapy student from Sydney. She is one of very few Aboriginal people studying the course, and in Ausitralia, there are only 6 Indigenous OTs overall. Erin spoke with 3CR’s Nola Brooks about Project Illipa, an initiative she has implemented that provides special equipment for schools to enable children to hear again. She began by explaining the implications of otitis media on sufferers.

A recent Victorian study showed that women released from prison are 27 times more likely to die prematurely than those in the general population. The figure for young women is higher still, at 41 times. Bree Carlton is a researcher in the area of history and prison studies. She has written a book Imprisoned Resistance: Life and Death in an Australian Super Max (maximum security prison). She spoke at the recent Imprisoned People and Social Justice Forum in Melbourne, about her research into the issue of prison survival and release in Victoria.

Associate Professor Marian Baird is the Director of the Women and Work Research Group at the University of Sydney. Her research focuses on women, work and family, and industrial relations, with a particular focus on maternity leave. She recently delivered the 2009 Clare Burton Memorial Lecture, tracing maternity leave policy and attitudes from the 1979 unpaid maternity leave test case to this year's announcement of a government paid parental leave scheme. So after 30 years, what are the ongoing challenges to gender equity in work and life?

Human rights activist and writer Unity Dow delivers the annual Nelson Mandela Lecture at the University of South Australia. Unity was a High Court Judge in Botswana for 11 years before retiring this year and has more than 16 years of experience in women's human rights activism, including on issues of HIV/AIDS. She discusses the way dominant cultures have claimed the right to frame issues and define the norm, stating that Africans must start to boldly and loudly insist that a view is not valid just because it is offered by the 'West'.

Today’s show has an environmental flavour; we’re talking about climate change, Copenhagen and whaling.
First a look at the latest developments on the climate change debate in Australia's Parliament. Climate campaigners have long since given up hope that Labor’s CPRS will have a meaningful impact on climate change. The Australian Greens have just released their Safe Climate Bill and have proposed amendments to the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, which they say is what real legislative climate change action would look like. Elanor McInerney speaks with Greens Senator Christine Milne.
Almost 40,000 young people voted in the recent Youth Decide vote on climate change, run by the Australian Youth Climate Coalition. They voted overwhelmingly for a 40% cut in emissions to avert climate change. In December, 21 young Australians will join world leaders at the Climate Summit in Copenhagen to raise the concerns of Australia’s youth. Wendy Miller is one of the delegates and she spoke with 3CR’s Elena McMaster.
NSW teenager Skye Bortoli has been campaigning to stop whaling since she was eleven years old. Her anti-whaling petitions have thousands of signatures and she has travelled the world with her message that whaling should stop. She spoke with 3CR’s Jan Bartlett.

Kim Traill first went to the Soviet Union in 1990, not knowing that by the end of the following year it would no longer exist. In the years since, she has frequently returned to Russia to visit friends and to work as a video journalist for SBS Dateline. Today she discusses her new book, Red Square Blues: A beginner's guide to the decline and fall of the Soviet Union.

Untouchable Girls is a new documentary about comedy double act the Topp Twins - sisters Jools and Lynda Topp from New Zealand. Also on the show we hear about disability rights in the form of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
In July the Australian Government announced it would ratify the optional protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. To find out what this is and what benefits it might bring in an Australian context, 3CR’s Helen Gwilliam spoke with Emily Howie, from the Human Rights Law Resource Centre in Melbourne.
Jools and Lynda Topp have been entertaining audiences for many years as the Topp Twins. They have always been popular among mainstream audiences, while being openly lesbian and politically vocal on many issues. Director Leanne Pooley set about making a documentary feature film about their lives, which are entwined with much of New Zealand’s political and social history over the last 30 years. The film, The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls played at the Melbourne Film Festival recently and Leanne Pooley spoke to 3CR’s Bree McKilligan and Suzi Taylor about the broad-reaching appeal of the story of the Topp Twins.

Balibo is a new Australian film from director Robert Connolly that tells the story of the Balibo Five and Roger East, six Australian-based journalists who were killed in 1975 when Indonesia invaded East Timor. Although the Balibo story centres largely on the fate of men, it is also of personal significance to the women on our program today. Maureen Tolfree is the sister of journalist Brian Peters, one of the Balibo Five murdered by Indonesian troops on October 16, 1975. And Bea Viegas, who left East Timor with her family as a one-year-old in 1975, speaks about the significance of the Balibo story in the history of East Timor, and her first acting role playing the character Juliana in the film.

After four-year-old Darcey Freeman's father allegedly threw her from Melbourne's West Gate Bridge in January, the Federal Attorney General Robert McClelland called for a review into the Family Law System and how the courts manage issues of violence and child abuse in family law matters.                                                       

Changes to the Family Law Act in 2006 put greater emphasis on the importance of the father's presence in children's lives, yet a widespread perception remains in the community and among some lawyers that the shared parenting ideology trumps other considerations. We speak to Dr Elspeth McInnes, senior social policy advisor for the National Council for Single Mothers and their Children, and Barbara Bigs, author and child protection campaigner, about the current system and proposed changes.

Gill Hague, co-director of the Violence Against Women Research Group at the University of Bristol, recently directed the first ever national study in the UK of women with disabilities and domestic violence. She spoke about her findings at the 4th Forensic Disabilities Conference in Melbourne in July, where the conference theme was Disability and Justice: Many Faces, Equal Rights?

The ongoing war in Afghanistan has been making headlines in recent weeks, with much discussion around how long international troops, including Autsralian soldiers, will remain in the country.  Recently Shazia, a member of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), travelled to Australia to raise awareness of the situation for women in her country. She spoke to 3CR’s Christie Stott and Elena McMaster.

Today, a voice from inside Afghanistan. Malalai Joya is a social activist and women’s advocate who was elected to the Afghan National Assembly in 2005. She has publicly denounced the presence of warlords in Afghanistan’s parliament, and in 2007 was expelled from the parliament on the grounds that she had insulted its members. Though she is renowned internationally as an outspoken voice for her people, within Afghanistan she has survived five attempts on her life. Her experience illustrates the dangers modern Afghanistan presents to advocates for democracy and women’s rights.
Malalai Joya has written a new book, Raising My Voice. It’s a memoir about her life and the struggles of Afghanistan’s voiceless.
You can support Malalai Joya's work and contribute to her safety by making a donation to the Defense Committee for Malalai Joya.

Miles Franklin was born in 1879 and spent the early part of her life in the Monaro region of NSW. After the publication of My Brilliant Career in 1901, Franklin wrote as a freelance and became involved in the early Australian feminist movement via her friendship with Rose Scott and Vida Goldstein and later the National Women's Trade Union league. Miles Franklin was committed to pursuing the notion of the unique Australian perspective in literature and made provision for an award for Australian literature on her death in 1954.
Professor Jill Roe is chair on the Editorial Board of Historical Documents Publications Project and Professor of History at Macquarie University. She has recently written the definitive biography of the Australian writer, and spoke in Katoomba about the literary and cultural activism of Stella Miles Franklin.

Sheila Jeffreys is an Associate Professor in Political Science at the University of Melbourne. Her new book, "The Industrial Vagina: The political economy of the global sex trade", has just been published. Today we hear a talk she gave while completing her book, in which she focuses on the economics and international politics of the pornography industry, and its effects on traditional and other cultures worldwide.
And Meagan Tyler presents a critical assessment of sex advice literature, from her Phd research on the sexological and pornographic constructions of women’s sexuality.
Both women were speakers at a 2007 conference, “The Pornification of Culture: A Feminist Response”.

Every week there are media reports of more ships being attacked by pirates, particularly in the waters around East Africa. Piracy attacks off the coast of Somalia account for a third of all pirate attacks. So why is piracy happening? Why do people turn to piracy, and what is being done to address its root causes? Dr Carolin Liss is a researcher at the Asia Research Centre at Murdoch University in Perth, and has completed a Phd on the subject of piracy.

It is now 2 years since the Federal Government began its intervention in the Northern Territory. The intervention was the Howard government's response to the Little Children Are Sacred report on sexual violence against children in Aboriginal communities. However, it  did not address many of the report’s recommendations, and has been criticised for the lack of genuine consultation with those who would be affected. The military style intervention suspended the Racial Discrimination Act, focused on quarantining income support., and has led to a situation where the law allows for Indigenous people to be treated differently to other Australians. Imelda Palmer, deputy principal of Santa Theresa Primary, 80kms from Alice Springs, speaks with 3CR’s Sue Leigh, about  the impact of the intervention on her community. She speaks in particular about the problems with the government-issued Basic Card, which has replaced cash in communities like Santa Theresa.

SAWA Australia is the Support Association for the Women of Afghanistan, a volunteer organisation that raises awareness and funds for RAWA, the Revolutionary Association for the Women of Afghanistan. It provides support for war widows and illiterate women through a vocational training centre in Kabul, and education for refugee children by supporting Hewad High School.
The fall of the Taliban regime in 2001 has brought back the warlords of the Northern Alliance, and with it great difficulty to the lives of women in Afghanistan. Shazia, a member of RAWA, recently toured Australia on a speaking tour to raise awareness about the current situation for women in Afghanistan.

We hear from Professor Fiona Stanley, Chair of the Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth and Founding Director of the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research. She spoke at the Annual Hawke Lecture at the University of South Australia about the need to focus on the implementation of commissions’ recommendations and Aboriginal input in policy and control in health services in Indigenous communities.

Art as a form of political protest has a long history. In Iran, where restrictions on the media and the rights of women make freedom of expression a difficult task, women are taking a creative approach to activism.  The female-dominated One Million Signatures campaign aims to promote law reform in Iran. Today we are looking at the work of one branch of the campaign, its Arts Committee. We’re heading to Tehran, to hear from Azadeh, a young theatre studies graduate, about  her use of street theatre as a way of highlighting injustices in Iranian law.

When Israel’s 18th Parliament opened this February, there was only one Arab woman amongst its intake of legislators. Hanneen Zoubi was the first Arab woman to be elected for an Arab party in the Knesset and the first woman ever to represent a non-Zionist party. She is a representative of the Tar-jar-mu party, the Arab-Israel party with a Palestinian nationalist platform.  Hanneen Zoubi was in Melbourne recently as the guest of Australians for Palestine and spoke with 3CR’s Nola Brooks.

Joanna Bourke is a Professor of History at Birkbeck College, University of London. She is the author of Rape: A History from 1860 to the Present. In 2007, Professor Joanna Bourke gave a talk at Melbourne University, “Sexual Atrocity in War: Reflections on Twentieth-Century violence”.

Today on the show we look at the recently released Federal Budget in respect to its impact on women. Instead of higher income earners of feeling the budget pain, it seems to have hit elsewhere. And although the Rudd Government had stated Paid Parental Leave to be an aim to introduce over time, with the global financial crisis and forecast budget deficit, there was fear that this would be an area which would no longer be pursued. Australian women have been for many years pointing out the need for a paid maternity leave scheme in Australia, and instead were met with welfare payments that denied women’s attachment to the paid labour force.
We hear from Professor Barbara Pocock, the Director for the Centre of Work and Life at the University of South Australia, and author of the book The Labour Market Ate My Babies.
We also speak to Marie Coleman who heads the Social Policy Committee of the National Foundation for Australian Women.

We hear from Sonia Randhawa about the ways that copyright and patents legislation, and Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) regulate our access to knowledge, and the ways in which such regulation uniquely impacts on women.
Sonia Randhawa is the Deputy President of the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters for the Asia-Pacific, or AMARC, and has been involved in community broadcasting and activism for many years. She is currently a writer and editor of GenderIT, a free, web-based publication which has this month turned its eye to the issue of access to knowledge in Africa in particular.

We hear from five Australian women writers at the Perth Writer’s Festival discuss the current state of feminism in a session titled ‘A Revolution Half Won?’
Susan Maushart, senior research fellow in the faculty of Media, Society and Culture at Curtin Uni, author of Wifework; What Marriage really means for Women and What Women Want Next, was the moderator for the session and was joined by:
Jane Caro, advertising writer and coauthor of The F Word – How we learnt to Swear by Feminism.
Alice Pung, solicitor, teacher and author of Growing Up Asian in Australia.
Monica Dux, a writer for the Age the Australian and The Monthly and co author of The Great Feminist Denial.
Anne Summers, well known Australian feminist and journalist, who has run the Federal Office of the Status of Women. Also the author of  Damned Whores and God’s Police and more recently On Luck.

Today on the program, we add another voice to the growing calls to heed civilian accounts about Israeli military conduct in the assault on Gaza.
Rachel Johnson, a member of the International Solidarity Movement, reports back on the 5 weeks she spent in Gaza gathering civilian testimonies about the impacts of Operation Cast Lead, the 23-day Israeli assault on Gaza that began on December 27 last year. Rachel Johnson entered Gaza in the days after Israel’s cease-fire declaration on January 18. She gives an overview of the impacts of Operation Cast Lead, the aftermath of which she witnessed when visiting destroyed neighbourhoods to speak to Gazans about their experiences of Israeli bombardment, the ground invasion, and the use of white phosphorus.

It has been over a year since the Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made the formal apology to Indigenous Australians about the Stolen Generations. On today’s show we look at the current position of Aboriginal Australians one year on, and specifically the impact of the ongoing NT Intervention.
We hear from Emma Murphy, who has worked in remote Indigenous communities and recently visited town camps and Aboriginal organisations in Central Australia to find out how the intervention, while posing as a solution to a number of problems, has actually undermined grassroots community solutions. We also hear from Pat Eatock, veteran Aboriginal activist and Kairie elder, who believes the assimilative and dispersive policies attached to quarantining welfare is destructive to Indigenous culture and community.

Every year in Australia, hundreds of young people with disabilities find themselves living in aged care facilities. In Victoria alone, 70 people under 50 are placed in aged care every year. So how has this situation come about and what is being done to address it?
Di Winkler is managing director of the Summer Foundation, and speaks about the Building Better Lives campaign which was launched this month, and aims to get young people out of nursing homes and into more suitable accomodation.
Michelle Newland is an ambassador of the Building Better Lives campaign. Michelle is a 26 year old woman from Victoria, who’s life was changed completely after a severe asthma attack when she was 19.
Also, Angela Barker is a young woman with an acquired brain injury, whose experiences in an aged care facility we hear about later in the program.

Renew Newcastle is an initiative that seeks to generate cultural and community activity in empty buildings around Newcastle, allowing artistic and cultural projects to function within these spaces, and get the city active and used again.
We hear from two women involved in Renew Newcastle: Board Secretary Marni Jackson speaks about the different aspects of the arts project, and Jane Shadbolt, a stop motion animator who is one of the first 7 artists to move into an available studio space in Hunter Street.
Renew Newcastle has evolved from a proposal by Marcus Westbury, sparked through his comparison of Newcastle to Glasgow in his ABC Not Quite Art television series.

Israel is one of the most militarised countries in the world - a situation that women are challenging from within. Judy Orstav is a member of Machsom Watch, whose members monitor and report on Israeli checkpoint activity, and Ruth Hiller is the co-founder of New Profile, an Israeli movement campaigning for the de-militarisation of Israeli society.

This week, we reflect on the presidency of George W. Bush. Barack Obama was sworn in as America’s 44th President on January 20 in Washington DC, and today’s Women On The Line is marking the occasion by getting perspectives on Bush’s legacy, and what opportunities for hope and change Obama might bring in the wake of it.
We’ll hear from Amy Goodman, host and executive producer of Democracy Now!, an independent grass-roots daily news program broadcasting perspectives and voices rarely heard otherwise in the United States. Her latest book, co-written with her brother David, is Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times. She was in Washington DC for the inauguration festivities, and I spoke to her on the last day of George W. Bush’s presidency.
Also, the nuclear launch codes have been transferred, but what was Bush’s contribution to the international effort to get rid of nuclear weapons? And will Obama’s presidency lead to a new direction for the US and the world? 3CR’s Rachel O’Connell spoke to Jessica Morrison, the Australian Director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.

This is a summer re-broadcast of a Women On The Line program first broadcast on 24 October 2008.
Rwanda’s recent history has been of bloodshed and war. But today, Rwanda is undergoing a remarkable reconstruction - politically, economically and socially. And it is Rwandan women, for the first time in its history, who are taking the lead. Recent elections in Rwanda have returned the world’s first female-dominated government.

We’ll hear from Dr Shirley Randell, Senior Adviser in Gender, Governance and Education with the Rwandan-based Dutch Development Organisation. And Annie Kairaba, director of the Rwandan Initiative for Sustainable Development, and a leading advocate for women’s rights, will talk about the new Rwandan society she is helping to build, having returned to her country following the genocide.

This is a summer re-broadcast of a Women On The Line program first broadcast on 18 July 2008.
On today’s program, girls will be boys. We take a look at Melbourne’s Drag King culture. Since 1978 the Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives has been collecting and preserving Australia’s queer history. This year, its annual Homosexual Histories Conference was held in Melbourne, where Roberta Foster and Bree Taber presented papers on Melbourne’s Drag King culture, which since June 2000 has centred around a club night called King Victoria. Also in the program, I speak to Selina Jenkins, who has regularly performed at King Victoria as cocky young homeboy Braydon, and sensitive country boy, Beau Heartbreaker.

This is a summer re-broadcast of a Women On The Line program first broadcast on 27 June 2008.
Activists from Okinawa and Guam are united in their opposition to the presence of U.S. military bases on their lands. Maki Yonaha was born in Okinawa and now lives in Australia, where she is a member of the group Japanese For Peace. And Dr. Lisa Natividad is a professor at the University of Guam, and an activist for her people, the indigenous Chamoru. Both women were speakers at an activist workshop in Melbourne, “Militarisation: Guam and the Pacific”.