Described by The Times as ‘An important contribution to the field of military history’ and Bookseller as ‘Brilliant, perspective-shattering’, Forgotten Warriors it an attempt to set the record straight on the diverse and indispensable roles that women have played on the battlefield. Richly detailed and well researched, this book details the long history of women on the front lines.

COVID-19 has been declared a public health emergency of international concern and a global pandemic by the World Health Organization. This global threat to health security underscores the urgent need to accelerate progress on achieving Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 3: good health and well-being. It also reveals what is less obvious, but no less urgent: how health emergencies such as COVID-19, and the response to them, can exacerbate gender inequality and derail hard-won progress not only on SDG 3 but SDG 5 (Gender Equality

As the world has turned its attention to combating the COVID-19 outbreak through lockdowns and self-isolation methods, victims of domestic violence (DV) are suffering. There have been spikes in reports of domestic violence globally, to varying degrees. In Tunisia, hotlines for women experiencing abuse increased fivefold; Spain saw an 18% increase in calls to the emergency number for domestic violence; French police reported a 30% rise in domestic violence call-outs, and in China, the number of calls tripled. When accounting for the amount of abuses that aren’t reported, these numbers are likely much higher. Women are disproportionately affected by gendered violence, with some national studies showing that up to 70% of women have experienced some form of intimate or sexual partner violence in their lifetime. Due to a range of systemic inequalities, the percentage is much higher for women of colour on a global scale and locally, for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women in Australia.

The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic are widespread, diverse and indiscriminate, affecting the world on both micro and macro levels. Many natural environments are thriving, while economies are crashing and bringing about recessions not witnessed since the Great Depression. The effects of the pandemic are much less severe within Australia than they are elsewhere in the world. However, those effects, albeit less overt than the horrors of overcrowded hospital wings, mass unmarked graves and respirator shortages, are still just as dangerous and unfortunately just as ubiquitous. Our intimate relationships and social interactions have been drastically altered, perhaps irrevocably. Not only does this transformation bring about new challenges, but it exacerbates existing social inequalities and vulnerabilities based on a range of factors including gender, ethnicity, race, disability, age, etc. This is particularly evident for instances of domestic violence (DV) in Australia.

We need to talk about Female Genital Mutilation. We need to talk about FGM as a human rights transgression, as a health concern, and as a form of gender-based violence. We need to talk about FGM as surrounded by an international dialogue that is often reductive, and crude. We need to talk FGM in terms of ‘culture’ and ‘rights’, and how they may be reconciled. Last week, it was reported that a 12-year old Egyptian girl had died from a medicalised FGM procedure. FGM is difficult to talk about, but the ramifications of our silence are too horrific. February 6th, International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation, is an opportunity to have these conversations, and to reflect upon the role of the #EndFGM movement in the context of prevailing debates.

A genuine feminist foreign policy will not be easy to achieve but is well worth the effort. Greater gender equality promotes more peaceful, healthier, and more resilient domestic security environments. Most important, states with more gender equality are more stable. So how does Australia’s foreign policy stand up? On September 12, 2019, Women In International Security (WIIS)–Australia and the Asia-Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect (APR2P) convened a workshop to assess whether Australia has a feminist foreign policy and, if not, what steps could be taken to advance such a policy. These are their findings.