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Join panelists Professor Linda Trimble, W/Prof Carmen Lawrence, and political journalist Christine Wallace on the anniversary of the Australian Sex Discrimination Act (1984) for a lively and hard-hitting discussion, facilitated by Gender Institute Convenor Dr Fiona Jenkins, about the sexism that many believe contributed to Julia Gillard's downfall a year ago - and more broadly, to consider how media frame women in public life.

This event is free and open to the public; Followed by drinks and light refreshments.

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Image: Poster detail. Artwork by Alison Alder

About the panelists

Carmen Lawrence trained as a research psychologist at the University of Western Australia and lecturedbefore entering politics in 1986 and serving at both State and Federal levels for 21 years. She was at various times W.A Minister for Education and Aboriginal affairs and was the first woman Premier and Treasurer of a State government. She shifted to Federal politics in 1994 when she was elected as the Member for Fremantle and was appointed Minister for Health and Human Services and Minister assisting the Prime Minister on the Status of Women. She has held various portfolios in Opposition, including Indigenous Affairs, Environment, Industry and Innovation and was elected national President of the Labor Party in 2004. She retired from politics in 2007 and is now a Professorial Fellow at the University of Western Australia where she is working to establish a centre to research the forces driving significant social change in key areas of contemporary challenge as well as exploring our reactions to that change. The centre will also seek to expose for public discussion the processes most likely to achieve social change where that is a desired objective.

Linda Trimble is a Professor in, and former Chair of, the Political Science Department at the University of Alberta, Canada, where she teaches courses on Canadian politics, media politics and research methods. An expert on women’s legislative representation, Dr. Trimble’s work on media, gender and politics has appeared in The Canadian Journal of Political Science, Feminist Media Studies, The International Journal of Press/Politics, and Journalism Practice. She is currently writing a book about news coverage of women prime ministers in Australia, Canada and New Zealand, called Ms. Prime Minister: Media, Gender and Leadership.

Women and power is a continuing interest of writer and commentator Chris Wallace, which she explored in journalism during an extensive Canberra Press Gallery career as well as in longer form works including her biography of Germaine Greer, Greer, Untamed Shrew (1997), 'Standing Up to P' in the 'Women & Power' edition of Griffith Review (Winter 2013) and 'Julia Gillard' in the Michelle Grattan-edited Australian Prime Ministers (2013). Wallace is currently completing a doctoral thesis on political biography as political intervention at the National Centre of Biography in the ANU School of History, under the supervision of Australian Dictionary of Biography general editor, Professor Melanie Nolan. She observed Julia Gillard's rise and fall at close quarters.

Fiona Jenkins is Senior Lecturer in the School of Philosophy, Australian National University, and Convenor of the ANU Gender Institute. Her current research covers two projects, one on Judith Butler, which focuses on questions of political legitimacy, violence and non-violence, in post-national frameworks which has the working title Sensate Democracy and The Question of Violence: How Bodies Matter in a Common World and centrally includes discussion of the materiality and force of the image; the other on gender equity in academic disciplines. She is the co-editor with Katrina Hutchison of Women in Philosophy: What Needs to Change? (OUP 2013).