Article here. Excerpt:

'New South Wales Attorney-General Mark Speakman has announced a suite of reforms to consent law, following a two-and-a-half year review by the Law Reform Commission.

The review was prompted by survivor-advocate Saxon Mullins, who endured two trials and two appeals, only to end up with no legal resolution to her rape case. Since then, Mullins has advocated for affirmative consent.

However, the final report from the commission, released in November last year, failed to recommend this standard. Despite this, Speakman has stood alongside Mullins with the promise of a bill that goes beyond the recommendations of the commission — and will make affirmative consent the law in NSW.
...
This does not, as some may claim over the next few months as we see this bill progressing through parliament, reverse the onus of proof. People accused of sexual assault will continue to be afforded their right to the presumption of innocence.

Article here. Excerpt:

'On September 22, 2018, Australian woman Maria Doris Axiak, 58, attacked her husband while he slept by pouring boiling water over his face and torso. His crime? He said he wanted out of the marriage.

That night, he told Axiak that he was unhappy and wanted a separation, NCA Newswire reported. He said he would sleep in the guest bedroom so that she could sleep in the master bedroom, and after he fell asleep, Axiak smoked a cigarette before disconnecting the landline so that he could not call for help. She then boiled a pot of water and poured it over him as he slept.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'An external investigation into former computer science Ph.D. student Maha Hasan Alshawi’s allegations of sexual harassment and retaliation found computer science professor Alberto Quattrini Li not responsible for any of the seven allegations made against him. The 87-page report on the findings of the investigation — which drew on over 1,000 pages of interview transcripts, email exchanges and other evidence — was produced by Cozen O’Connor, a law firm retained by the College last August.

Article here. Excerpt:

'A tech firm with a growing Raleigh headcount is instituting a gender quota as a way to move the needle when it comes to gender equity.

Vineet Jain, CEO and co-founder of California-based Egnyte, prides himself on staying out of political commentary. He’s not the kind of guy who typically jumps on the conversation trends or does things just to check boxes.

So the tweet announcing his plan – posted on Tuesday – may have come as a surprise to some.

“I’ve always said I hate quotas,” Jain told TBJ. “But that’s the only way to look at this.”

Emiliana Guereca, president of the Women’s March Foundation, said, “Equality across the tech industry is not going to happen” without enforced quotas.

“The gender gap is a problem in tech … there are not enough women being hired, and quotas are the only way to get equity,” she said.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Deutsche Bank will have to appoint women to about 50 per cent of vacant senior management positions to meet its new 2025 gender target, a Financial Times calculation shows.

Germany’s largest lender last week promised to raise the share of women among its roughly 600 most senior executives to at least 30 per cent by 2025, up from 24 per cent now.

Only a limited number of these positions become vacant per year, however, so this target can only be met if the lender chooses female candidates in at least every other senior hire and promotion, according to the figures.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'In an effort to reverse that trend at UNCTAD, Isabelle Durant, a former Belgian politician and UNCTAD’s acting secretary-general, instructed her senior managers last month in an internal memo to scrap a requirement that new hires have doctorate degrees, saying that it limits the pool of potential female candidates. She also insisted that women be included in shortlists for potential job recruits, that managers undertake training to detect potential unconscious bias against women in their hiring practices, and that women serving in the lower and middle professional ranks be given “priority consideration” during the hiring.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'To add to this continuing bandwagoning, the Jim Henson Company posted an audition call to Twitter this week for “top talent and new creative voices from diverse communities and backgrounds to train as puppeteers in the Jim Henson technique.”

Described by the company as an ‘inclusive workshop’, the program’s criteria states the Los Angeles company is currently looking to train “members of the LGBTQ+ community, people of color, and women of all cultural backgrounds.”'

Article here. Excerpt:

'A federal judge has ruled against a conservative legal group that sought an immediate halt to the priority status for restaurants and bars owned by women and certain minorities in President Joe Biden's COVID-19 relief package.

U.S. District Judge Travis McDonough in Knoxville, Tennessee, issued the opinion denying a temporary restraining order last week in the lawsuit brought by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty. The group is appealing the decision.

The judge wrote that "Congress has gathered myriad evidence suggesting that small businesses owned by minorities ... have suffered more severely than other kinds of businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic, and that the Government's early attempts at general economic stimulus ... disproportionately failed to help those businesses directly because of historical discrimination patterns."'

Article here. Excerpt:

'A woman in Longmont, Colorado, was sentenced to eight years of probation – no jail time – for sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl multiple times.

Chelsea Vigorita, 29, was able to plead guilty to “attempted sexual assault on a child by a person in a position of trust and third-degree assault,” according to local news outlet the Times-Call.
...
Had Vigorita been a man, such a light sentence most likely wouldn’t have been enacted even with a guilty plea. Further, the reporting outlet never would have described the interaction between Vigorita and the teen girl as “having sex.” Rather, it would have been described as sexual assault or rape.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Another week, another shaming of boys in schools. Last Monday a teacher at Como Secondary College in Perth stormed into a change room and told boys celebrating a soccer win that they sounded like ‘a bunch of testosterone-fuelled misogynistic boys.”

It was encouraging to see the extensive media coverage of this event as well as the recent shaming of boys in two Victorian schools, where boys were required to apologise for men’s violence and denounced as male oppressors.

It is odd that so many react with surprise given that shaming of boys as toxic, violent and dangerous has been happening for years in Australia and is part of school curriculum in many states. With all the interest in the new national curriculum and concern about the growing influence of identity politics in schools, it is telling that no one is focusing on the widespread infiltration of feminist ideology into school programs with male-bashing now part of school teaching across the country.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Late last week, President Biden announced the selection of Catherine Lhamon to return as head of the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. This prospect should be of deep concern to those who care about students’ rights. As head of the office for President Obama, Lhamon’s enforcement of the federal anti-discrimination law Title IX was a disaster out of which students, academia and the federal courts are still digging.

Article here. Excerpt:

'The government of Chile, under pro-China President Sebastián Piñera, moved to do away with its 50-year-old constitution following nationwide leftist riots in 2019 that allegedly began as a protest against a proposed subway fare hike in the nation’s capital, Santiago. Fare protests rapidly escalated into the mass burning and vandalizing of churches, government buildings, and private businesses, resulting in Piñera agreeing to scrap the constitution.

Among the several progressive reforms Chile has implemented during the Piñera era is a law that requires bodies like the constitutional convention to conform to “gender parity,” meant as a nod to feminists who formed part of the far-left coalition fueling the riots. The law requires that each sex not make up over 55 percent of the lawmaking body. The intent of the law was to give more power to women in politics, but its first major implementation will disenfranchise 11 women who won their posts in free and fair elections.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'A federal judge in Texas issued a preliminary ruling Tuesday which found that the Biden administration’s nearly $29 billion restaurant relief fund discriminated against a white male restaurateur.

In an 18-page ruling, the judge ordered the Small Business Administration (SBA) relief program to temporarily stop prioritizing funding applications from businesses owned by women and racial minorities, over that of the plaintiff.

U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, found that the plaintiff is “experiencing race and sex discrimination at the hand of government officials.”

“The evidence submitted by plaintiffs indicates that the entire $28.6 billion in the Restaurant Revitalization Fund may be depleted before plaintiffs’ application can be considered for relief under the program,” O’Connor wrote.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'President Joe Biden's nominee to be the next secretary of the Army, Christine Wormuth, told senators at her confirmation hearing Thursday she is concerned about the force's new fitness test and whether it will push a significant number of women out of the service.

"I have concerns on the implications of the test for our ability to continue to retain women," said Wormuth, who would be the first woman to serve in the role if confirmed.

She said the Army needs a good measure of fitness, but strict fitness standards across the board could shrink the service's talent pool for critical jobs that do not demand athletic ability, such as cyberwarfare roles.

Gillibrand, who chairs the personnel subcommittee, and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., ushered a measure through last year suspending official implementation of the ACFT until the Rand study is complete.

Article here. Excerpt:

'A heated debate in South Korea about mandatory military service for women is inflaming divisions between the sexes rather than narrowing social gaps, the country’s gender equality minister said.

Chung Young-ai, who leads the Gender Equality and Family Ministry, was responding to a question in a Bloomberg interview about whether young women should be made to join their male counterparts in serving in the armed forces. The issue has been the subject of wide discussion since April, when ruling party lawmaker and 2022 presidential hopeful Park Yong-jin reacted to local election defeats by suggesting mandatory military service for women would promote gender equality.'