Lizzie Wong

The issue lies in selling dreams without acknowledging the necessary sacrifices, hard work, and clear understanding of one's rights as a worker in Australia, as well as the consequences of breaching one's contract or visa.

It is essential to learn how to ask questions, navigate the Australian system effectively, and avoid receiving misleading information or advice. ABC Pacific

For the Pacific Island women who harvest the fruit and vegetables that stock Australia’s supermarket shelves, motherhood here can mean injury, debt, secrecy and fear.

Meet *Priscilla, she is one of an unknown number of Pacific Island women who have fallen pregnant while living and working in Australia without a valid visa.

Read full story: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-06-14/pacific-farm-worker-pregnancies-undocumented-labour/106779364

A society can praise women endlessly while still limiting them. It can call women nurturing, selfless, pure, and emotionally generous, then punish them the moment they are angry, ambitious, blunt, difficult, childfree, competitive, or unwilling to serve.

The pedestal is not the same as freedom.

“Women are wonderful” sounds like a compliment.

But in psychology, it describes something more complicated.

In the 1990s, researchers Alice Eagly and Antonio Mladinic identified what became known as the “Women Are Wonderful” effect: the tendency for both men and women to express generally warmer, more favorable attitudes toward women than toward men.

At first, that sounds almost encouraging.

But the praise came with conditions.

Women were more likely to be associated with kindness, sympathy, tenderness, warmth, and morality. Men, meanwhile, were more often linked with ambition, authority, competence, and leadership.

In other words, women were admired for being good.

Men were trusted to be powerful.

That distinction matters.

A society can praise women endlessly while still limiting them. It can call women nurturing, selfless, pure, and emotionally generous, then punish them the moment they are angry, ambitious, blunt, difficult, s*xual, childfree, competitive, or unwilling to serve.

The pedestal is not the same as freedom.

Later research on gender in-group bias added another layer. Women were found to show stronger automatic favoritism toward women as a group than men showed toward men. This does not simply mean women are “biased.” It may reflect how deeply women connect identity, safety, care, and shared experience with other women.

Men, even in societies structured to benefit them, are not always taught to feel warmth toward men as a group. Masculinity is often built around ranking, competition, and emotional distance.

That is what makes this subject so revealing.

The problem is not that women are seen as wonderful.

The problem is that “wonderful” often means harmless.

It means warm, but not authoritative. Moral, but not commanding. Loved, but not fully believed.

And that may be one of s*xism’s most polished tricks: praising women for the qualities that make them easier to contain, while reserving power for someone else.

*xism

May reminded me, meaningful impact is not measured by how much we do, but by how deeply we serve, connect, and grow.

🎯💯

"Cody is right that we must urgently address male violence against women. But it is extraordinary to invoke male violence, while simultaneously ignoring such violence when it is perpetrated by men who identify as women, and refusing to recognise why women object to males accessing female-only spaces in the first place."

My response to the S*x Discrimination Commissioner's damage-control opinion piece in today's Australian for Women's Forum Australia.

🔗 www.womensforumaustralia.org/you_cannot_fight_violence_against_women_while_erasing_them_in_law

📣 : www.womensforumaustralia.org/FixTheSDA

✨️

We spend so much time chasing big moments that we forget life is built in the small ones.

A quiet morning.
Food on the table.
Laughter from our children.
A safe place to sleep.
A message from someone who cares.
The strength to get through another day.

Not every blessing arrives loudly.
Some come softly, wrapped in ordinary moments we almost overlook.

Gratitude changes everything. When we learn to see the simple things as sacred, we realise we have survived, grown, and been carried through more than we thought.

The little things are not little at all.