Not Now, Not Ever

This is an edited extract from Chapter 10 of Not Now, Not Ever

What do next-generation activists think? In conversation with Chanel Contos, Caitlin Figueiredo and Sally Scales

Julia Gillard

Misogyny remains pervasive and deep-seated. It is not just going to disappear like morning dew because we are shining a light on it. Changing the stereotypes and structures in our society that hold women back is hard work, and it takes time. Despite the efforts made by so many to accelerate this progress, at the current rate of change, the World Economic Forum estimates it will take 136 years for us to reach gender equality globally.

Against that kind of depressing backdrop, it would be easy for younger women to say, ‘Why even bother?’; for them to look at older feminists and say, ‘You have laboured and failed to create a fair world, free from misogyny – why should we waste our lives trying?’ Instead, they could choose to navigate the world as best they can, trying to avoid the worst traps and pitfalls created by gender inequality without campaigning for major change.

When I first left political office, I would frequently hear an eerie echo of this kind of thinking. Young women would approach me and say that watching my time in politics and all the sexist slurs and misogynist hate I’d endured had put them off becoming involved. It was hugely saddening for me to confront the very real risk that my role modelling had amounted not to a call to arms, but rather to sounding out the call to retreat.

And yet, in more recent years, I have detected a change. The news seems to be flooded with younger women who are living their feminism visibly and vibrantly, leading campaigns for change with a savvy, take-no-shit attitude. This is the kind of feminism Abbey Hansen captured so brilliantly in her TikTok video, mouthing the words of the misogyny speech as she applies her make-up and steels herself to go out into the world with the lyrics ‘I’m a bitch, I’m a boss’ pounding in the background.

I now have hope that another feminist wave is gathering, drawing on the power of new activists, who are unapologetic about the need for change. But how real is all this? What is today’s feminism? Who is fighting misogyny now? To answer these questions, I spoke to three young Australian activists: Chanel Contos, Caitlin Figueiredo and Sally Scales.

Chanel holds a first-class master’s degree in gender, education and international development from University College London. For her dissertation, she investigated sexual assaults on girls who were high school students, focusing on abuse where the perpetrator was also school-aged. When she reached out to students from a limited number of elite girls’ schools in Australia to ask for survivors’ stories, she was blown away by the mountain of responses she received. Ultimately, more than six thousand survivor testimonies were submitted. This led Chanel to become the founder and CEO of Teach Us Consent, which gathered 44,000 signatures on an online petition demanding effective consent education reform in Australian schools. This activism has triggered change to policy regulating schools and teaching practices.

Caitlin is the founder and CEO of Jasiri Australia, a youth-led social enterprise on a mission to unleash a fearless generation of women and girls. At 22, Caitlin was listed on the Forbes ‘30 Under 30 Asia’ list for co-founding the Girls Takeover Parliament program, a bipartisan initiative that promotes representational democracy and increasing female political participation across the Asia-Pacific region. Her advocacy efforts in youth development and gender equality have been recognised nationally and internationally, with Caitlin being invited to the first Forbes Under 30 Global Women’s Summit. Caitlin is also the co-chair of the Australian Youth Affairs Coalition and has sat on three United Nations task forces.

Sally is a Pitjantjatjara woman from Pipalyatjara, in the far west of the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands in remote South Australia. She was elected as chairperson of the APY Executive Board Council in 2019, the second woman to have held this position. An artist herself and winner of the 2022 Roberts Family Prize, Sally has worked with the APY Art Centre Collective since 2013 in cultural liaison, elder support and spokesperson roles. Sally is part of the leadership team advocating for the Uluru Statement from the Heart, which captures the largest consensus of First Nations peoples on a proposal for reform and recognition in Australian history. On top of all of these commitments, Sally is a foster mum to Walter, who is now six years old.

We begin our discussions with where they were and how they felt when they first heard the misogyny speech. Caitlin says:

‘I first heard the misogyny speech when I was fifteen and in high school. At the time I was sort of interested in politics but wasn’t active. My friends said, “Caitlin, did you hear this?”, so we got around the computer – all my friends, about ten of us – and we started watching it.

I remember my mouth dropped! I was looking at you and I was feeling everything that you were feeling – the anger, the passion, the hatred, the frustration, and I felt like, “Oh my god! Finally, someone is saying something.” All my friends and I were so shocked and saying, “Yeah, we feel seen.”

I didn’t know about “misogyny” until your speech. I had to go and look it up, but I already felt that women and girls were treated differently. I remember quite clearly that at the start of primary school, our teacher asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I raised my hand and said, “I will be the Prime Minister of Australia one day,” and all the boys laughed. They were like, “Ha ha, Caitlin, there’s never been a female prime minister.” And I was like, “Can’t I be the first?” They all said, “No, that doesn’t happen.”

When you became prime minister, that attitude instantly shifted. But then I could see that the level of respect, the comments, and even the questions that you were given, weren’t the same as for previous male prime ministers.

Watching the speech, I was thinking, “Okay, you know what? There are people who get it. There are people who are willing to actually call out bad behaviour.” That was a massive turning point for me and my friends.’

Sally was with friends in Alice Springs when she first saw the misogyny speech. She came to that moment steeped in women’s leadership. She says:

‘In my formative years, my mother was the chair of Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Women’s Council, which is based in Central Australia. The women weren’t part of the conversation in the 1980s around getting land rights. These are strong, staunch, Black women, but the government effectively said to them, “We’re just going to talk to the men about what we’re doing.” In reply, the women said, “Well, we’ll start our own organisation.” I grew up seeing that incredible leadership and seeing how that duality happened: the iron fist with a bit of a smile. My mum’s got the biggest sass, I get it from her. I’ve seen how she uses it.

I remember watching the lead-up to the misogyny speech, and that time was filled with rage. You were our leader, but you were getting such hate and disgusting commentary, which just didn’t seem to end, ever. It also showed me that there was a lack of leadership by everyone else because they allowed that commentary to go on and go on and go on.

So, the misogyny speech was just like a “Hell yeah!” moment. It had that power for me, the reaffirming that we can just be anything, and, you know what? Everyone else might not lean in. Everyone else might not stand up, but we do. Women constantly stand up. Women constantly are the drivers for change. Women constantly are the ones who say, “Enough is enough, this is not going to be the way we do it.”

It’s the way you managed to do that – it could have been done in such a way that everyone would have been like, “Oh, she’s a hysterical woman.” But it was just done in a way that was so powerful and brilliant. And it’s like you saying to the sexists, “I know you are going to keep going. I can see it on your faces. But I’m not moving. You can’t move me, and this is what my leadership is.” I just felt that was the most powerful thing.

I think all Australian women walked a little bit taller that day. It was a bit like, “Our prime minister has gone there. Do you wanna go there? We know how to go there now.”’

Chanel remembers the misogyny speech as leading to far deeper conversations about gender equality in her life. She says:

‘I think I was in my living room and I heard the speech on the news. I had just come home from school and I was fourteen years old. This was a time in my life where the dictating, coercive forces of gender inequality that victimise girls and women were at the peak for me in terms of how I saw myself and how I interacted with my peers and boys and the world around me. It was kind of a time where I was meant to feel, “Oh yeah, women are subordinate to men,” because that’s what I was being told by everything around me. I grew up in quite a right-wing, conservative household.

I had become numb to all the negative media around you as prime minister. This was the first moment when I realised, “Oh, that’s not okay and that’s not what should be happening.” Because I grew up with you being prime minister, I did think women could be prime minister, but I had never thought about whether women could be prime minister without facing all this backlash.

I didn’t know what “misogyny” was, actually, until your speech. I had never heard that word before, I don’t think, which is so disappointing, given that I went to an all-girls school, where I would have hoped we might have had these conversations earlier.

The next day at school I remember a friend talking to me about the speech, and also the head girl of the school. Then all our friends were talking about it, and we were getting that sense of community that is so important to women. We created a conversation in a safe space.’

I am a big believer that while it can be intriguing to talk about the past, what really matters is what we learn from it and how it leads to change in the future. As a result, I am keen to dig a little deeper and find out how these incredible young women see their feminism. In answer to that question, Chanel says:

‘Feminism is equality, which sounds like a boring answer. But I also see feminism as being very deconstructive and critical of the current status quo, because, in order to achieve true feminism, which would be equality, we need radical change. I pursue that very specifically with initiatives such as the Teach Us Consent campaign, trying to prevent men’s violence against women and children, but also more broadly, creating conversations and trying to change cultures and things like that, because I feel as if it’s all the micro stuff which builds up that’s kind of getting in the way of real change. So, again in my conservative Greek family household, it’s things being said like, “Oh, that’s a good job for a woman,” or “Oh, that’s a bad job for a woman.”

My focus in promoting feminism is very much on education. I have studied feminism now at high academic levels, but my original teachers in feminism were other girls at school. I’d never read a feminist text in my life or any sort of feminist book at that age. It was very much what I learnt in my immediate group of friends. I would say probably there were two or three who seemed to be equipped with this stuff from earlier on in their lives, presumably from their family environment. They were the ones who told our whole friendship group we shouldn’t be using the word “slut”. They were the ones who, when boys from neighbouring schools said horrible things, stood up and were willing to “boycott” them or encourage us to say something about it.

I do remember one teacher making our whole history class get up and stand next to the window and look over at the boys’ schools while she said, “They’re going to earn more than you.” She talked us through the gender pay gap and why it happens. But my early feminism was mainly learnt from my peers, and I was most receptive to it when it came from my peers. I also like to think that, over time, I was involved in spreading and teaching feminism, and that is what matters to me so much now.’

Caitlin endorses the concept that feminism is equality, but goes on to say:

‘I think feminism for me is about reclaiming and healing the past, peeling away trauma that has been passed down through generations. I’m Anglo-Indian and I grew up in a very patriarchal society where, from the time that I was little, whenever all my aunties and uncles would get together, all the boys were put on pedestals. I remember our aunties would sit around, literally in a circle, and the boys were always brought into the middle of the circle, and my aunties would go, “Look at how well my son is doing. He has won all of these awards. He’s fantastic. Oh, this is what he’s going to do when he is grown up,” and the girls would always just sit there around the outside of the circle. That never really changed and so I always felt very, very small.

I am also a survivor of quite horrific domestic violence. I kept that to myself for almost two decades. The first time ever I spoke about it, I remember being on stage at the 100 Women of Influence awards, and I looked down and my hero, Natasha Stott Despoja, was sitting at one of the first tables in the crowd. I’ve loved her since I was a little girl. I was like, You know what? This is my moment where I’m going to speak about why I’m doing this. I’m here because I have been silenced my whole life and I know what it’s like to feel powerless – to have your identity, to have your sense of security taken from you. To be on the verge between life or death because someone feels that they have the right to take that from you. That’s why I’m here in this moment, because I don’t want any other young woman, any other girl, no matter where they are in Australia or abroad, to go through this.

For me, that’s sort of why I do it, and that’s why I am really passionate about politics and making sure that we have diversity of faces and lived experiences there – because, yes, individual conversations are so, so important. Education is so damn important. But legislation, policy, changing the structures of our society can make a life-or-death difference. That’s what I’m trying to do through Girls Takeover Parliament, through the Australian Youth Affairs Coalition – bringing real people with real experiences together with legislative people.

Except for public speeches, I’ve never really spoken to my family about what happened to me as a child, especially, my broader family. I was just in Singapore, two nights ago, on my way back from overseas and I sat down to speak with one of my uncles over a bottle of wine. We started talking about our family history. I was like, “Do you know what happened to me when I was a child?” He said, “No, what happened to you?” I said, “Well, when I was a girl, my life was almost taken by a family member because I was born a girl, because I was not dressing the way they thought I should, because I was speaking out, and this was happening in the suburbs of Perth.” He looked at me and said, “Oh my god! I can’t believe that this has happened to you,” but then he told me stories he had heard about his mother and her mother, and it’s that generational trauma that has been passed down consistently that we need to overcome.

We have a long way to go, but that’s what it’s about for me. It’s about reclaiming those stories, about exposing them, and about trying to fix them and heal them.’

I then turn to Sally to hear about her understanding of feminism. She explains:

‘I mean, it is that element of equality and what that looks like. But for me, my own feminism has been about becoming more and more aware of how, in the Western world, the valuation of men is held above that of women. I hate the word “Dreamtime”, so I always talk about our culture, in which there’s always been a recognition of the importance of both women and men; their laws and cultures are seen as being on equal footing. The men’s stuff needs the support of the women.

I also grew up with my Dad when we were in Alice Springs, because Mum wanted to live at home, in her country. I have two strong parents who really pushed for me to have that duality in our language, duality in our cultures.

The biggest moment for me was when I was twelve and I was told by a family member that, as a First Nations person, I already have one foot in the grave. That was a huge shock to me, but it was a serious message about our life expectancy, the chronic ill health experienced by First Nations people and all the systems that are built up to fail us. I had to think, Oh wow, okay. So how do I then manage that and steel myself? How do I lean in? How do I be that advocate, be that voice?

As I said, I’m really privileged: I had all my language and my culture very firmly attached to my being. I had incredible leaders and elders, male and female, but especially the male leaders who quickly elevated me into leadership roles on bodies like the APY Executive Council.

I am grateful for that, but I became more and more aware of the lack of equality in work spaces, constantly walking into the room and seeing you are the only woman, or you are the only person of colour. I always talk about how one is a token, two is a change.

Women have always been leaders. I think that’s what my feminism is about. It’s about saying, “No, no, no, I actually belong in this space. You’re just catching up to me,” and then turning that spotlight onto the other women who don’t have that or need that support.

My biggest thing is actually seeing who’s not in the room and who do we need to make sure is in the room. It’s about, how do I use my privilege and power for the other ones that need it? I am always thinking through questions about how to be a good ally. I talk to others about it and urge them to stand there, next to that person, and say, “Hang on, do you need my help? Do you need my support?”

And then you can deal with marginalising behaviours. You can pull a person up and say, “Hey, I just heard your comment over there, that’s really incredibly rude and we can’t have that in this space anymore.” It’s about what standard you are going to be okay with.’

There is a core of agreement here between each of these younger activists – that feminism is about true equality – but such a diversity of context and views about what gets prioritised. Being prepared to educate and having the courage to challenge are common themes. I ask myself whether that is different from the feminism of the past and find myself thinking no, it is not. However, today’s reality is different to any other time in history, with much more understanding of the way gender, race and other forms of discrimination intersect.

That is progress; and yet, when we look at gender equality generally, the degree and pace of change has been maddeningly slow. I want to understand how frustrating being a feminist is today for the coming generation, given we ought to be bequeathing to them a far more equal world than we are actually passing on.

Caitlin admits she has had moments of doubt, and is particularly troubled by assaults on the ability of women to make their own reproductive choices, saying:

‘Literally I feel so gross when I look at what’s happening in the United States, with the challenges to access to abortion. Men, and even some very conservative women, are almost like, “We have a key to your body, we have the key to your future and only we can unlock it.” That for me is really, really difficult. I remember saying to friends, “I am losing a little bit of hope now that I’m getting older,” because of setbacks in Australia and around the world.

But mostly I am more optimistic than that. I do honestly think that in twenty to thirty years’ time, when our generation and the next generations coming through are in the majority, there will be major change. There is a movement building which is moving away from capitalism, from being all about money and greed. Now people are asking, “All right, how can we take care of each other? How can we start tackling climate change? How can we stop thinking about us in the here and now and start thinking about the next seven generations, ten generations? Younger people are starting to think that way. They’re not taking the jobs that can get them the fanciest car but the ones that make the biggest amount of difference. It’s not going to be immediate, but profound change is coming.’

Chanel describes herself as being positive, and for a similar reason. She believes Australia, specifically, is at a pivotal moment of accelerated change, saying:

‘The reason I’m optimistic is because the younger generations are better than the older generations at unlearning, reflecting and understanding. Once Australians learn how to unlearn, and once it becomes normal to self-reflect in that way and critique cultures and current practices, I think it’s going to be a really fast transition towards something a lot better. I hope that does have an intersectional approach.

I do have concerns – and I know I’ve also been a part of this – that mainstream feminism in Australia, or the feminism that the media gives attention to, is predominantly white feminism. While I’m optimistic for the future, we are at risk of not changing the structures as a whole and not actually deconstructing these power imbalances across all sections of society. We’re at risk of going towards a very neoliberal feminism that is inherently capitalistic in that way.

I talk about rape culture a lot in my movement and I say we have all been complacent. When you are being complacent, you’re being complicit, and we need to actively do better.

That’s the kind of approach that drives anti-racism work. With all of the work and conversations that the Black Lives Matter movement generated, for example, it started to become normal to accept that to be anti-racist you must understand that you are living and working within a society that is racist. When I speak to my parents, they would say, “I’m not racist.” But it’s not helpful to this conversation to just pretend that you don’t see race.

If we continue to develop the understanding that just because you as an individual are not doing something, it doesn’t mean that you don’t benefit from the system built around it, people will increasingly have a higher social conscience. That means I do hope for better, but I also understand my limited echo chamber, so that optimism might be misplaced.’

Sally is also optimistic, but she too worries about complacency. She recounts receiving a powerful new insight in recent weeks. A colleague built on the expression ‘We have to break the glass ceiling,’ by adding ‘but we also have to elevate the floor.’ That has stayed with Sally, who explains:

‘If you’re in a minority, and you end up being the spokesperson, you know – “This is the Aboriginal leader . . .” blah blah blah blah, then no one ever has any critical thought about that person or those systems. They just sit in that place of complacency.

Yes, we need some more female representatives. Yes, we need some more people of colour representatives. But I would always say whoever we put up as those faces of leadership, we all have to have some critical thinking about them because it’s not good enough to just have someone there.

Instead, we need to make sure we do our research, because it’s one thing to break that glass ceiling, but we have to start raising the floor and elevating all of us. It’s about bringing everyone together now. It’s not about waiting for someone to step into that space of leadership when they’re hitting a certain age. It is time now for everyone to move in, and we go together. Women have always gone together. Women have said, “I’ve got you. I see you. Let’s go.”

You know that even when you are young. For example, when you’re a teenager, when you go out with your friends and you see a girl and you don’t feel comfortable leaving her because she is a little bit too drunk, you say to her, “We have you and let’s get you home safe.”’

This remarkable younger generation is communal and caring, full of understanding about the risk of gendered violence. While this still-harsh world for women could easily wear away their optimism, it has not. They have a degree of confidence that change is coming in the next few decades.

To round off our discussion, I ask for comments on two aspects of the emerging feminism that have struck me. First, it is clear from what has been said so far that these younger feminists tend to view the gender equality project as one which is not about individual women changing themselves, but about changing the current power structures. I want to know whether in their minds it is about reaching equality in terms of who gets to the top of the pyramid, or is the aim to reshape hierarchies altogether?

Then, with the words to the old feminist song in my mind – ‘Don’t be too polite, girls, don’t be too polite!’ – I reflect on whether, despite this injunction, those of us who have gone before may have been too polite. I ask, is this current generation far more likely to make demands with real forcefulness, and make it clear that they are not prepared to take it anymore?

I think of these as unrelated but interesting questions; however, Chanel weaves them together, saying:

‘My mum grew up in a really conservative, strict Greek household, and she chose to marry my dad because the other guy that she wanted to marry wouldn’t let her go to university. I remember when I was young thinking, “Oh, she’s become a really successful lawyer, and that’s amazing. That’s, like, women’s empowerment.” But it’s not really, because that only changed things for her, not the broader picture.

I feel as if it’s very rare for a young woman to have an idea of just their own personal success without thinking about womanhood as a whole. I also think that ties in to why we could be less polite, and why we don’t need to be polite, because there’s this whole generation of people backing us, even if our parents don’t agree with the way that we’re speaking about things or asking for things, and the language we’re using on TV, we know that there are people our age who relate to us, who want to make change. I think it’s easier to go against those institutional values of what a nice, polite, ladylike girl should be when we know that we have the backing of true sisterhood.’

Caitlin adds:

‘Actually, one of your comments, Julia, reminds me of a time when a very senior government minister invited me to a round-table discussion because I have expertise in the Pacific and supporting young people to be entrepreneurs.

I was answering all these questions, but three times in a row the minister stopped me and repeated everything that I had just said, in his own words. The fourth time it happened, I interrupted him with the words, “Excuse me, please do not cut me off. They all know what I’m saying.” I was never invited back to that minister’s office again.

That behaviour towards women, which happened constantly, had just been accepted because he was a minister. He was someone in a very senior position of power. But for me, that was a real catalyst moment with me deciding, I’m not going to let you devaluate what I’m trying to say or why I’m here.

For me, this next phase of feminism is about standing up for ourselves, and not just changing the structures but dismantling them and rebuilding them. I feel this next wave of feminism is going to be all about making sure that every voice is at the table, and if it’s not, we are going to extend the table as far as possible. If we have to smash walls down to open the space, we will do that.’

Chanel builds on Caitlin’s words, saying:

‘What we are dealing with at the moment is old power, which is held by a few heavily controlled and inaccessible elites. Essentially the traditional parliament system is old power. Whereas this younger generation, we’ve harnessed technologies like social media, and that means we can communicate en masse, we can shift discourse overnight. One video can go viral and we can suddenly have a unified understanding of a new moral good across our whole generation instantly. I think this kind of new power is continuously being harnessed and it is inclusive, it’s accessible. It’s not elite.’

Sally takes a different tack:

‘I think there’s an incredible myth out there that all women have to agree, that all First Nations people have to agree, that all minorities have to agree. When people make that mistake, I always turn around and say, “Well, do all white people love Pauline Hanson and agree with what she has to say?”, and that shocks them because she is a very divisive politician in Australia.

We live in a democracy, but we need to be critical, we need to be thinking, what is the end goal here? My thing is, what is your core goal? Keeping that really front and centre matters, because everyone loves adding in other ideas and then we get really busy and we don’t know what’s going on anymore. You sort of have to rein it back and go, okay, what is our core business?

I’m really bossy and pushy. What I love about the younger generation is they are saying, “We have seen the skill sets of the older ones and seen what they’ve tried to do, and we’re really going to push through.’ I think that’s what is really amazing.

Where your speech was really powerful, Julia, was that it was effectively saying, “I’m letting you know that I’m throwing down the rules, I’m putting a boundary on this.” It also pushed everyone else to go, “Actually, I’m deeply disappointed in myself that I didn’t move in, and I didn’t lean in, and I didn’t say this was a problem.” I think it means that everyone is now saying, “Actually, standing back is not good enough for me anymore.”’

I end the conversation having learnt a great deal and feeling truly emotional, knowing that the future is in safe hands – and also knowing I will never hear a higher accolade for the misogyny speech than Sally’s closing words. I cannot entirely agree with her that now everyone is no longer standing back, but I love the youthful enthusiasm behind her words. If she is right that it has generated that reaction in some, and that there is more activism than there would have been as a result, that is more than enough for me.