What is equality? What does it mean to be equal to a man? In a country where an increasing number of young women professionals are entering the work force, I sometimes feel guilty for wanting to settle down with a family one day, and potentially taking a few years to spend on focusing on the rearing and education of my children.

Feminism. It's a word that can cause debates and rifts Australia-wide. One look at the comments in your average online news article about anything to do with women - or a quick google search of that gem of a term, 'feminazi' - will be enough to persuade you that anti-feminism is alive and well.

A report by PriceWaterhouseCoopers released this week shows that Australia lags behind the rest of the OECD in employment for people with disabilities, and ranks worst in the OECD on poverty for people with a disability. Christina Ryan, from Advocacy for Inclusion and a member of Women With Disabilities Australia, said on ABC radio that extreme social isolation and the “grinding, lifetime poverty” experienced by people with disabilities means most of us are not aware of the enormity of the problem within our community.

The topic of the blog post was suggested by someone else as a funny paradox, a hilarious juxtaposition of my different personal interests. I pondered upon this, but something did not sit quite right. It isn't a paradox. I AM a Girl Guide and a Feminist, I thought, but wait, aren't they actually the same thing?!

I'm not normally into New Years' Resolutions, and in the past few years I've tried to stick with making just one that is at least in theory possible to achieve. Previous ones have been to learn how to play bass guitar, roll cigarettes or ride a unicycle (true story). None of these have actually been achieved. I did learn the bass line to the Talking Heads' 'Psycho Killer' but not much else. Still can't roll cigarettes. Can't unicycle but didn't break any bones trying to learn, so I guess I could chalk that up as some sort of success.

Petals! Long time, no Link Love! I’ve had a dandy holiday season – lots of eating and swimming and all those other lovely things that come with the summer holiday season – and luckily for you all, there’s been a whole heap of brilliant Settle Petal content posted so you can get your Oz feminist fix. But I’m back! And it’s a bumper Link Love this week, just to make up for it…

Bob Katter has a bit of a funny-old-Granpa feel. The kind of bloke who is relegated to the corner of the room, to be left alone with his beer and his muttering. Whether or not he shares the same love of casual racism that the older people in my life sure seem to enjoy is a question I can't answer, but it is undeniable that BobKat is dangerously socially conservative.

In my previous life working in IT and hanging out with geeks, I often had to put up with sexist remarks or behaviour. At the time, I could never think of a suitable reply. I was either too intimidated, or jaw-droppingly surprised that real people actually say such stupid things to women. So here’s what I wish I’d said to things that people really have said to me at work in the past. If ever I hear those sexist remarks again, I’ll have a reply ready!

The other day I was in my car unusually early and caught the first part of drive-time radio. The show was doing a survey (of over 18 year old women) about whether or not they found it flattering or gross when they caught someone perving at them. Every single woman who I heard call in said something about context but the show clearly didn’t care about context (or content of what women said, really) and instead boiled all their callers’ comments down to “they find it flattering.” In fact, they closed the section with ringing bells and a call to all men to feel free to perve as “100% of callers find it flattering.”

Well, you've all seen the news by now. Apparently my biting criticism of some of the more embarrassing moments for the Liberal National Party in the lead up to Queensland's state election last weekend wasn't enough to stop them being elected in a landslide. 'Landslide' is a term that does get tossed around much too easily when it comes to elections, I agree, but in this case it seems appropriate, as does 'whitewash', particularly given the overwhelmingly middle-class-white-male makeup of our new parliament north of the border.

Well, well, well. It started with the #mencallmethings thread on Twitter, continued with the Kyle Sandilands' incredible response to some mild criticism from a female journo, followed by the Melinda Tankard Reist is-she-a-feminist-or-isn't-she debate, and then we moved on to the nightmare that is the current US war on women, and what I saw someone refer to as 'Greer's arse debacle'. The debate seems to have lasted the whole summer - and I for one have been loving the shit out of it.

Petals! It's been a long time between Link Loves, we know. We've sorted ourselves out and decided to replace the sporadic, if-we-can-coordinate-it weekly link love and go for a monthly wrap up instead. So this is it: what you may have missed, or wish you had, in May.

I'm not too sure when exactly I started speaking like the missing Kardashian sister. It certainly wasn't on purpose. But there I was a few months ago, collecting my change from the cashier and letting loose a 'thank yewww'. The long, lazy drawl isn't all that much different from the standard Australian accent I've always had and these slight Kardashian influences that have begun peppering my speech fit in nicely next to my occasional uptalk (the 'high rising terminal') and the Gilmore Girls-style rapid fire conversation that for some reason only women seem capable of following.

In my capacity as founder and editor of Australian feminist website feminaust.org I was fortunate enough to travel to Istanbul, Turkey in April to attend the 12th Associations for Women's Rights in Development Forum. This year with the theme: Transforming Economic Power to Advance Women's Rights and Justice. I've been writing about it and reflecting on my experiences over the last few weeks and I thought Settle Petal deserved an update, so in true young feminist of the 21st century style, I'm going to wrap up my four days at AWID 2012 via my twitterings from that time.

I am getting a new tattoo for my birthday. It will be white ink, on the inside of my arm: The seam of history / is stitched with the bones of those / who remained silent A quote from Omar Musa's poetry. It's something I do my best to live, but sometimes it is hard. Imagine how much harder it must be for Anita Sarkeesian. She has been the target of an online hate campaign by video gamers who take offence at her critique of the stereotyping of women in games.

In one swift manouvre I've escaped another censure Lived to tell a bolder tale My controversial new adventure

Petals! June already? When did that happen? Winter's officially begun, as has the endless media circus that is State of Origin, and it was the month I realised that the real reason I despise Queensland's Bigot-In-Chief Campbell Newman is simply that I have a problem with his footwear. So here's what you may have missed, or wish you had, in June.

Once upon a time, I could go for a half hour jog and do a session of sit-ups every morning and not even break a sweat. I could spend half the day chasing a horse around a paddock and the other half the day perfecting my canter transition. I could climb a rockface and then abseil back down. I could play an hour of squash with precision and not feel a thing in my legs the next day.

In Judaism there is a phrase: tikkun olam: to repair the world. It means a lot of things to a lot of people but here's what it means to me. That tomorrow can always be better than today and that I have a responsibility to make it so. I don't believe in God, but I do believe in a better tomorrow and that people taking responsibility will be the only way we can achieve that. In Reconstructionist Judaism, this belief in the holiness of tomorrow and my role in bring tomorrow to fruition is well articulated.

RU486 is licenced for Australia now, so all abortion problems are solved, right? Wrong. I've written before about abortion in Australia and how common perceptions aren't necessarily accurate. Like many of the things I write for Settle Petal, this was a list, of things people may not know or realise about abortion and Australian women. Some of these things are worth revisiting in the light of last month's announcement by the Therapeutic Goods Administration that RU486 has now been licensed for distribution in Australia.

A lot has been said about the Prime Minister of Australia this week. Much of it high praise; albeit mostly from overseas. It's probably not worth re-hashing here (though if you haven't seen it, you should do) but suffice it to say, I think the Prime Minister did a lot for feminism everywhere. And while there is much chatter about whether young women do or do not identify with feminism anymore, I have to say that watching such a powerful woman call a spade a spade when it came to the gendered nature of her experience in the top-job, I was never prouder to call myself a feminist.

It's not hard to guess what I was thinking about when I came up with a title for this blog (hint: it was sex). I am taking over from Simone de Beaver's Link Love and she has kindly shared some of her links and words for September. Alas it is quite late to be giving a wrap of September but just be grateful for my sharing, alright? Who knew I would be such a narcy blogger?

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for quite some time now, you’ll have noticed there’s been a lot of talk about misogyny and sexism in Australia. It began when respected broadcaster Alan Jones was unfairly targeted by militant extremist feminists for daring to discuss on air the views shared by millions of our fellow reasonable and rational Australians. The organisers of the witch-hunt say they want to “destroy the joint”, and yet ASIO have as yet been unwilling or unable to lock up the terrorists who so clearly wish to wreak violent destruction on an ageing and vulnerable man. Perhaps ASIO are actually a front for the Socialists? Time will tell.

I was at a meeting the other day, and the man I was meeting with said that I seem like a very moderate and reasonable member of the women's movement. Yes, I know. I was a bit stunned too. I took it as a compliment (I think that's how he meant it), but I've been wondering ever since what a "moderate and reasonable" feminist looks like.

Find My Friends is a location-based iOS app that lets you see where your friends are, and receive an alert when they're coming or going from specific locations. But all this information can be used for good, or evil.

I went to a lecture by DrGita Sen the other day. She addressed a range of topics including claiming the word 'feminism'; general wisdom that gender equality has assumed the position of motherhood and apple pie, and asked the audience if that was the best position for gender equality to be in (hint: though she didn't say so I think her answer was no!); what gains feminism has made in the last decade; what slippages have we seen, and; what is the context of the fierce new world in which we work.

So what did happen in March that got our feminist knickers twisting?! Read on to find out the best of what happened in feminist minds in March.