On Tuesday, November 28th, Women in International Security – Australia Inc. was fortunate enough to have a conversation with Dr Sarah Percy from the University of Queensland. Dr Percy discussed her new book Forgotten Warriors: The History of Women on the Front Line  published with Hachette Australia.

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).

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.

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.

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 July 2019 the Lowy Institute released Foreign territory: Women in international relations. The report found a severe gender imbalance within the departments and organisations in Australia that are responsible for conducting Australia’s international relations. It subsequently identified issues with the ‘pipeline’ of women via recruitment, as well as the ‘ladder’ of promotion once women were in these institutions. The report concluded with several concrete recommendations for improving the recruitment and retention of women in these workforces.