Cirrus@Austlit

'The house husbands or SNAGS, a new phenomenon, did not see this as a permanent role and most, sooner or later, tired of a lack of life in the public sphere; despite a brief fashion for the male population's public job being private Home Duties, many men longed to re-enter the usual world; one in which important or sometimes stimulating things went on. The Australian Institute of Family Studies (in the government Department of Social Services) has regularly researched attitudes to gender roles within households in relation to things such as divided domestic work and has found, in its surveys, considerable support for shared housework. Other factors are in play in many countries, especially the incidence of child marriage (650 million girls) and of Female Genital Mutilation (imposed upon 200 million girls), the latter increasingly administered by actual health services rather than the stereotypical old, female relative with a razor blade and a sewing basket. The witches and midwives of centuries ago were one thing (documented, for example, in Barbara Ehrenreich's 1973 Witches, Midwives and Nurses) but more recently, in COVID-19 times, women are much in demand in their jobs/professions as health workers, and have been given enthusiastic encouragement to lead their working life in close contact with often viralent infections, as "essential workers"-a category that seems to have benefits for the bourgeoisie who belong to it, but not many for nurses working long and demanding shifts, wearing often-uncomfortable Personal Protective Equipment, in hospitals and infection-testing clinics.' (Carole Ferrier, Editorial introduction) 

'In 2011 the Gillard government passed legislation regarding passports that allowed the choice of an X gender on them with the selection of gender not depending upon medical intervention, and in 2013 amended the Sexual Discrimination Act to make discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and intersex people illegal. In 2004, the Howard government had amended the Marriage Act to exclude same-sex marriage; in 2009 the Rudd government brought in legislation to remove discrimination for same-sex couples in 1985 Federal laws. Australia certainly has a plentiful supply of the former, though the still expanding oil industry is a major contributor to Australia having one of the worst records in the world on carbon reduction in relation to industry and export especially in relation to fossil fuels (and metals) extraction and trading. [...]if the big fossil fuel companies operating in Australia paid more tax- and one third pay none at all-there would be capital available for more investment and community involvement in sustainable energy generation. Morrison also signed off on what was agreed to be-at the Pacific Islands Forum urging global efforts to limit warming to 1.5 degrees-"critical to the security of our blue Pacific," but the LNP has no plans to develop a policy to substantially transition from fossil fuels to sustainable energy sources, even though recent developments continue to make this energy cheaper.' (Carole Ferrier, Editorial introduction)

'This issue of Hecate prints papers presented at the Excess and Desire conference in February 2017.1 A central topic of many of them is that of gendered corporeality, especially as this is represented in literary and cultural production that comes from a fringe, an edge, a periphery—that often stands (up) for a much larger group. The authors discuss texts from a range of contexts, with approaches to ways of reading that involve innovative practices of recognition, and a critique that evaluates writing that speaks out for silenced majorities, and for those who envisage paths for liberation.' (Carole Ferrier, Editorial introduction)

'This issue of Hecate, as well as the one to follow (43.1), prints some papers from the  "Excess, Desire and Twentieth to Twenty-First Century Women's Writing" conference held at The University of Queensland in February 2017. A common feature of the articles in this issue is that they investigate various possibilities of resistance to and agency against white supremacist, capitalist, imperialist, patriarchal, repressive regimes, both institutional and ideological - as their operations are recounted in women's writing and/or as they are examined/focused through a subversive feminist lens - the author's or the critic's.' (Editorial)

Hecate has from the mid-1970s published work from cross-disciplinary perspectives that contest hegemonic received ideas regarding gender, class, ethnicity and race, and sexualities, and how these things have played out at particular times in particular places. In this issue, Fiona Duthie's article discusses some female characters in Janette Turner Hospital's novels who aim at 'interesting forms of internationalism' and who challenge 'cultural and political systems that seek to enforce division,' so that the can try 'to achieve the truth and justice thy so earnestly desire against the backdrop of the general bleakness.' While this could be said of many fictional female characters in much of the literature of the past decades, the reference her to 'bleakness' seems particularly apposite when 'interpreting the world' in 2016.' (Editorial 4)