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.

In Gillard’s cabinet reshuffle yesterday, it was announced that The Hon Julie Collins MP (Electoral Division of Franklin, Tasmania) is to be the federal Minister for the Status of Women. She joins Nicola Roxon and Tanya Plibersek in a special club. The “super mums”, as dubbed by the media, have risen to the top of Australian politics, while also juggling young families. Nicola Roxon, a mother of one has become Australia’s first female Attorney-General, while newly appointed Health Minister Plibersek and Collins both have three children.

Recently the Feinstein International Center at Tufts University produced a terrific report with funding support from CARE International and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA) called Sex and Age Matter-a fact any feminist (or, you know, anyone with any sense) could have seen coming! Designed as an advocacy tool highlighting the need for Sex and Age disaggregated data (SADD) in humanitarian response, Sex and Age Matter examines the consequences of failing to disaggregate data by sex and age in baseline data and/or needs assessment

When people talk about women's equality, there's a lot of use of the word "fair". It's not fair that women earn less over their lifetime than men. It's not fair that women are subjected to violence because they are female. And so on. But what do we really mean?

What is woman? Is woman what I see every day plastered on billboards and television screens? Is she the body the world demeans Through constant propagation of idealized and objectified images of skin? Is woman defined by her butt size, her cup size? Every organ of her body romanticised, Or are these lies?

As a young woman in Australia today, I am frustrated. I am frustrated because I live in a culture that has ripped away the enjoyment of being female, destroyed self-esteem and created so much competition among women. Don't get me wrong here, I'm not saying that I hate Aussie culture – I'm saying that I hate western culture and every constraint it forces upon the females bound by it.

I was pretty excited to hear there's been evidence of an ancient stream found on Mars. It means an increased chance of life having once existed on Mars. But what if there's life out there without gender - what would that be like?

Once upon a time…. A soon-to-be aunty ventured out to assemble a book collection for her niece/nephew. In the dark of night she fled from the mainstream bookstores with their blinding aisles of pink and blue dust jackets, and sought books that represented diversity! Courage! Acceptance! And social justice! She fought dragons alongside princesses in disguise; sought out ghosts with boys who wanted to know why they haunted the town, rather than join the angry torch-and-pitchfork mob; attended jungle parties with giraffes and zebras who just needed to find their own rhythm; and encountered some underpant-loving aliens. The soon-to-be-aunty sighed with satisfaction at the bookshelf before her, and excitedly awaited the year when her niece/nephew would meet Hermione Granger.

My New Years resolution for this year was to read all six Jane Austen books. This challenge served no other purpose than I haven't read most of them since high school English, and it seemed like a good sanity-maintaining strategy to survive my final year of university. When I've told people about this 'challenge' the main responses to this have been the following: "Who's Judy Austen?"