23 minute read
My Word
Let Me Introduce My Shelf
Sometimes you’ve just got to know when to pack it in, writes Katherine Collette. Unless you’re trying to win a public speaking prize.
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When I first hear of competitive public speaking, I think, Who would want to do that? It’s bad enough having to get up and talk in front of people; imagine being ranked for how terrible you are.
I can’t imagine ever attempting it. But a few years after joining a public speaking club, I do exactly that.
Round One is the club competition, which hardly anybody enters. Hardly anybody comes to watch either; the audience consists of two other competitors, three judges and the MC. So far as “public speaking” goes, there’s a lot of the speaking, not so much of the public.
It’s still nerve-racking, though. I stand at the lectern, hands gripping its sides. I try to imagine the audience naked but it’s more helpful to imagine them asleep. It’s not difficult, given how few people are there.
My speech is a tale of adversity and struggle, about how I bravely, naively, attempted building a flat-pack bookshelf. It begins with the question, Do you really need the instructions? and ends with a smattering of applause.
Then, an announcement: I’ve won. I receive an enormous trophy. “I don’t know where I’ll put it,” I say. At home, I set it on the mantlepiece, where everyone can see. I take photos and post them on Instagram.
After my thrilling victory, I prepare for the next round, recording and watching myself on my phone. I look stiff, awkward; I barely move. I realise I need to work on my delivery.
Delivery is important. I understand this doubly when I check the judges’ criteria and find that no points are allocated for content. I take this to mean that it isn’t what you say that matters, it’s how you say it that counts.
I consult YouTube to see what other competitors have said and how they’ve said it:
The word “love” – hands to heart.
The word “we” – arms outstretched.
“You can do it” (voice loud), “you just have to try” (barely a whisper).
On competition day I feel positive… Until I see the size of the audience. Then I start wondering what I’m doing. Why am I here? I hate public speaking. Is it too late to drop out?
My heart thumps as I walk on stage, and across it, back and forth – part of my effort to increase visual engagement. I gesture a lot too, palms open, fingers pressed together (pointing is frowned upon).
A second victory! Amid widespread applause, holding another gargantuan trophy aloft, I think I don’t hate public speaking, I love public speaking. The post-performance high sustains me to the next round.
If more movement helped, surely even more movement will help even more? This time I don’t walk across the stage, I flutter. I hold an invisible hammer, knock in imaginary nails. I’ve got facial expressions! A prolonged pause! I pose a question and when the audience answers, I put my hand to my ear and say, “I can’t hear you!”
Weirdly, I don’t win. But the second-place speaker is disqualified for going overtime and I scrape through to the next round. No trophy, just a certificate.
Round Four. I’m not obsessed, just very interested in winning – which is how I end up in a speaking coach’s living room. I stand between her TV and kitchen table, pretending to make eye contact – Miming! Pausing! – to an audience that isn’t there.
At the end the coach says, somewhat dubiously, “That’s a lot.” I tell her my “it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it” theory: “It’s very meta. That’s the way the world’s going, all style and no substance.”
The coach isn’t convinced. She thinks my speech needs a message. Stories with messages, parables for how to live your life, do well. It never hurts to be inspiring. Like the woman with unruly children who found patience. Or the marathon runner who realised the beauty of standing still. But all I’m talking about is assembling a flat pack, a flat pack I abandoned half-way through. It’s hard to find inspiration in that.
However, by the time I reach the semi-finals, I think I’ve managed to hit on something.
“How to assemble a flat-pack bookshelf,” I begin.
“Step 1: Don’t. ”
The point is sometimes you need to know your limitations. It doesn’t resonate; I don’t make the grand final. Retrospectively, a better message might have been about continuing to try, because eventually you will succeed. You will end up with a working bookshelf. Or a few impressively sized trophies for your mantle.
Letter to My Younger Self
Believe in Yourself and What You Deserve
2015 Australian of the Year Rosie Batty jolted Australia into recognising that family violence could happen to anyone. A tireless advocate for victim-survivors ever since her 11-year-old son Luke was killed by his father, Batty opens up about the joys of motherhood and why the fight to end Australia’s hidden endemic must involve our young people.
by Anastasia Safioleas Contributing Editor
@anast
My 16-year-old self was shy and unsure of
herself, but friendly and keen to learn
to drive and start working. I grew up on a farm in a small English village and I went to a private boarding school [but] I was in a rush. I couldn’t imagine going on to do A-levels and university. I can’t recall, to be honest, why I thought I’d get a job in a bank. I wanted what I thought was a good job that my parents would be proud for me to get. It was considered a secure job and a good step, reputable and respectable.
It wasn’t considered unusual for me to leave
school at 16. I wanted to be able to earn some money and to buy clothes. I didn’t have a great big wardrobe. I came from a generation where you weren’t overindulged. I lost my mum when I was little, and we didn’t have many clothes. I was dying to earn my own money. The first thing I did with my first month’s salary was I went down to London with my stepmother and, much to her horror, squandered my entire salary on a pair of boots. I felt a bit embarrassed wearing them, actually. I was embarrassed that I’d spent all my money on boots that were a bit on trend for a rural place.
After my mum died, Dad was left with three
children under the age of six. He was a farmer so that was quite difficult. We would spend a lot of our school holidays with my aunties and uncles and my grandmother; they all lived in the same village about an hour and a half away. Everybody loved my Nana. The hardest thing for me was when I started to live overseas from the age of about 20, when I first went off to be an au pair in Austria. I was always worried that something would happen to my grandparents. But my grandmother lived for quite a long time. She would always say to me “When are you going to come back to England to live? When are you getting married?” I would get very irritable because it seemed I couldn’t be genuinely happy unless I got married. I was in no rush to be married. And I never did. Neither did my brothers. I can look back now and see that it was the trauma of losing my mum so suddenly that probably prevented us from being able to have a permanent relationship as adults.
I always had a fragile sense of self-image. I was always shy with boys initially and unsure of myself. When it comes to a romantic connection, I’m very shy and reserved. I was very cautious about having a real boyfriend and was very, very cautious about entering that kind of romantic relationship, which I didn’t do till I was over 18.
It’s sad but if I could go back to a particular time of my life it would be when I was 40 and fell
pregnant with Luke. I don’t think I’ve been happier than when I was a mum. I hadn’t planned to have a child – I was so scared of losing something that I love. I have attachment disorders and it was only when I studied trauma and attachment theory that I understood the decisions and choices I’d made subconsciously during
my life that had prevented me from that commitment of permanent relationships. Part of that also was not wanting children because of the risk of losing a child.
It became evident very soon after I fell pregnant
that Luke’s father was unbalanced. I had really hoped we would have a relationship but it started to become increasingly evident that he was some weird mixed-up guy. I look back now at behaviours I didn’t understand and didn’t know how to deal with. I was constantly torn, trying to make it work and then realising it was impossible. The joy I had being a mum was often challenged by my relationship with him as the father. I didn’t realise it was violence until I saw a counsellor when [Luke] was about two. I was never able to fully embrace being a mum without the shadow of dealing with the abuse from his father. My role as I saw it was to facilitate a relationship with his father because at that time, I believed I was doing the right thing. It was really challenging… Making sure that Luke had the best of what I could provide for him, that he didn’t go without anything, that he had joy and happiness in his life, that he was well balanced and engaged and a connected little human: that was just always pulled back and sideswiped by this goddamn man who was his father. So when I was about 40 and I had Luke, I was so nurturing and so overly content being his mum. I loved that first year where he was a baby, gurgling and learning to eat and breastfeeding. It was just so special.
Having a child is the thing that starts to connect
you to your community. So, when I did lose Luke, my greatest disconnect has been in this area because my connections came through creche and kinder and schools. You have a relationship with the mums and their kids; you’re connected through their sports and swimming. Wherever you went you were meeting people and getting to know each other. Then when I lost Luke all those connections went, and it was really difficult. It still is.
My one tangible achievement was being instrumental in the Royal Commission [into Family
Violence] in Victoria. Just over five years on it’s been a significant and real opportunity for systemic change. It hasn’t fixed everything but it’s the only thing any government has done that has likely [led] to structural change in responses. And I advocated very strongly for Respectful Relationships in schools. The Victorian State Government again acknowledged that my advocacy contributed to those programs going into over a thousand state schools. That’s a significant opportunity for real change, which I’m delighted about because I think one of the most important things we can do is to create generational attitudinal change. It’s a shame the Federal Government pushed things back because of their conservative views. A lot of the work I’ve been trying to do has been slowed down because of push back and reservations from ultra-conservative and religious groups. Which is just so bloody annoying because it’s the most important area for us – to be able to see generational change. We need to reach young people.
I’ve approached my advocacy in my own individual way but I’m sure it’s different because of my generation and the generational gap between
Grace Tame and I. That doesn’t mean either is right or wrong. It just demonstrates difference. It’s a great reflection and insight that’s challenged me at times… the lack of apology, of not knowing your place. Just going “Nah, I’m not conforming. This is who I am. And nobody’s going to tell me any different.”
If I’ve helped lift the lid on something that has been a dirty secret throughout previous generations
and shifted that into a conversation where people are able to learn and understand it more, then that’s a big thing in itself. I realise I haven’t reversed statistics – it’s potentially gotten worse – but as people understand they’re in a violent situation or they’re in an abusive relationship, they have more confidence to reach out to get support and help. Our systemic responses of course have never had bipartisan, long-term, sustainable, sufficient funding. So that is, again, a slog that feels challenging because it’s still a battle to really get political leadership, particularly at a federal level.
I would tell my 16-year-old self that you’re
enough and don’t settle for less. Believe in yourself and what you deserve. I turned 60 a couple of weeks ago and you think who was I at 16? You have no idea of what tragedy awaits you in life. I would never have had any idea that the only child I would ever have would be murdered. It’s beyond your comprehension to think that could be possible in your life. I didn’t even know about family violence when I was 16. I didn’t know it existed, didn’t know what it looked like. I knew nothing. So how the hell did I find myself experiencing life as I have? I mean, what would you want to say to that 16-year-old girl? Avoid that fuckwit.
IF YOU HAVE EXPERIENCED VIOLENCE OR SEXUAL ASSAULT AND REQUIRE IMMEDIATE OR ONGOING ASSISTANCE, CONTACT 1800 RESPECT. FOR CONFIDENTIAL SUPPORT AND INFORMATION, CONTACT SAFE STEPS’ 24/7 FAMILY VIOLENCE RESPONSE LINE ON 1800 015 188.
Eleonora Arosio
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Takin’ Care of Business
The Big Issue’s Women’s Workforce are a force to be reckoned with, as Melissa Fulton discovers when she joins them on a shift.
by Melissa Fulton Deputy Editor
@melissajfulton
It’s a bright sunshiny morning when I arrive at The Big Issue’s vendor support offices for my shift. Women dressed in Lycra check the laces on their running shoes, rub sunscreen on their faces, chat quietly among themselves as they prepare to get to work. We make chitchat – where to get coffee, the merits of almond milk (Kristel’s off the dairy), Tina asks Lieu about her family. Gemma and Esther, who are both overseeing our shift, hand out maps, cold drinks and the leaflets we’ll be delivering today, which we pack into bright red Big Issue bags. Welcome to the Women’s Workforce. The agenda for the day? A letterbox drop in the suburbs of inner-city Melbourne, alerting residents to construction work in their area – upgrades to the public housing towers.
Ever noticed that the majority of Big Issue vendors are men? Well, 12 years ago The Big Issue did too, and saw an urgent need to provide safe, flexible and family-friendly work opportunities for women.
While women represent 42 per cent of Australia’s homeless population, women’s homelessness tends to be less visible. Overwhelmingly, domestic violence is the leading cause of homelessness among women in this country, and women over 55 are the fastest-growing group to experience homelessness.
In response, The Big Issue launched the Women’s Subscription Enterprise (WSE) back in 2010, employing women experiencing homelessness, marginalisation and disadvantage to pack and send our magazine to subscribers. Demand for no-barrier, inclusive work for women and gender non-conforming people has continued to grow since then, so the WSE has expanded into the Women’s Workforce, and increased the services on offer, employing women for third-party procurement work – jobs like picking and packing, mail house services, data entry, call centre work, event support and, like today, letterbox drops – for government, start-ups, not-for-profits and other businesses, including Australia Post, The Body Shop, Westpac and Melbourne International Jazz Festival. Today we are employed by ICON Developments.
Lieu has been employed by the Women’s Workforce since its inception, and she knows a thing or two about how to prepare for a shift. She agrees to show me the ropes, and is patient when I fumble with the handfuls of leaflets she gives me to pack for the day.
As we stroll between housing complexes unloading our pamphlets, Lieu opens up. One of the benefits of this type of work is that there’s plenty of time for a chat. “I was a boat person from Vietnam,” she says, “so I know how important it is to feel safe.”
Lieu talks about arriving in Australia in 1979, settling in West Melbourne and how for 10 years she owned and operated an Asian grocer in Footscray. She had a family, and when her children were born, she opened a new business with more forgiving hours, so that she had more time to care for and be with them. At one stage, she owned three houses in Melbourne with her partner.
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And then one night, with nothing but the clothes on her back, she packed up her children and fled – “For our safety.”
At first, Lieu didn’t know where to go, which services to access, who to turn to for help. Her daughter was about to sit her Year 12 exams. “I didn’t feel safe at all. I didn’t want my children to know, but I knew they knew something. They were so scared, but I told them not to worry, we just had to get out the door right now.” They ended up at the sick bay of Southern Cross Station, asking for help.
Lieu’s children are grown up now, and she’s proud that she was able to support them through university. But for Lieu, finding the Women’s Workforce was about more than just the money. “The best part of the work is that we’ve always got support,” she reflects. “Any issue – be it personal or family – you can come there and check in with each other and see how you’re going. The Big Issue is really just like family; if you need to ask for help, you just let the staff know and they’ll meet you before or after or during the work. It’s a really caring, supportive environment.”
To date, the Women’s Workforce has employed almost 200 women across four states – Victoria, New For some, it’s a lifeline. “I kept telling myself as soon as I have surgery, I can go back to work. But I thought, sometimes it’s not just the injury, it can be a little broader than that… You’ve gotta heal the mind too.”
When I talk to Tina during our lunch break, she’s still glowing with pride after the weekend, when her son got married. “The wedding was fantastic, beautiful,” she says, then describes the dress she bought for the occasion: “It’s a full-length dress, navy blue, with short see-through sleeves.”
KRISTEL, ON THE BIG ISSUE’S WOMEN’S WORKFORCE
South Wales, South Australia and Western Australia. It pays award wages, and offers shifts of a minimum four hours. These shifts are overseen by a managing supervisor, who can provide support and extra training to the women. Importantly, the shifts are flexible – and aim to accommodate the circumstances the women may be facing.
“My first shifts I didn’t show up,” reflects Kristel. “And most jobs wouldn’t ring you back. I must admit, at the start, it was anxiety. I was really bad like that.” Kristel worked in recruitment at Monash University for 14 years. But just six weeks after she resigned from the job, she was in a serious accident. Then COVID arrived, and delayed the surgery she is undertaking as part of her recovery. It’s been a tough time. At one stage she was homeless, sleeping on friends’ couches. But then, her luck changed, and her housing provider connected her with accommodation. About a year ago, she joined the Women’s Workforce.
“The Big Issue has been great, just to get my foot in the door somewhere,” she says. “I’ve found that this has just been a good way to ease back into work… It’s given me back my networking and engagement skills, too, because I withdrew for a little bit there.”
For many women, the Women’s Workforce works as a stepping stone back into the workforce or study.
Tina’s been working with the Women’s Workforce for five years now. Prior to that, she had been out of the workforce for some time. “I was very unwell – my mental health, yeah. But the work with the Women’s Workforce was only for four hours, which was comfortable and manageable, and I got to meet the ladies and have a talk. I’ve made some good friends. It’s a good place, a very friendly and happy environment.
“I’m learning people skills, time management skills, organisation skills. Getting up in the morning and making sure I’ve got enough time to get ready and get into work.”
As we trundle along the footpaths of Melbourne, our bags getting lighter as we unload these pamphlets, I take in more stories from these women. I understand something that I often forget about work: that it’s about more than just the pay – though that’s important too – it’s about having somewhere to be, having someone to talk to, having people looking out for you and asking how you are.
“You might have nothing,” says Lieu. “You might have lost everything. You might not even have a roof over your head, but if you come to The Big Issue, they will give you support and guide you.”
The Long Revolution
More than 50 years after her landmark speech signalled the ascent of feminism and galvanised women worldwide, Gloria Steinem still has the fire in her belly.
by Laura Kelly The Big Issue UK
@laurakaykelly
Sex and race, because they are easy, visible differences, have been the primary ways of organising human beings into superior and inferior groups, and into the cheap labour on which this system still depends.”
So said feminist Gloria Steinem more than 50 years ago, in one of the most important speeches of the 20th century.
Addressing sexism and misogyny, racism and poverty, the rallying cry of the Address to the Women of America remains the core demand of feminists today: to live in a society “in which there will be no roles other than those chosen, or those earned”.
On that July day in 1971, Steinem co-convened a gathering of more than 300 women, including The Feminine Mystique author Betty Friedan, civil rights activist and journalist Myrlie Evers-Williams, activist lawyer politician “Battling Bella” Abzug and Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to the United States Congress. By the end of the weekend, they’d founded the National Women’s Political Caucus (NWPC) – a ground-breaking organisation to increase women’s participation in political and public life.
“This is no simple reform,” Steinem promised. “It really is a revolution.”
Five decades on, “it’s been a long, long, long revolution,” Steinem tells The Big Issue on a video call from her office in New York. It’s her current base for a battle she’s still actively
fighting today, at 87. “Our goals were mainly electoral and political,” she continues. “It was a bipartisan effort to see to it that there were more women – hopefully, half women – in both elected and appointed political office.”
Did it feel like a revolution? “Not yet. It still doesn’t.”
Though the feminist revolt is yet to topple the patriarchy, the NWPC has helped shift the dial on women’s participation in US politics. In 1971, women represented 4.7 per cent of American state legislators; today, they are 31 per cent. “Things have changed enormously in a half century,” Steinem agrees.
Still, the most powerful position in America has remained the preserve of men. In 2016, Hillary Clinton came the closest to being America’s first female head of state – only to lose to possibly the most boorish misogynist ever to hold the role.
Steinem was a prominent campaigner for Clinton, so it comes as a shock to hear her say, “I never thought that she could win, actually.”
Really? “Yes, yes. Of course, we all worked our hearts out anyway, right?”
Though Donald Trump was voted out in 2020 – and Kamala Harris sworn in as the first female, first African American and first Indian American vice-president of the United States – the hangover from his administration remains.
Trump’s Supreme Court appointments now threaten one of the totemic achievements of American feminists – Roe v Wade. In 1973, the landmark case blocked individual states from banning abortion, thus protecting a pregnant person’s liberty to have an abortion.
For Steinem, an attack on bodily autonomy is nothing less than an assault on democracy. “The first step in every hierarchy that I know about is controlling reproduction. And that means controlling women’s bodies,” she warns. “So, democracy also starts there.”
The US Supreme Court is expected to rule by October in the case of Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, over a Mississippi law that would outlaw most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
“Oh, fuck them!” exclaims Steinem. “How dare they say that they can make a decision over our bodies? It’s just impossible and wrong.”
The day after Trump’s inauguration, at the 2017 Women’s March on Washington, Steinem had a hero’s welcome from the hundreds of thousands of people who thronged the streets. “I’ve been thinking about the uses of a long life,” she told the crowds, “and one of them is you remember when things were worse.”
So after all these years, is there still the same fire in her belly? “Oh yes, of course. Are you kidding me?! Part of what is great about social justice movements is that you learn. It’s exciting. You have a chosen family of people who share some of the same hopes and values. You laugh at each other’s jokes. You dance. I don’t know why people think a movement is a source of deprivation. It’s not. It’s a gift.”
Chief among criticisms of second-wave feminism – that of Steinem and her contemporaries – is that it failed to address how different forms of oppression – such as race, class, disability and sexuality – intersect.
Steinem acknowledges the criticism, and points to such prominent Black activists as Dorothy Pitman Hughes and Florynce
Rae Kennedy, alongside whom she often appeared on the lecture circuit – not to mention Shirley Chisholm, whose 1972 presidential campaign has been unjustly forgotten. “Shirley Chisholm took the white-male-only sign off the White
House door all by herself. In 1972. That is extraordinary.” In her much-storied life,
Chisholm’s presidential campaign is the moment Steinem says she’s most proud of. Yet the story doesn’t get the attention it deserves. “That’s a problem,” says Steinem.
“Even to the extent that we have been part of history, it kind of gets wiped out or underplayed. Shirley Chisholm should have been a bigger part of the coverage of
Kamala Harris’ candidacy. I’m not sure
I saw it mentioned at all.” Neither Steinem’s team, nor I, could find a full version of the 1971 Address to the Women of America online. It has, Steinem fears, fallen victim to a combination of the general erasure of women’s history, as well as the failure of the women’s movement to recognise themselves as history-makers at the time.
I did turn up a clip in which a journalist plays her another clip in which a woman calls Steinem a “real bitch”.
“I’ve learned now, if somebody calls me a bitch, to say thank you,” she laughs, “because the reason they’re calling you a bitch is usually something to be proud of.”
TOP: WITH A PREGNANT PRESIDENT CARTER, 1977 MIDDLE: LEADING A PRO-CHOICE RALLY, 1986 BOTTOM: MARCHING ON WASHINGTON, 2017 04 MAR 2022
